Modern Delivery for Modern Customers

It has been a busy and rewarding time at the United States Postal Service since we released our Delivering for America plan.

The Postal Service is unique in that it has a mandate to serve the American people — this is what sets us apart from other delivery organizations. But for some years now, we have struggled to meet our goals, in part because we had a network that was designed for a time that has long passed us by.

Since the Great Recession, which accelerated mail volume declines in the United States and throughout the world, we lacked capital and severely underinvested in our network, people and systems to conserve cash.  This situation caused a deterioration in our performance and our ability to compete, which has grown unacceptable to us and to the American public.

With Delivering for America, we’re addressing that problem and many more. With a new, modern approach to meeting our customers’ needs and an anticipated influx of capital for investment, the Postal Service now has the tools to show our customers, the industry and ourselves what we can really achieve.

The planned investment is huge — $40 billion — because we have big ideas for this new, modernized Postal Service. Delivering for America is a comprehensive reimagining of how the organization works and how it interacts with our customers. It also places a renewed emphasis on our postal workers — the people who make all of this happen.

The planned investment in new fuel-efficient vehicles — which start hitting America’s roads in 2023 —  understandably has generated most of the headlines because it is such an extensive and long-term spending commitment. But that is only part of our strategic overhaul.

Behind the scenes and unnoticed by many outside the Postal Service, we’re taking major steps to improve our processing and logistics operations to support package delivery, a sector that now accounts for more than 40 percent of our $77 billion in revenue and one that will continue to grow for years to come. Our more than 200 processing and distribution centers are being redesigned to streamline both mail and package flow. We’re deploying 112 new package processing machines all over the country and leasing more than 100 annexes, all focused on increasing our mail and package processing capacity.

We are also making critical investments in the Postal Service’s information technology infrastructure — no small feat, considering it is one of the largest in the world — and in many other functions across our enterprise.

But this is not just about moving packages. We’re investing to expand capacity and create a more precise and efficient network that improves on-time delivery performance for every piece of mail, be it a First-Class letter, a piece of marketing mail or your latest e-commerce purchase.

Delivering for America is a substantial investment in our future. We are charting a course toward a stronger, more secure Postal Service. When this plan is completed, our revitalized Postal Service will be as viable and necessary for the American people as we have ever been.

 

Joseph Corbett, USPS chief financial officer and executive vice president