WASHINGTON — The below remarks are as prepared for delivery by Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy during the open session meeting of the Postal Service Board of Governors on Aug. 8, 2024.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
During this quarter we continued our aggressive efforts to stabilize service, implement necessary network initiatives, reduce costs, grow volume and revenue, and lead change both internally and externally. We addressed local pockets of deficient performance and made improvements. We expect these improvements to continue in the coming weeks.
Despite significant weather events, service performance for market-dominant and competitive products improved when compared to last quarter — with 60 percent of market-dominant volume delivered early and 95 percent of volume delivered within a day of its service standard. And I’m happy to say, on average, our customers still receive their mail and packages in less than three days.
These improvements are attributed to our focused persistence and cross-functional engagement, in areas where performance does not meet our high expectations.
Our cross-functional teams continue to increase the intensity of their operational reconnaissance, on a site-by-site basis, to identify procedural shortcomings and quickly correct them. We are reviewing performance at every location, every day, in grave detail. We continue to resolve local and functional performance across the board.
Despite our many challenges, these improvements mean the organization as a whole is engaging and adapting to the changes we need to make, not just to deliver mail tomorrow, but to thrive and serve — far into the future. These improvements also highlight the cultural change permeating throughout the organization. One that is refocused on innovation, collaboration, problem-solving and competition.
While we still have much work to do across the country, I am proud of the responsiveness and the seriousness of every employee trying to adapt and do better every day, and I will continue to count on them to rise up and meet the challenges of the massive transformation we are undertaking.
Change of this magnitude is never easy. However, with each stumble the organization learns, and our future execution becomes more precise and responsive as we progress through our initiatives. And we must, and will, progress.
Later you will hear from Joe Corbett, our chief financial officer. While we are growing revenue and cutting costs at an aggressive rate, it is still downward enough to overcome the historic trajectory, the substantial inflation, our difficulties in making changes, and the cost of doing so.
As with service, we continue to look for major and minor ways to reduce our cost of operations and grow our revenue. While we have more than halved the projected losses since the issuance of the Delivering for America plan, we take seriously that it is still not enough, and we have plans to accelerate cost reduction and revenue growth initiatives.
The Postal Service has many substantial initiatives underway in operations, infrastructure, sales, marketing, technology, sustainability, retail, delivery and employee engagement — as is necessary to prepare us for the future. Having said that, we are now very focused on ensuring the nation that we are well prepared for the upcoming general election and the peak holiday season.
Regarding the upcoming election, processes are underway to ensure our service across the nation excels as it has in the past. We are already out in the field engaging every facility, manager and employee to ensure conformity with our proven processes.
Concerning the upcoming peak season, we have more package processing capacity than we have ever had. In addition, our operational, transportation and delivery processes are being finely tuned.
We are confident we will deliver America’s seasonal mail and packages on a timely basis. We are equally confident in our ability to deliver the nation’s ballots this election because the Delivering for America plan initiatives have set us up for success.
As you may remember, in March 2021, we published the Delivering for America plan as a blueprint for transforming and modernizing the Postal Service from an organization in financial and operational crisis to one that is self-sustaining and high performing.
Our goal was to begin the recovery process to rescue the organization from its devastating past and transform it into a high performing service provider — enabling both commerce and public service in an extraordinary manner.
The path to achieve this goal is not a straight line, does not come without error, and needs to be accomplished in digestible doses, while we race to improve our financial condition and avoid a crisis. We are trying to manage our transformation with this understanding.
I would like to thank our leadership team for all their hard work and commitment to improving our organization. I would also like to thank all our employees who are embracing this change and working hard to contribute to this transformation. And finally — I would like to thank our governors for their public service, their guidance and support as we engage in this in this important work.
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