(The Center Square) – A follow-up audit of the Atlanta Regional Processing and Distribution Center shows $16.1 million in questioned costs, including $8 million in unauthorized overtime, a report said.
The audit released this week from the Office of Inspector General of the United States Postal Service follows a previous report that showed the center had challenges that were adding to labor and transportation costs. This week’s audit looked at operations in December and March 2025 in a new Atlanta processing center that first opened last year.
The audit shows the expected savings anticipated by the move to the new center will not be realized.
“The Postal Service was forced to expand operations into a nearby annex to help receive mail and trailers for the RPDC (regional processing and distribution center), and as a result, it is unlikely it will achieve expected savings in fiscal years 2026 and 2027,” the audit said. “Additionally, the facility continues to experience challenges related to the layout and space needs, management oversight and workplace culture, and transportation. These issues contributed to over $16.1 million in questioned costs.”
This plant has had something like six managers and it’s still a disaster. The OIG actually could have been much harder on this fiasco than they were. Why they held back I don’t know. It seems that no one is minding the store here and the blame falls squarely on management. A flagship RPDC that’s supposed to represent the new, more efficient USPS and they have to open an annex? This place is supposedly to eliminate annexes and crap is piled everywhere so they can’t even utilize all of their space? This is on the heels of the disaster in Charlotte where the USPS has pretty much bit the bullet and has started hiring clerks and mail handlers to run their RPDC. So the outcome is clear; these facilities cannot be run with the skeleton crews the USPS thought they could get by with. There goes your savings. But the question does remain; if they staff up these places is service going to improve? It can’t get much worse.
This facility was a mess from the beginning. Truck drivers and maintenance workers reported that it opened without all machinery installed. Mail started piling up immediately, long lines of trucks waiting to be unloaded and thousands of “lost” or delayed packages, flats and letters became the norm. It has improved to some degree, but still not functional at near the level intended…its been a year and a half almost.