By Stephen Smoot
Louis Dejoy, Postmaster General of the United States, has ridden the political tiger. Appointed by Donald Trump in 2020, the former Republican donor has continued his role by appealing to the priorities of the Biden-Harris Administration.
USPS operations and changes, however, have earned significant criticism from the United States Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General. Dejoy launched a number of transforming initiatives simultaneously, leading to major declines in service quality.
One of Dejoy’s signature programs is “Delivering For America,” an aggressive transformation that focuses on the creation of Regional Processing and Distribution Center hubs that would be served by local processing centers, then sorting and delivering centers. Implementation is expected to result in slower delivery times for rural customers and expected (but perhaps not possible) faster delivery for urban residents.
He explained, “We’re trying to literally save the Postal Service” from the impact of losses that totaled $7 billion in 2024 so far alone, up from a $6.5 million shortfall in 2023.
Dejoy blames previous administrations for “letting this place be neglected,” but also has seen significant unnecessary costs and waste pile up under his own leadership.
To survive the move from the Trump to Biden presidency, Dejoy turned himself from Republican backer into what Politico called “a critical player in Biden’s environmental agenda.” In partnership with “the president’s green guru, John Podesta,” Dejoy and the USPS plan to add 66,000 electric “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles” to the USPS fleet.
At a cost of $9.6 billion, with $3 billion coming from the Inflation Recovery Act, the USPS has committed to a large scale replacement of traditional vehicles. That said, serious problems have already emerged.
First, electric vehicles do not perform well in areas of extreme cold, extreme heat, or mountainous topography. According to the USPS Office of the Inspector General, the agency failed to adequately test these same vehicles.
The only testing performed took place at three separate sites – all in Northern Virginia and all in April of 2023. Despite the obvious limitations, the USPS has no plans for further testing, but expects “all Next Generation Delivery Vehicles . . . to be 100 percent electric starting in 2026.”
Locally, the Potomac Valley Transit Authority’s testing on electric vehicles showed that, for their purposes, electric vehicles cannot run properly in mountainous or cold conditions, spurring their move toward hydrogen powered engines.
Even worse, the OIG stated that the USPS “tested for short-term reliability” but “did not conduct long-term performance monitoring, test with Next Generation Delivery Vehicles, or test the lifespan of the charging stations.” Additionally, the USPS stored charging stations in unsecured locations, leading to the theft of “$67,000 in assets.”
The coming boondoggle over USPS electric vehicles and charging stations reflects a pattern that continues to plague the agency. Large scale plans falter over a lack of preparation, organization, and basic understanding of how systems work. Spending on vanity projects such as untested electric vehicles and infrastructure has only deepened the financial hole in which the USPS continues to fall.
Delivering for America’s initial forays into transforming mail and package delivery systems have shown even worse problems.
On March 28, the USPS OIG released a blistering report on the progress since the launch of its first Regional Processing and Distribution in Richmond, Virginia. The hub covers most of southeastern Virginia, the northeast corner of North Carolina, and the counties along Interstate 64 to the West Virginia state line.
Its territory does not extend into the Mountain State, but covers some area counties, such as Highland, Bath, Allegheny, Augusta and Rockingham in Virginia.
The first four months alone led to “$8 million in questioned costs,” a “decrease in service performance,” and exposure of staff problems from top to bottom. The USPS promised that a $25.4 million “investment” would bring about $186 million in savings, but the OIG says “it is uncertain if expected savings will be achieved.”
One major problem stems from the fact that, as the OIG states “the postal service did not take action to address known weaknesses before converting the Richmond facility into an RP and DC.”
The lengthy list of what the OIG referred to as “challenges” includes:
“Supervisors didn’t fully understand new operations and mail flow.”
“We . . . observed multiple instances of personnel throughout the facility not engaged in work” including “a mail handler sleeping on a parked forklift,” “general inattention to mail left on or around machines,” “mail over two months old left in a container in the truck yard,” and more specific examples of the decline in quality at every level.
Despite the reported issues with employees not working while on the job, “83 percent of all overtime hours at the facility since conversion were not authorized.”
Costs soared as extra trips rose by 706 percent, late trips rose 30 percent, canceled trips 185 percent, “trips departed, not arrived” up 938 percent, and unrecorded trips up an astounding 35,337 percent.
What changes took place between the March report on the Richmond RP and DC and the review of the Atlanta RP and DC opened later?
Not many.
The OIG criticized Atlanta officials for not implementing suggested changes from their review of the Richmond facility, saying they “did not build on lessons learned from the launch of the Richmond RP and DC.”
The report also read that “mail service performances in the Atlanta region declined significantly after the launch in February 2024.”
Of the employees at the Atlanta facility “most did not receive training or know the operational layout of the facility” and 57 percent of “necessary front line management positions were vacant at launch.”
Incompetence has consequences. One of many incidents stemming from the failure of the Atlanta launch saw “mail wrongly delivered to another facility resulting in 500 delayed passports.”
The USPS, like private sector businesses, faces serious headwinds from the government sparked inflation, the impact of the pandemic, and more. While Dejoy blamed its problems mostly on his predecessors, other issues occurred during his tenure. This includes the fact that the Delivery for America plans were based on projections created during the pandemic.
Unfortunately, as the OIG reported in its June 21 “State of the United States Postal Service Financial Condition,” “the DFA plan and its projections no longer provide a reasonable basis for comparisons to future years’ results.”
In other words, the USPS plan for reforming itself relies on projections that no longer make sense in the economy of 2024.
