On April 1, 2025, the Postal Service will begin implementing the Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) initiative. The RTO will discontinue the end-of-day collections at most post offices, leaving outgoing mail and packages to sit overnight in a back room, waiting to be picked up the next morning when mail is dropped off for delivery.
This change will add a day to delivery times for mail sent at an RTO post office, so the Postal Service is revising service standards to reflect the extra day.
The RTO applies to post offices located more than 50 miles from one of the nation’s 60 Regional Processing & Distribution Centers (RPDC). That’s over 24,000 post offices — nearly three-fourths of the country’s post offices. Over 70 percent of ZIP Codes and nearly half the country’s population will see their outgoing mail slow down. The rest of the country will see incoming mail from these places slow down, so the whole country will be impacted.
