In 2021, the U.S. Postal Service implemented a major change in mail handling that slowed delivery for two out of five first-class letters.
In some cases, this change permitted mail to be delivered a full two days later than under the prior standard.
Now, the agency is again planning to slow down the mail by adding an additional day to delivery times in much of the country.
That’s according to an article by Christopther Shaw in the current issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen.
As part of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s push to restructure the postal system, which the agency calls “Delivering for America,” mail would no longer be collected from most post offices at the close of the workday.
The new policy would impact much of rural America and largely fall on individual postal patrons, not large corporate mailers.
In a statement on the plan to alter collection times, the Postal Service claimed that “refinements to our existing service standards will enhance service reliability, improve the daily reach of mail when traveling through the network, and are projected to reduce costs by approximately $3 billion annually.”
The projected cost savings are the primary motive for both this change and the broader restructuring of the agency’s processing network. Under its current funding model, the Postal Service is required to finance itself with postage revenues.
Total mail volume has declined slightly since 2020, as has the number of packages delivered through the postal network – a service that has become more central to the agency’s operations in recent years.
Under existing practices, mail is collected from post off ices at the close of business and transported to processing plants where it is sorted and dispatched the following morning, Shaw reported.
This procedure ensures that the processing of letters and packages begins on the same day that patrons mailed them. Under the planned change in policy, mail will remain in most from processing plants for delivery. The restructured processing network that the Postal Service is unveiling revolves around sixty facilities called regional processing and distribution centers that will be located in major metropolitan areas.
The roll out of these new hubs has been a troubled process, resulting in significant delays in mail delivery times. These problems prompted a bipartisan group of twenty-six senators to call on the agency to “pause” the initiative.
“We are concerned about the impacts these changes have had so far,” the senators stated, “and the potential impacts that further changes could have. In regions where USPS has implemented significant changes, on-time mail delivery has declined. In addition, it is not clear that these changes will improve efficiency or costs.”