USPS Office of Inspector General

It’s not only travelers that have to deal with delays at the airport. Seems inbound international mail does, too.

But the U.S. Postal Service isn’t necessarily at fault when inbound international mail is delayed. While on a plane and even after it’s unloaded but not yet tendered to the Postal Service, inbound international mail is the responsibility of the foreign postal operators and their agreements with air carriers or ground handlers.

Managing workhours is a critical part of helping the U.S. Postal Service realize annual productivity gains, which help offset cost increases.

That’s why it’s so important postal management uses all the tools at its disposal to improve productivity. One tool is the mail processing variance (MPV) model, which measures annual mail processing performance and efficiency.

How prepared is the U.S. Postal Service for a sudden increase in the price of diesel fuel? When diesel climbed by $2.03 a gallon from March 2009 to March 2012, the USPS’s fuel tab soared by $341 million.

It’s what happens when you operate one of the biggest vehicle fleets in the country: 7,600 of its own in addition to almost 16,000 contract vehicles. In fiscal year 2016 alone, USPS bought about 251 million gallons of diesel at a cost of over $570 million.