A National Look at Local Mail Operations

We take great pride in all our audit work and the work of our Field Operations Review Team is no exception. Since this team was rolled out in 2021, it has visited 132 delivery units clustered around 41 processing centers, covering 30 states, as well as Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. Want to see the full list? Check out our Field Operations Review page. 

While this team focuses on problems in specific locations, we realized that we were starting to see nationwide trends.  To highlight these findings, we recently released two summary reports — one covering delivery operations, the other covering logistics and mail processing — that provide a summary of what we found across the 24 places we visited during fiscal years 2023 and 2024. In some cases, we revisited delivery units and processing facilities to see if things had improved since our first visit.

In our delivery operations report we identified both continued problems and areas that have improved. While we did find that package scanning performance generally improved, there were continued problems with included delayed mail found on site, inaccurate reporting of delayed mail, incorrect package scanning that still exists, and inadequate arrow key security. Our recommendations included developing new controls and introducing new technologies that could help alleviate the problems.

In the processing and logistics report, our auditors also found issues with delayed mail, scan compliance, and late or canceled outbound trips at the six processing facilities we revisited. While there have been some improvements since our prior audits, service performance has not improved in any mail category. Our recommendations included providing training, improving documentation, and establishing new procedures to improve accountability.  

What do you think about these bird's-eye-view audits? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.