‘You’ve Got Weeks, Not Months, to Fix This’: Senate Grills DeJoy on USPS Delays
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was on the hot seat Tuesday after months of customer complaints of delayed mail deliveries have permeated across major U.S. metropolitan areas.
At a U.S. Senate hearing in Washington D.C., DeJoy fielded criticism from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on the recent delivery performance of the United States Postal Service (USPS).
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The USPS has been under significant scrutiny for its service in recent months in and around U.S. cities including Atlanta, Houston, Richmond, Va. and Kansas City, Mo.—all areas where the agency’s new regional processing and delivery centers (RPDCs) have either been rolled out or are in development.
These RPDCs are large hubs designed to streamline mail processing, reduce transportation costs and make more efficient use of space. USPS aims to build roughly 60 of these facilities nationwide, which sort all mail and packages that are being sent to other regions, and sort packages for delivery in the regional area.
The facilities are a part of the 10-year “Delivering for America” modernization plan, which was meant to save the agency when it was announced in 2021 but has only seemed to make it less efficient. And despite expecting to break even by 2023, the USPS has since lost a whopping $18.8 billion in the first three years of the plan, including $6.5 billion last year.
To avoid running out of cash, the courier is cutting $5 billion in operating expenses through 2025.
DeJoy defended the changes that have been made throughout the USPS in the wake of the cost cuts.
“In regards to service deteriorating, we recognize that, and we apologize to the constituents that we see that service,” DeJoy told the committee. “But in the long term, if we don’t make these changes, that will be every day, everywhere around the nation.”
Postal Regulatory Commission chairman Michael Kubayanda said that in March, only 16 percent of letters and cards were delivered on time in Atlanta. About 36 percent of inbound first-class mail is now being delivered on time in the city’s metro area, he said.
This is substantially below USPS’ own target for first-class mail, which is a 92 percent on-time rate, Kubayanda pointed out.
One committee member, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), lambasted DeJoy on the performance across Georgia.
“You don’t have months to fix 36 percent of mail being delivered on time,” Ossoff countered. “I’ve got constituents with prescriptions that aren’t being delivered. I’ve got constituents who can’t pay their rent and their mortgage. I’ve got businesses who aren’t able to ship products or receive supplies.”
DeJoy responded to Ossoff’s questions with a laundry list of what USPS is doing to restore normal service in metro Atlanta.
“We have engaged over 50 different management executives on site. We are finishing up our staffing at the main three locations. We’re revamping our truck schedules. We are stabilizing the operation in terms of machinery we have deployed there,” DeJoy said. “We have special teams on soite working on our docks, working on the rest of the transportation aspects of this that are causing a significant amount of problems. The two plants where we did a lot of transfers, within the next ten days, we should have them fully staffed.”
DeJoy sought to assure the audience that service would improve in the long run with the changes, DeJoy projecting a 60-day timeline to improve services in the area.
“You’ve got weeks, not months, to fix this,” Ossoff said. “If you don’t fix it, 36 percent on-time delivery, I don’t think you’re fit for this job.”
The hearing also featured testimony from USPS Inspector General Tammy Hull, who criticized the operation in Richmond, the location of the first RPDC opened last July. Hull noted that the repurposed facility had “significant problems,” one being that insufficient transportation planning resulted in a 700 percent increase in extra trips.
Hull said that first-class on-time service performance in the Richmond region dropped about 21 percentage points to 65 percent after the USPS implemented a new initiative at some post offices, where mail received during the day is held overnight. That initiative was designed to reduce the number of trips and associated costs.
She also mentioned recent problems plaguing deliveries in Houston.
“Following media reports of undelivered packages, we visited a South Houston facility in January and found 384,000 pieces of delayed mail, mostly packages,” Hull said. “The Postal Service had moved operations from another plant but staffing, equipment and logistics were not aligned with the new workload.”
USPS hikes stamp prices…again
The hearing came less than a week after the Postal Service unveiled it is hiking the price of its first-class Forever stamps yet again.
By raising the price of a stamp by five cents—up from 69 cents to 73 cents by July 14—this would mark the sixth time that the agency increased the cost since March 2021. Alongside other price increases for mailing letters and postcards, the proposed hike for all services would raise mail prices by approximately 7.8 percent.
DeJoy said earlier this year that the USPS aims to recover $2 billion in revenue by raising prices on mail products to counteract 15 years of a “defective pricing model.”
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