USA Today: Older than the United States itself, the postal service faces significant challenges as Americans send fewer letters, Christmas cards and wedding invitations. Now, President Donald Trump‘s federal cost-cutting efforts, led by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, are targeting how to stop the service from losing money.

But change comes hard to an institution that counted Benjamin Franklin as the first postmaster general and uses an army of 635,000 union workers and contractors, a fleet of specialized trucks, boats, float planes and even mules to help deliver about 300 pieces of mail daily.

While news that Musk’s DOGE team will be scouring the service for savings sparked recent protests and drew headlines, a reorganization was already well underway with a longstanding transformation called “Delivering for America.”

Those changes include cutting 10,000 jobs through early retirements, a new fleet of electric delivery trucks to replace existing trucks that keep breaking down, and slowing delivery for many rural customers. More than 75% of the postal service’s budget goes to paying its roughly 635,000 workers, and those 10,000 job cuts reflect only a 1.5% staffing reduction.