EVs and S&DCs: USPS says you can’t have one without the other
The Postal Service is using the very popular plan to buy electric vehicles to justify its very unpopular plan to relocate carriers to Sorting & Delivery Centers. In press releases, news articles, and presentations to business mailers, the two plans are being yoked together, as if you can’t have one ... Read More
The S&DC plan rolls on, the excessing begins
The Postal Service began implementing its plan to relocate letter carriers from post offices to Sorting & Delivery Centers back in November. At first it seemed — at least for the time being — that only the carriers would be impacted, but that’s not the case. The Postal Service has ... Read More
Previewing the first wave of Regional Processing & Distribution Centers
The Postal Service is in the process of creating sixty large, multi-functional mega-plants called Regional Processing & Distribution Centers. The first of them may go live as early as this summer. It’s been known for several months that three of the first RPDCs would be located in newly leased facilities ... Read More
USPS OIG will investigate delayed mail and delivery operations in Kansas City area
fox4kc: KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The United States Postal Service (USPS) Office of Inspector General will conduct an audit of delayed mail and delivery operations in the Northland and Kansas City area. The Thursday announcement comes after Congressmen Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) sent Postmaster General Louis DeJoy ... Read More
New USPS TV spot promises a delivery network with smarter, more efficient routes
The Postal Service has come out with another new commercial. It’s just 15 seconds long — but long enough to fit in what Mark Twain would call a “stretcher.” The spot is the second in a series that began a few weeks ago with a 30-second commercial touting the changes ... Read More
Dear Fort Lee, New Jersey Building (once a post office, recently razed)
Post Office Fans: Dear United States Postal Service Building, 229 Main Street, Fort Lee, New Jersey 07024, (FLB) for short. I wrote the following letter as a way of reflecting on the events of the past few years. I also hope it honors you in some small way. You’ve touched ... Read More
The slow death of reliable mail: Apathy abounds in a severely compromised postal service
The Dickinson Press: This newspaper is deeply concerned about the state of the United States Postal Service and its ability to provide timely, reliable and secure delivery of mail — our own newspapers notwithstanding. For many years, the USPS has been a pillar of our communities, providing an essential service ... Read More
A progress report on S&DC conversions and plant consolidations
The Postal Service presented its 10-year plan, Delivering for America, two years ago this month. It began implementing the plan’s main component — the transformation of the processing and delivery networks — about a year ago, when the Postmaster General approved funding to repurpose some processing plants and to lease ... Read More
Postal Service shares a new list of S&DCs and spoke offices to be converted in June and September
Earlier this week, the Postal Service provided the APWU with an updated list of the facilities that it’s planning to convert to Sorting & Delivery Centers and the post offices that will give up their carriers to these S&DCs. The new list shows the plans for September 2023: Sixteen new ... Read More
Everything you didn’t know you need to know about the Postal Service’s new commercial
By Steve Hutkins Last week the USPS Link had an article — titled “Get a ‘Move’ on” — announcing the Postal Service’s new TV commercial. The commercial is called “Orchestrated Delivery,” and its theme is “We’re reinventing our network” — a reference to the way thousands of letter carriers across ... Read More
The Postal Service consolidates its network: Modeling five metros
By Steve Hutkins When Congress eliminated the Postal Service’s pre-funding mandate for retiree health benefits, which had caused $50 billion in artificial debt, it required semiannual reports on the agency’s financial condition and operations. Section 207 of the Postal Service Reform Act directs the Postal Service to respond to information ... Read More
OIG revises announcement of its S&DC audit (again), will now focus on communication
The USPS Office of Inspector General has made some changes in the announcement about its audit of the Postal Service’s Sorting and Delivery Centers. It’s the second time the announcement has been revised. In December, the OIG’s website said one of the ongoing audits would focus on the Postal Service’s ... Read More
Delegation demands answers from Postal Service leadership on delays across Vermont
Representative Becca Balint (D-Vermont) on Thursday sent two letters to the leadership of the United States Postal Service (USPS) demanding answers and accountability regarding postal issues affecting workers and service in communities across Vermont. These letters – one to the USPS Board of Governors and one to Postmaster General Louis ... Read More
The Postal Service unwinds the NDC network and merges the mail streams
As part of its 10-year plan to streamline the network, the Postal Service is in the process of “unwinding” its 21 Network Distribution Centers, which handle Marketing Mail, Periodicals and some ground packages. One of the goals of this NDC Unwind is to merge the mail and packages handled by ... Read More
USPS OIG pushes back release date of audit of S&DC plan
In December, the USPS Office of Inspector General announced that it had initiated an audit of the Postal Service’s “Development and Communication of Sorting and Delivery Centers.” As shown on this version of the announcement from the Internet Archive, the estimated release date was originally June 28, 2023. Sometime over ... Read More
The first two historic post offices put at risk by the S&DC plan
This month the Postal Service is continuing implementation of its initiative to transform the delivery network. Seventeen post offices are seeing their carriers relocated to five new Sorting & Delivery Centers (S&DCs). A list of them is here. After the carriers are gone and more than half the floor space ... Read More
USPS’ plans to consolidate sorting in part of Southwest Michigan appear to have been delayed, but it’s not clear for how long.
WMUK: The Postal Service has plans to consolidate mail processing in Kalamazoo and surrounding communities. But it appears to have delayed those plans by at least a few months. Kalamazoo is one of a handful of places around the country targeted for an overhaul. USPS says moving sorting out of post ... Read More
Texas Two-Step: S&DC holds a grand opening, Post Office gets downsized
The Postal Service will hold the grand opening of the new Sorting & Delivery Center in Bryan, Texas, on February 23, 6 to 8 pm. The Bryan S&DC will be the new home for about a hundred letter carriers who have been working out of the College Station post office ... Read More
USPS Postal Bulletin publishes the 85 discontinuance announcements previously omitted
The current issue of the Postal Bulletin contains all 85 of the post office discontinuance announcements that had been omitted from two earlier issues because there were too many of them, plus nine more that hadn’t been announced. All of these discontinuances were for post offices that had been closed ... Read More
USPS is moving ahead with a major shakeup of its delivery network
Federal News Network: The Postal Service is moving ahead with a major shakeup of its delivery network this year as part of its 10-year reform plan. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the USPS Board of Governors on Thursday that he is working with postal unions and management associations to accomplish ... Read More
