For reasons perhaps known only to the operational brain trust dutifully serving Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and his 10-Year Plan, the redesign of the postal processing network seems to have all originating mail flowing into the 60 or so regional processing and distribution centers from which it will go to other RPDCs or back through local processing centers for distribution to delivery units.
As is the apparent current view, the incoming flow to the RPDCs will be more or less directly from post offices (as the Regional Transportation Optimization scheme would suggest), not via the LPCs, meaning the general function of the LPCs would be only to process destinating volume from the RPDCs.
Look at the map
This mail flow design would typically result in some mail from an LPC’s service area moving up to the RPDC only to be turned around and sent back to the LPC for destinating sortation. Apparently, the irony (and cost) of how this “turnaround mail” was to be handled was noticed by someone in the DeJoy brain trust who, in turn, proposed that such mail be short-stopped at the local LPC and turned around.
However, what seemed like a reasonable idea has been slow to be recognized and even slower to be incorporated into the proposed network.
As reported on November 24 by Save the Post Office, only sixteen of the approximately 180 LPCs currently will be allowed to turn around locally-originating and -destinating mail:
Of the other 164, 25 will be co-located in an RPDC, leaving about 139 not allowed, at this point, to turn around locally-originating and -destinating mail. Why that would be so cannot be discerned, of course, but it would seem generally true that the merits of enabling LPCs to turn around mail should be applicable in more than sixteen locations.
Another question
As currently described, the Postal Service’s envisioned network is not clear about which originating trips from local post offices will travel directly to the origin RPDC and which, if any, would stop at the local LPC where their mail would be consolidated and then sent to the origin RPDC.
The agency’s RTO Initiative predicated the termination of afternoon collection runs to some post offices on whether they lie in or out of an arbitrary 50-mile radius of the local RPDC. This suggests that the typical originating transportation would be direct from a post office to the RPDC.
What the USPS hasn’t officially clarified is how the sixteen LPCs that will be allowed to turn around mail will get that mail if transportation from its local POs goes directly to the RPDC – but the only logical way it could be possible is if the transportation was not direct to the RPDC.
It’s likely that the DeJoy brain trust has modeled everything, measured distances and travel times, estimated costs for various transportation scenarios, and adhered to whatever the model spit out as the ideal solution.
Despite this, after simply looking at a map, the question remains as to why – other than serving the god of full trucks – the USPS would not concentrate originating mail at the LPCs, moving one truck to the RPDC rather than many, and, in turn, making it possible for all non-co-located LPCs to capture and turn around locally-originating and -destinating volume. Hopefully, not allowing this shortcut in all cases isn’t simply to fill trucks or justify staffing levels at the RPDCs.
Unfortunately, if originating mail were generally channeled through the LPCs, it wouldn’t blunt the impact of the RTO initiative, but at least it would improve the chances that mail staying within an LPC service area might continue to receive some level of current service. Whether broadening the role of the LPCs and widening the opportunities for turnaround mail will be considered by the USPS remains to be seen, but it may depend less on whether it makes sense and more on what the computer models say about full trucks.
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