Has USPS Targeted the Wrong Processing Plants for Closure?

The U.S. Postal Service’s plan to reduce its mail-processing network by half has a major flaw, according to a Postal Regulatory Commission opinion released Friday: The plan would tend “to move processing assignments from more productive plants to less productive plants.”

USPS goofed in assuming that consolidating mail sorting into larger plants would improve productivity, according to the PRC’s advisory opinion on the Postal Service’s ambitious Network Rationalization plan. In fact, larger plants historically have tended to process fewer mail pieces per workhour than smaller ones, the PRC’s analysis finds.

In theory, large plants have the advantage of more automation