What ails the Post Office?

A greeting card from Arlington, Massachusetts, takes over two weeks to reach a Thetford Center address. A postcard from the Thetford Town Hall in Thetford Center arrives at an address in Thetford Center in a few days bearing a postmark from Hartford, Connecticut.

What we're seeing is the effect of Regional Transportation Optimization, part of the 10-year plan dubbed “Delivering for America” that the United States Post Office (USPS) instituted in response to the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022. 

The Postal Service Reform Act had good intentions it seemed. For a start, it undid the hugely damaging congressional mandate of 2006 that required the USPS to pre-fund the health benefits of retiring employees, something that no other government service is required to do. This had put an intolerable strain on the finances of the USPS to the tune of $54 billion to $57 billion in future retiree health benefits over a 10-year period. The annual cost of about $5.5 billion accounted for 87% of the USPS's financial losses through 2016, causing widespread defaults until it was repealed in 2022. 

Another part of the 2022 Act mandated mail delivery six days a week via an "integrated delivery network." The legislative intent of this was to make letters and packages travel together and be delivered together, using a single unified network. Then postmaster Louis DeJoy, selected by the Trump-appointed Board of Governors of the USPS, pressed to implement these changes. The USPS responded with the Delivering for America plan.

At the top of a pyramid of changes sit the Regional Processing and Distribution Centers (RPDCs). These are designed to act as hubs for a selected multi-state or regional area, handling all mail moving within their region as well as out-going and incoming mail for that region. They are equipped with high-powered, automated machinery for sorting packages. 

To achieve this, USPS began consolidating about 200 large local processing centers in the postal network into about 60 even larger regional centers. This explains the closing of the White River Junction mail facility and why Thetford mail gets stamped in Hartford, Connecticut.

Rather than increasing efficiency, this has made many mail transport routes longer (Thetford to Hartford rather than Thetford to White River Junction) and thus made delivery slower. As consolidation proceeded, customers reported widespread delays and mail that had gone missing. Some such complaints came from the biggest commercial customers of USPS, prompting a pause in several consolidation attempts. The on-and-off nature of the effort resulted in disrupted services, more re-routing of mail, and even more delays. 

In 2025, the USPS implemented Regional Transportation Optimization which, in fact, reduced the number of truck trips and ended twice-daily mail collections from post offices located more than 50 miles from a regional hub. That mail now sits overnight before being moved to the regional hub to be sorted. There has also been a reduction in the number of local mail collection points. In fact, this initiative has made mail-handling less "optimal," the real point being to minimize truck trips between local post offices and the regional hub. Acknowledging that this has slowed mail delivery, the USPS has re-defined its delivery times in certain areas. First Class Mail is now allowed to take 1-2 business days for a local delivery, 2-3 business days for a regional delivery, and 4-5 business days for a national, long-distance delivery. Priority Mail Express can take from overnight to 2 days and as much as 3 days in "remote locations."

The bottlenecks in sorting created by the volume of mail going to the regional hubs exacerbate this slowness. This is compounded by the extra build-up of mail due to the cancellation of twice-daily mail delivery.

Late in 2025 the USPS revised how mail was postmarked. It is no longer postmarked with the date it was received at the local post office. Instead, it is postmarked with the date it arrived at the regional hub.  

This really matters for deadlines tied to postmarks, including late fees and penalties for items stamped after a certain date. Particularly affected are rural populations, like almost all of Vermont. This issue becomes critical in determining whether mail-in ballots were submitted on time.

Other fallout from the routing of mail to large regional hubs includes delayed delivery because the mail may sit in a queue at a bottleneck, reduced ability to track mail as it is scanned later in the process, and inconsistent and unreliable delivery times. 

As if to add insult to injury, DeJoy in 2025 worked with DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) on a plan to cut 10,000 workers and several billion dollars from the USPS budget, even though the USPS does not receive fiscal aid from the government. This is in contrast to most of Europe, China, Japan, and other Asian-Pacific nations that subsidize their postal services in part because all postal services are obligated to deliver to all addresses, including remote and hard-to-reach places, at no extra charge, even though such deliveries incur extra costs. In the US, the USPS pays its expenses by raising money from selling stamps and shipping services and not from tax dollars. The postal service in Australia and New Zealand is also self-funded.

Rural mail delivery has taken an extra beating. Back in 2023, the USPS slapped some Vermont postal workers with big pay cuts thanks to a new system of calculating how rural mail carriers are paid. The USPS insisted, in negotiations with the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association, that it was merely making a change in the way rural routes would be evaluated.  In distinct disparity with city mail carriers, rural carriers are now paid according to mail volume, distance, and number of boxes, meaning they get paid for the time of the route evaluated by a formula, regardless of how much time it takes in reality. City carriers are paid an hourly rate and earn overtime.

Nationwide, 66% of rural mail carriers now earn less money. A VT postal worker who asked to remain anonymous said that this formula that took effect in May 2023 reduced his salary from $54,000 to $46,000 a year — a 15 percent pay cut. Meanwhile, his route and the time it takes to deliver the mail have not changed at all. So, to the woes of rural postal delivery add worker burnout, low starting pay, long hours, surging numbers of packages due to on-line ordering, and the high cost of living in VT. 

Since the layoffs, many post offices are now understaffed. It only takes one or two workers to call in sick for the house of cards to teeter. This is a worrisome state of affairs. A study by the Brookings Institute found that rural counties with better access to postal services also had higher levels of small business activity. This relationship held true even when factoring in broadband internet access and local economic climate. The postal service is vital for sending and receiving parts and supplies, shipping goods to customers, sending contracts and other time-sensitive documents, and more. It remains the most accessible carrier because private carriers are few in rural areas and impose extra charges for remote locations. 

Small businesses that employ less than 500 people account for the greater majority of US businesses, and business in rural areas is concentrated in very small firms. Unlike giant corporations that have in-house shipping services, small businesses depend on what the local, shared infrastructure provides. The post office is long-standing, geographically fixed, and thus a dependable partner. Its obligation to provide universal mailing services makes it central to rural economies.