USPS proposes changes to save $3 billion per year, starting in 2025

David Sharp, Associated Press

The U.S. Postal Service wants to prevention $3 cardinal annually connected changes that bespeak its greater reliance connected streamlined location networks — while retaining section message transportation times of 1 to 3 days and allowing customers to way immoderate transportation schedules pinch greater precision.

Election message won’t beryllium affected, officials said.

The proposal, announced Thursday, would set message transportation times while maintaining a committedness to a maximum five-day transportation for nan flagship Ground Advantage programme nationwide and a maximum three-day transportation for section first-class mail.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said nan changes to return spot adjacent twelvemonth are basal to “enable america to run much efficiently and reliably, turn our business and springiness america a chance for a viable future” aft an 80% driblet successful first-class message since 1997 and a corresponding maturation successful packages. All told, nan Postal Service has amassed much than $87 cardinal successful losses from 2007 done 2020.

The specifications were unveiled by nan Postal Service up of a Sept. 5 gathering successful which nan projected changes will beryllium discussed pinch stakeholders earlier they are submitted to nan Postal Regulatory Commission.

Election message and vacation shipments won’t beryllium affected because nan projected changes would not return spot until nan adjacent almanac year, officials said. Medications besides should proceed to beryllium delivered astatine their existent speed, aliases faster, nether nan proposal, officials said.

The connection reflects nan Postal Service’s move to overhaul its processing and proscription web pinch an accent connected location hubs, thing that is already opening to return spot successful Atlanta; Richmond, Virginia; and Portland, Oregon. Changes to amended utilize existing crushed networks mean nan Postal Service must set pickup and drop-off times betwixt station offices and processing plants, a process that will summation nan velocity of immoderate of nan mail, officials said.

Postal customers who unrecorded person to location hubs will spot nan top reductions successful transit clip for mail; transit times for immoderate agrarian customers could turn while still falling wrong existing work standards, an charismatic said.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly, a predominant professional of changes nether DeJoy, was unimpressed by nan proposal.

“Any effort to degrade work while raising prices is simply a look for a decease spiral astatine nan Postal Service,” Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, said successful a statement. “This is nan 2nd clip Postmaster General DeJoy has projected little work standards. He mightiness arsenic good denote a return to delivering message by equine and buggy.”

This connection aligns pinch nan organization’s instruction to beryllium financially self-sufficient while continuing to present to each reside crossed nan federation six days a week. If adopted, 75% of first-class message will spot nary alteration from nan existent work standards, and astir two-thirds of message will beryllium delivered successful 3 aliases or less days, nan Postal Service said.