Replacement of Privately Owned Delivery Vehicles

In fiscal year (FY) 2020, the U.S. Postal Service had about 133,000 rural letter carriers and associates delivering mail on over 79,500 rural routes. A rural route can be a government owned vehicle (GOV) route where the Postal Service provides the delivery vehicle, or an equipment maintenance allowance (EMA) route where the carrier provides the vehicle and receives fuel and maintenance reimbursement. That same year, the Postal Service paid rural letter carriers almost $583 million for more than 36,900 EMA routes. Our objective was to assess the Postal Service’s strategy for assigning GOVs to EMA routes.