A U.S. Postal Service employee sorts parcels for distribution inside the Los Angeles Mail Processing & Distribution Center, the largest in the United States, on November 22, 2021.

A U.S. Postal Service employee sorts parcels for distribution inside the Los Angeles Mail Processing & Distribution Center, the largest in the United States, on November 22, 2021. Mario Tama/Getty Images

This Is Where USPS Is Building Out Its First Mega-Centers This Year

The Postal Service will build out 60 new facilities as part of Louis DeJoy's 10-year plan, adding to its overall staff and improving working conditions.

The U.S. Postal Service is planning to build 60 new regional processing centers, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced on Tuesday, hoping to create facilities that will make the agency more operationally efficient and better for employees. 

USPS will still drastically reduce its overall footprint by closing facilities that it says are redundant and create costly inefficiencies, as part of a plan it announced in May, but will replace them with new and repurposed mega-centers that can process, sort and send out for delivery mail all under one roof. DeJoy called the change a transformative investment that will make the Postal Service a more attractive place to work and enable it to meet its on-time delivery goals while maintaining its self-sustainability. The building of the new centers will take take several years to implement and are part of DeJoy’s promise to invest $40 billion in capital improvement projects. 

Plans for the new or refurbished regional centers are already underway, USPS said in an internal magazine for employees, and "major initiatives" are first targeted for the Atlanta, Indianapolis and Charlotte areas this year. The goal of the new super centers is to bring all processing operations in a given metro area into one building. Some metro areas currently have up to eight processing plants with 80 delivery units—the final sorting location where carriers pick up mail and packages for home delivery—that require hundreds of trips to move the mail between them. Postal management has said it can consolidate these redundancies with a single, modernized plant that uses “standardized processes" to make the use of space more efficient.

“This new strategy will reduce redundant operations and transportation across the nation, saving us both time and money,” DeJoy said in a message to employees on Tuesday. 

While USPS will eliminate many delivery units, annexes and some plants, the postmaster general vowed to invest in “most existing mail and processing facilities” to align them with the new strategy. The agency will repurpose some facilities that were previously vacated. 

Dave Partenheimer, a USPS spokesman, said in May the changes were intended only to make the delivery network more intentional and efficient, not to reduce the agency's headcount. Some employees may be impacted by the consolidations, he added, but management expects the overall workforce to grow. 

"Any impact on employment that may be required as a result of efficiency gains will easily be accommodated from additional growth expectations and the normal attrition we experience," Partenheimer said. "We expect to be in a hiring mode for many years to come."

The project will also build new “employee amenities” at plants and improve lighting to “reduce stress and improve morale,” DeJoy said when first announcing the plans. In a recent interview with Government Executive, DeJoy likened the existing facilities to "dungeons" and said they are causing USPS to lose employees.

“Creating the modern facilities from scratch will dramatically improve the working environment for hundreds of thousands of postal employees,” USPS said. 

Existing processing facilities are outdated and designed for the needs of another era, the agency added, with decades of retrofitting creating a maze of antiquated equipment, stuffiness and artificial light. 

“Configurations that once made sense now limit a location’s ability to process growing package volumes,” postal management said. “Because of these limitations, many metro-area processing facilities rely on a system of duplication and repetition, where mail and packages are ferried between a number of locations over the course of several days in half-empty trucks before they reach a carrier to be delivered.”

The Postal Service already went through one round of facility consolidations last year, when it closed 18 mail processing plants. USPS said at the time it would help the agency transition to the increase in package volume. The agency has previously faced resistance to closing plants, while failing to realize its anticipated savings when it was able to do so. 

USPS  is moving forward with DeJoy's plans despite President Biden's nominees now constituting a majority of the postal board of governors. Some of those board members have voiced significant reservations about elements of DeJoy’s plans, while the newly confirmed governors vowed to reexamine them.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.