PMG Outlines Ambitious Timeframe for 2024 Network Redesign

The Postmaster General has staked out a litany of planned changes this year as part of the USPS network redesign.

During a Feb. 8 presentation before the USPS Board of Governors, Louis DeJoy announced that he intends to activate more than 40 Sorting & Delivery Centers (S&DCs) before year’s end. This compares with the 29 that were activated in 2023.

DeJoy also said that USPS will take nine Regional Processing and Distribution Centers (RPDCs) “to an improved future state” in 2024. This includes facilities in Atlanta, Boise, Charlotte, Chicago, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Houston, Portland and Richmond.

DeJoy also said USPS would go on a $3 billion transportation diet over the next two years, through a combination of optimizing lanes, reducing underutilized trips and bringing more air freight into the ground network.

Similarly, he said USPS would be cutting processing, distribution and delivery costs by $2.5 billion “by insourcing previously outsourced operations, consolidating operations out of random buildings, modernizing facilities, reorganizing operating plans and schedules, adding more sortation equipment, and improving operating tactics to increase throughput, gain productivity and increase asset utilization.”

The PMG also made mention of USPS’s peak season service in his presentation, noting that “our organization encountered the unplanned and abrupt shutdown of a major transportation and transfer hub supplier in eight strategic locations across the nation. This required us to stand up transfer operations for over 5,000 truckloads of mail and packages a day across 18 rapidly deployed locations.” He explained that the process was “less than precise” and hampered service to such an extent that the issue will be ongoing for “the next several weeks.”

DeJoy also said that package volume rose 7 percent during the 2023 peak season compared to 2022.