The U.S. Postal Service mentioned Wednesday it intends to open its “last-mile” supply community, the most costly a part of the transport course of, to massive and small shippers, increasing past present preparations with giants comparable to Amazon and UPS.
The purpose is to diversify and increase income by the postal carriers’ ultimate leg of supply to tens of millions of particular person houses and companies.
The postal service expects to simply accept bids in late January or early February from different shippers, which is able to suggest their very own mixture of quantity, value and supply timing. The company will award contracts later in 2026, primarily based on the place it might probably present same- and next-day supply service at a revenue.
“As a part of our common service obligation, we ship to greater than 170 million addresses at the very least six days every week, so we’re the pure chief in last-mile supply,” mentioned David Steiner, the postmaster common and CEO. “We need to make this useful service accessible to a variety of consumers that see the value of final mile entry -other logistics corporations and retailers massive and small.”
Steiner has mentioned the 250-year-old postal service ought to broaden its income base by capitalizing on its long-standing authorized obligation to ship to each deal with, in addition to current modernization investments in package deal processing and supply capability.
The company reported web losses of $9 billion this funds yr, a slight enchancment from the earlier yr’s $9.5 billion. The postal service is an unbiased and largely self-supporting federal company.
Beneath the brand new plan, shippers would have entry to greater than 18,000 postal service “supply distribution items,” entry factors all through the community the place mail and packages are sorted for supply to an area space.
Steiner referred to as the idea a “compelling worth proposition for a lot of shippers who we all know are wrestling with the necessity to ship to their buyer as shortly and reliably as attainable,” predicting it’s going to finally assist decrease their prices.
The postal service mentioned it nonetheless plans to gauge curiosity within the idea and fine-tune the main points.
