DeJoy cites progress two years into 10-year Delivering for America plan

By Linn’s Staff

During a May 9 meeting of the United States Postal Service’s board of governors, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy reported progress two years into the 10-year Delivering for America plan.

DeJoy said that 98 percent of people receive their mail and packages within three days, and roughly 50 percent of first-class mail is delivered a day early.

A great deal of that mail is now moving on the ground instead of through the air. Today, 92 percent of first-class mail and 85 percent of first-class packages move via ground transport, DeJoy said.

“From an operations standpoint, it is a different Postal Service from two short years ago,” DeJoy told the governors.

For example, passage of the 2022 Postal Reform Act reversed “the unfair requirements of the Postal Service legislated in 2006 by a previous congress,” DeJoy said.

DeJoy pointed out that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Postal Service delivered 700 million test kits across the nation.

“We have increased capital spending on modernizing our operations for the future with new technology, facilities, equipment and vehicles,” DeJoy said. This includes fulfilling the long overdue need of acquiring new delivery vehicles.

DeJoy said the Postal Service plans to make 66,000 of those delivery vehicles electric.

“This initiative, combined with our planned reduction in transportation and in the improvements in our operating efficiencies, will make us a leader in carbon footprint reduction over the next 10 years,” he said.

According to DeJoy, the USPS has reduced projected losses during the 10-year Delivering for America plan from $160 billion to approximately $70 billion.

Several unforeseen matters contributed to the Postal Service not meeting short-term financial goals, DeJoy said. These include lack of reform to the Civil Service Retirement System, inflationary costs that greatly exceeded the Postal Service’s forecast, and what DeJoy called “the time and cost it took to bring our service to the nation to the stable position it is in today.”

Other areas where DeJoy is seeking improvement include service to rural areas, configuration and functionality of mail-processing facilities, and a redesigned delivery network.

“We expect the next two years to be more exciting and consequential than the first — they need to be — and we will work diligently to fulfill the goals identified in the Delivering for America Plan,” DeJoy said.

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