As part of its 10-year plan to achieve financial sustainability and service excellence, the US Postal Service (USPS) is to make several network infrastructure investments to meet the evolving mailing and shipping needs of American public and business customers ahead of the 2021 holiday season.
According to the post, these initiatives and investments include:
- An accelerated investment and procurement of 138 package processing sorters that will be operational ahead of the 2021 peak holiday season, with plans to purchase additional processing machines over the next 18 months as package volume grows. As USPS expands its role in the e-commerce marketplace, it will deploy and maintain a diverse suite of package sorters and material handling equipment to optimize processing throughputs. In March, USPS customer demand for package deliveries had grown 28% year on year.
- The leasing of an additional 45 annex facilities located near processing centers in key locations to support surges and overflow of packages.
- The movement of mail processing operations at 18 facilities previously paused in 2015. Those select moves will follow USPS’s existing contractual process and be completed by November 2021. Due to the decline in mail volume, it will relocate or remove unnecessary letter and flat sorting equipment as appropriate to make space for much needed package processing.
“The Postal Service’s future depends on its ability to adapt to the evolving demands of our customers,” said Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy. “These initiatives and investments give our employees the infrastructure and technology they need to serve today’s e-commerce marketplace reliably and efficiently. This optimization will lead to more efficient and reliable performance in our plants, which in turn will enhance our ability to predictably and reliably deliver mail to the more than 161 million addresses we serve each day.”
With full implementation, the Postal Service’s 10-year plan is aimed at reversing a projected US$160bn in losses over the next 10 years. It hopes this will spur cash flow and savings to make US$40bn in capital investments over the next 10 years – including US$20bn towards USPS’s mail and package processing network, facility upgrades and procurement of new processing equipment.