U.S. Postal Service

The U.S. Postal Service’s mission is to provide timely, reliable, secure, and affordable mail and package delivery to over 160 million residential and business addresses across the country. The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General reviews delivery operations at facilities across the...

The U.S. Postal Service needs effective and productive operations to fulfill its mission of providing prompt, reliable, and affordable mail service to the American public. It has a vast transportation network that moves mail and equipment among approximately 315 processing facilities and 31,200 post...

During the week of June 2, 2025, we performed a self-initiated audit at the St. Louis Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC) and Network Distribution Center (NDC) and seven delivery units serviced by the two plants. The delivery units included the Ballwin, O’Fallon, and St. Charles Main Post...

In fiscal year (FY) 2024, the U.S. Postal Service handled more than 11.6 million undeliverable Parcel Select packages that were scanned as return-to-sender. The Postal Service must process these packages at the post offices that serve the original delivery address and the return address. To receive...

A key facet of the U.S. Postal Service’s Delivering for America plan is a nearly $10 billion investment to modernize its aging delivery vehicle fleet. The Postal Service plans to acquire 106,480 vehicles between fiscal years (FY) 2023-2028, 9,250 of which are E-Transits — a left-hand drive (LHD)...

Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the U.S. Postal Service is obligated to provide its employees with a safe and healthy place to work. The Postal Service proactively meets this obligation by implementing policies, procedures, special teams, and reporting tools related to...

During fiscal years 2023 and 2024, the Field Operations Review Team completed audits of 72 delivery units to assess delivery operations and property conditions. We found about 800,000 delayed mailpieces across these delivery units. Most of the delayed mail was not accurately reported. We also...

In October 2023, the U.S. Postal Service deployed a major change to operations when it began piloting its Local Transportation Optimization (LTO) initiative. The initiative was designed to reduce the number of transportation trips to and from select post offices and increase the amount of mail...

Priority Mail Express (PME), formerly Express Mail, was introduced in the 1970s as the U.S. Postal Service’s fastest product, and as the best option for customers to send time-sensitive documents and packages by offering a next-day to two-day service guarantee. Recent transformations to postal...

This report presents the results of our audit of service and operational performance at previously audited mail processing facilities. Background The U.S. Postal Service needs effective and productive operations to fulfill its mission of providing prompt, reliable, and affordable mail service. It...