508-
5/6/2020-mh
Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready
The U.S. Postal Service
Five-Year Strategic Plan
FY2020-FY2024
2 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
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The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 3
Contents
Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Letter From the Postmaster General and the Chairman of the Board of Governors . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Purpose of This Document
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Postal Service Mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Vision for 2024
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Current Business Environment and Key Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
U.S. Postal Service’s Mission, Current Business Conditions, and Vision for the Future . . . . . . . . . . 10
Mission — Bind the Nation Together. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Governance
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Overview of the U.S. Postal Service Today. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
Our Vision for 2024 — A Financially Sustainable Postal Service
that Delivers Products and Services that Customers Value in a Digital Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
USPS Ready-Now – Future-Ready Goals and Key Strategies for FY2020-FY2024 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Goal 1: Deliver World-Class Customer Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
Goal 2: Equip, Connect, Engage, and Empower Employees to Best Serve USPS Customers
. . . . . . . 22
Goal 3: Innovate Faster to Deliver Value
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
Goal 4: Invest in Our Future Platforms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Goal 5: Support the Legislative and Regulatory Changes to Enable This Vision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
How We will Measure Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Conclusion: Delivering Excellent Service Today Is the Key to Future Success
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Appendices
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Appendix A: USPS National Performance Assessment System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Appendix B: Postal Service Strategic Planning Stakeholder Outreach Efforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Appendix C: Postal Service Products and Services
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Appendix D: Selected Links to Learn More or Provide Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Additional Information
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Trademarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Year References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
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The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 5
Letter From the Postmaster General and the Chairman of the Board of Governors
Nearly every person in America experiences the Postal
Service brand every day — by saying hello to their mail
carrier; passing postal vehicles on the street; visiting
a Post Ofce or usps.com; using a USPS mobile
application; conducting mailing and shipping business;
or just by the simple act of reading one’s mail.
This daily brand experience — and the value the Postal
Service delivers — continue to evolve for our residential
and business customers as we provide more services
and offerings that keep pace with their ever-changing
needs. From fueling America’s e-commerce economy
with next-day and Sunday delivery, to delivering digital
and mobile tools like Informed Delivery, or providing
real-time mailing data that allows senders to improve
the efciency of their marketing, the organization is
always on a transformative journey to better serve the
nation.
This ve-year strategic plan describes the next stage
in our organizational journey. It provides Congress, the
Administration, postal stakeholders, and the American
public with a clear understanding of our mission, our
business, our nancial condition, and the strategies
that will carry the organization forward over the next ve
years. The title “Ready-Now — Future-Ready” reects
a mindset that shapes postal decision-making: prepare
relentlessly for today’s opportunities and those ahead.
In this document, we discuss the core strategies
necessary for the Postal Service to be a nancially
sustainable organization that delivers services the
American public values in an increasingly digital
economy. We also identify the initiatives we plan to
implement to achieve the following goals:
Goal 1. Deliver world-class services and customer
experiences.
Goal 2. Equip, connect, engage, and empower
employees to serve our customers.
Goal 3. Innovate faster to deliver value.
Goal 4. Invest in future platforms.
Goal 5. Pursue legislative and regulatory changes
necessary to achieve nancial sustainability.
You will also nd a discussion of the current nancial
challenges facing the organization. The most signicant
issue facing the Postal Service today is that our
business model is unsustainable. This is due to
increasingly conicting mandates to be self-funding,
compete for customers, and meet universal service
obligations under highly regulated and legislated
constraints. Resolving these conicting mandates
requires a national public policy discourse that hinges
on a basic question for the American public: What
would you like the Postal Service to become and how
would you like to pay for it?
Because the Postal Service is an independent
entity of the executive branch, the Postal Service
today operates like a large business, but with
a public service mission. Our mission and our
role in America’s economy and society remain
indispensable — but we can only continue to
compete effectively and meet the high expectations
of the public with an improved business model.
Surveys continue to nd the Postal Service is America’s
most trusted and well-regarded government entity. The
633,000 men and women of the Postal Service — who
live, work, and serve in every community in America
— earn that trust every day through regular delivery
services that are secure, reliable, affordable, and
universal. We intend to continue to earn their trust and
high regard over the next ve years.
We hope you nd this strategic plan informative and
useful. The goals and strategic initiatives identied in
this ve-year plan are subject to change by the Board of
Governors as changes in strategy become necessary or
business conditions warrant. Thank you for your interest
and engagement in the future of the Postal Service.
Megan J. Brennan
Postmaster General and Chief Executive Ofcer
United States Postal Service
Robert M. Duncan
Chairman, Board of Governors
United States Postal Service
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The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 7
Executive Summary
Purpose of This Document
The Postal Service’s Five-Year Strategic Plan, covering
the scal years (FYs) 2020 to 2024, is intended to
provide our stakeholders, including the President,
Congress, the American people, our employees,
business partners, and customers with the following:
A comprehensive mission statement covering the
major operations of the Postal Service.
An identication of the key factors external to the
Postal Service and beyond our control that could
signicantly affect the achievement of our overall
goals and objectives.
A description of the Postal Service’s overall goals
and objectives, aligned with National Performance
Assessment (NPA) goals and annual performance
targets.
1
A description of the program evaluations used
in establishing or revising overall goals and NPA
system objectives.
This document satises the reporting requirements
articulated in 39 United States Code (USC) Section
2802. The goals and strategic initiatives identied in
this ve-year plan are subject to change bythe Board
of Governors(BOG) as changes in strategy become
necessary or business conditions warrant.
Postal Service Mission
The Postal Service is an essential part of the fabric of
our great country and continues to serve a vital role in
our society and in the economy. The Postal Service is a
basic and fundamental service provided to the people
by the government of the United States, with a mission
to provide prompt, reliable, and efcient services to our
customers in all areas and all communities. By providing
universal mailing and shipping services to all Americans,
regardless of where they live, we help to bind the
nation together through the delivery of the personal,
educational, literary, and business correspondence
of the people, and we help to make the fruits of the
American economy accessible to everyone through our
package delivery offerings.
1
The FY2020 Integrated Financial Plan (IFP) information contained in this document
will be revised if needed upon approval by the Board of Governors.
We are also required to fulll this universal service
obligation (USO), and meet other statutory obligations,
in a self-sufcient manner, by covering our costs through
revenues generated from the sale of our products and
services. To help ensure the funding needed to meet the
USO, the law establishes the Private Express Statutes
and the mailbox access rule, which together comprise
the postal monopolies. Since any obligation must be
matched by the capability to meet that obligation, the
USO, the Private Express Statutes, and the mailbox
access rule are inextricably linked.
Vision for 2024
In 2024, we envision a nancially sustainable Postal
Service that enables all Americans to connect,
businesses to grow, and communities to thrive in
an increasingly digitally-connected world, including
individuals in rural or urban communities that are
digitally underserved. Specically we envision a Postal
Service grounded in its core public service mission
of providing universal, affordable, high-quality mail
and parcel delivery to all Americans, and expanding
that public service mission to include the provision
of essential e-government services. We envision a
business model that enables the exibility to best serve
the changing needs of our customers and respond to
marketplace trends, including continued and signicant
declines in mail volumes due to electronic diversion and
continued, but lower growth, in parcel deliveries due to
increased last-mile competition. We envision a Postal
Service that is an employer of choice able to attract,
retain, and develop high-quality, customer-focused
employees. And nally, we envision that the Postal
Service will maintain its position as the world’s most
efcient and affordable postal operator and the most
trusted federal agency.
To realize this vision, we intend to make the following
broad transformations over the next ve years:
Transform our services from only providing a physical
delivery into a service that also enables a digital
connection and provides other value-added services.
Transform our last-mile operations from the most
efcient last-mile mail delivery service provider into
the most efcient local logistics and e-commerce
delivery platform.
8 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Transform our middle-mile operations from a xed
processing and transportation network into an
adaptive and resilient national and international
logistics ecosystem.
One thing will remain the same: we will maintain the
trust of the American people by delivering excellent
services every day.
The Postal Service cannot realize this vision alone.
Though this ve-year plan lays out our efforts to make
this vision a reality, creating a nancially sustainable
Postal Service requires changes to existing laws and
regulations as well as new agreements with our labor
unions. Ultimately, Congress determines the contours
of the Postal Service’s statutory business model and
therefore has the unique authority to enable this vision
or direct the Postal Service toward a different vision.
We will continue to do all that we can within our current
authorities to effectively manage the Postal Service
while we work with the Administration, Congress, and
the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to identify
options and implement the necessary changes that will
enable nancial sustainability and best meet the needs
of the American public.
Current Business Environment
and Key Trends
To fulll our USO in 2019, we provided access
through 26,362 Postal Service-managed Post Ofces;
4,960 stations, branches, and carrier annexes; and
55,000 other access points comprising a network of
commercial outlets which sell stamps on our behalf.
Many of our services can also be accessed through our
website, usps.com. On an average day, our 633,000
employees processed and delivered 471 million
mailpieces to nearly 160 million delivery points, utilizing
approximately 204,000 delivery vehicles, 8,500 pieces
of automated processing equipment, and a variety of
transportation methods to move mail and packages
through this large network, including contracted
highway and air transportation.
Over the last decade, the Postal Service has deployed
market-leading innovations in the mail and parcel
delivery services and improved productivity. We
pioneered Sunday package delivery and became a
leader in providing last-mile package delivery services.
These innovations and product expansions have
enabled us to more than double package revenues
(to $22.8 billion in FY2019) and more than triple the
contribution provided by packages to institutional costs
(to 24.7 percent in FY2019). Innovations, such as
Informed Delivery, are enhancing the utility of mail as an
advertising medium in the digital age and are used by
more than 20 million Americans.
We are consistently rated the most favorable and
trusted U.S. federal agency (a 2019 Pew Opinion Poll
reported 90 percent of Americans have a favorable
view of the Postal Service) and the most affordable and
efcient postal operator across the world’s 20 largest
economies (G20 economies). Oxford Consulting reports
in 2012 and 2017, Delivering the Future: How the G20’s
Postal Services Are Meeting the Challenges of the 21st
Century, ranked us the highest overall rated postal
provider and noted that we deliver more parcels and
letters per full-time equivalent employee than any other
G20 Post.
The Postal Service operates in a very dynamic and
competitive mail and package delivery marketplace.
Total volume of First-Class Mail and Marketing Mail has
declined by 34 percent (approximately 66 billion pieces)
since 2007 due to the proliferation of electronic bill
presentment and payment, social media platforms, and
e-mail. Package volumes, which have almost doubled
since 2007 and have been the Postal Service’s primary
source of revenue growth, began to demonstrate
slowing growth beginning in 2017, with growth ceasing
entirely in the last two quarters of 2019, as commercial
customers insourced more of their last-mile deliveries.
These trends are projected to continue over the next
ve years.
The following statutory and regulatory constraints have
limited our ability to respond to market forces:
A Consumer Price Index-based price cap for mail
products, representing 67 percent of revenues,
results in prices that are insufcient to provide
adequate revenue to pay for xed universal service
obligation costs and other legally mandated costs
amid secular volume declines.
The universal service obligation to maintain six-day-
a-week mail delivery to all geographies and to keep
unprotable retail locations open results in a large
proportion of costs being devoted to delivery and
retail operations that deliver less mail to an ever-
increasing number of delivery points.
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 9
Federally-mandated retiree and employee benet
programs result in high benet costs that are
growing faster than the rate of ination.
In combination, these factors have led to a large
nancial decit. Since 2007, we have suffered 13 years
of consecutive net losses, totaling $77.8 billion. Our
nancial challenges reect the simple dynamic that our
largely xed and mandated costs continue to rise at a
faster rate than the revenues we are able to generate
in the competitive marketplace. Though the lump-sum
and amortization expenses for prefunding retiree health
benets (RHB) (excluding normal costs) account for
approximately 74 percent of our cumulative net losses
over the last 13 years, these losses were partially offset
by revenue growth from growing package volumes,
a temporary exigent price increase for mail, and cost
reductions. As we look to the next ve years with the
prospect of continued price caps on mail, increased
competition for package deliveries, and rising USO
costs, resolving only the RHB funding issue will not ll
our projected nancial gap.
Our nancial condition can be improved, and the Postal
Service can continue to be self-reliant. The Postal
Service’s problems are readily identiable, and their
solutions are implementable. While it is incumbent
upon Congress and the PRC to address structural and
business model deciencies before the decit grows
even larger and requires more drastic and politically
difcult solutions, the Postal Service will continue to
implement all cost-reduction and revenue-generation
measures available under existing law.
Postal Service Ready-Now — Future-Ready Plan
for FY2020-FY2024
This strategic plan describes our mission, vision, and
strategic goals, and how they are enabled by our
strategic initiatives, NPA metrics, and related annual
performance targets. This plan also describes in greater
detail our current and projected challenges, denes how
the Postal Service will respond to these challenges, and
identies where we will need support from Congress
and the PRC.
While our nancial challenges remain signicant, we
remain committed to building our vision of the Postal
Service. Therefore, while we work with external
stakeholders, Congress, the Administration and the
PRC, we will continue to do everything within our
authority to make our vision a reality and to continue to
deliver excellent and efcient services to every customer
every day. That is why we titled our plan, Ready-Now
— Future-Ready. Our ability to prepare for an uncertain
tomorrow while delivering excellent services today
requires that we focus on the following ve strategic
goals:
Goal 1. Deliver world-class services and customer
experiences.
Goal 2. Equip, connect, engage, and empower
employees to serve our customers.
Goal 3. Innovate faster to deliver value.
Goal 4. Invest in future platforms.
Goal 5. Pursue legislative and regulatory changes
necessary to achieve nancial sustainability.
These ve Ready-Now — Future-Ready goals will
drive everything we do. We will measure our progress
against them using our NPA performance measurement
system and incent employee efforts through our pay-
for-performance (PFP) system. A focus on the customer
experience — delivered by an equipped, connected,
engaged, and empowered workforce — enables us to
innovate faster and invest strategically in our future to
meet the needs of our customers and the communities
we serve. We will publish our progress against the
goals contained in this plan, describe lessons learned,
and identify how we plan to improve every year in
our “Annual Performance Plan” as part of the Postal
Service’s Annual Report to Congress. The strategic
initiatives identied in the USPS Five-Year Strategic
Plan for FY2020–FY2024 are subject to change
by the Board of Governors if revisions in strategy
become necessary or business conditions warrant.
10 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
U.S. Postal Service’s Mission, Current Business
Conditions, and Vision for the Future
Mission — Bind the Nation Together
Title 39 Section 101(a) of the USC states that the
United States Postal Service shall be operated as a
basic and fundamental service provided to the people
by the Government of the United States, authorized by
the Constitution, and created by an Act of Congress.
The Postal Service shall have as its basic function
the obligation to provide postal services to bind the
nation together through the personal, educational,
literary, and business correspondence of the people. It
shall provide prompt, reliable, and efcient services to
patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all
communities. The costs of establishing and maintaining
the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the
overall value of such service to the people. The Postal
Service shall provide a maximum degree of effective and
regular postal services to rural areas, communities, and
small towns where Post Ofces are not self-sustaining.
The central tenet of this statutory public service mission
is a universal service obligation (USO) to provide
prompt, reliable, and efcient postal services to all
Americans, regardless of where they live. The Postal
Service is also required to fulll its universal service
mission, and meet its other statutory obligations, in a
self-sufcient manner, by covering its costs through
revenues generated from the sale of its products and
services. To help ensure the funding needed to meet
the USO, the law establishes the Private Express
Statutes and the mailbox access rule, which together
comprise the postal monopolies. Since any obligation
must be matched by the capability to meet that
obligation, the USO, the Private Express Statutes, and
the mailbox access rule are inextricably linked.
Governance
The U.S. Postal Service was established under the
provisions of the Postal Reorganization Act (the
Reorganization Act) of 1970, Public Law 91-375, 84
Stat. 719, as amended by the Postal Accountability and
Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), Public Law 109-435,
120 Stat. 3198, as an independent establishment of
the executive branch of the Government of the United
States, under the direction of a Board of Governors
(BOG), with the Postmaster General (PMG) as its Chief
Executive Ofcer. The Board of Governors of the Postal
Service (the Board) directs the exercise of its powers
through management that is expected to be honest,
efcient, economical, and mindful of the competitive
business environment in which the Postal Service
operates. The Board is authorized to consist of 11
members: nine Governors appointed by the President
(with the advice and consent of the Senate, to
represent the public interest generally), the Postmaster
General, and the Deputy Postmaster General.
Overview of the U.S. Postal Service Today
The Postal Service delivers a unique service to the
American people and the economy alike by delivering
mail and packages throughout the United States.
In fullling its mandate, the Postal Service provides
services across all regions and to all areas of the
United States irrespective of population density or
socioeconomics, including rural areas, small towns,
and urban areas where Post Ofces are not necessarily
nancially self-sustaining. USPS does not receive tax
dollars and relies solely on the sale of postage, products
and services to fund its operations.
To fulll our USO in 2019, we provided access
through 26,362 Postal Service-managed Post Ofces;
4,960 stations, branches, and carrier annexes; and
55,000 other access points comprising a network of
commercial outlets which sell stamps on our behalf.
Many of our services can also be accessed through
our website, usps.com. On an average day in 2019,
our 633,000 employees processed and delivered 471
million mailpieces to nearly 160 million delivery points,
utilizing approximately 204,000 delivery vehicles,
8,500 pieces of automated processing equipment,
and a variety of transportation methods to move mail
and packages through this large network, including
contracted highway and air transportation.
The Postal Service is a powerful marketing and
communications partner for businesses across
diverse sectors in the United States, including retail,
health care, real estate, and nancial services.
USPS fullls the essential function of delivering bills,
statements, correspondence, packages, catalogs,
and a wide range of marketing materials on behalf
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 11
of these companies, thus facilitating millions of
daily transactions for virtually every commercial
entity in America, as well as providing the means
for remitting payments for millions of consumers.
Additionally, through its shipping services, the Postal
Service is a partner to consumers, and to both
brick-and-mortar and online retailers in growing
their businesses to meet rising consumer delivery
expectations from e-commerce. The Postal Service’s
last-mile resources deliver to every address to
satisfy the requirement of the USO, thus enabling
all Americans, no matter how remote their location,
to have access to parcel delivery, and to therefore
participate fully in today’s e-commerce economy.
The Postal Service is consistently rated the most
favorable and trusted U.S. federal agency (a 2019
Pew Opinion Poll reported 90 percent of Americans
have a favorable view of the Postal Service) and the
most affordable and efcient postal operator across
the G20 economies. In 2012 and 2017, the Oxford
Consulting report, Delivering the Future: How the G20’s
Postal Services Are Meeting the Challenges of the 21st
Century, ranked the Postal Service the highest overall
rated postal provider and noted that it delivers more
parcels and letters per full-time equivalent than any
other G20 Post.
Postal Service Offerings, Classication, and Pricing
The Postal Service generates revenues primarily by
offering mail and parcel delivery services to domestic
and international markets. It monitors and reports
revenue by mail classes, products, and shapes.
Appendix C contains a description of USPS current
services and the historical mail volumes and revenues
by category of service. Prices and fees are established
by the Postal Service’s Governors and are subject to a
review process by the Postal Regulatory Commission
(PRC). The Postal Service offers two categories of
products, which are classied for regulatory purposes
as Market-Dominant services and Competitive
services. Each category is subject to different pricing
requirements established by statute and PRC
regulation.
Market-Dominant services account for approximately
67 percent of the Postal Service’s annual operating
revenues. Such services include, but are not limited to,
First-Class Mail, Marketing Mail, Periodicals, and certain
parcel services. Price increases for these services are
currently generally subject to a price cap based on the
Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U),
though the PRC has the authority to revise or eliminate
the price cap and create an alternative regulatory
structure for Market-Dominant services. Reclassication
of services from Market-Dominant to Competitive
requires PRC approval.
Competitive services, such as Priority Mail, Priority
Mail Express, First-Class Package Services, Parcel
Select, Parcel Return Service, and some types of
International mail, have greater pricing exibility and
are not limited by a price cap. By law, prices for each
Competitive service must be set so that each service
covers its “attributable costs” (meaning the Postal
Service’s costs attributable to such service through
reliably identied causal relationships), and Competitive
services collectively must contribute an appropriate
share to the institutional costs of the Postal Service
(meaning the Postal Service’s costs that cannot be
attributed to specic products). The appropriate share
is determined by a formula, and is currently 8.8 percent
for FY2019, as determined by the PRC. In general, the
Postal Service attempts to set its prices for Competitive
services at rates that maximize contribution.
Current Business Conditions
Over the last decade, the Postal Service has deployed
market-leading innovations in the mail and parcel
delivery services and improved productivity. We have
been pioneers in Sunday package delivery and became
a leader in providing last-mile package delivery services.
These innovations and product expansions have
enabled us to more than double package revenues
(to $22.8 billion in FY2019) and more than triple the
contribution that packages provide to cover institutional
costs (to 24.7 percent in FY2018). Innovations, such as
Informed Delivery, are enhancing the utility of mail as an
advertising medium in the digital age and are used by
more than 20 million Americans.
Over the same period, we have implemented
aggressive cost controls that have resulted in signicant
cost savings even as delivery points grew by over 9
million. We have reduced the total number of career
employees by more than 84,000 by restructuring
delivery routes, reducing lobby hours at 13,000
underutilized retail ofces, and consolidating mail
processing at more than 360 facilities. In addition,
we negotiated labor agreements which allowed
us to increase our non-career workforce and to
12 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
introduce a lower-tier wage schedule for new career
employees, which we have maintained through
subsequent contracts. We have negotiated health
benets contributions with our unions that bring many
of our employees to parity with the rest of the federal
government. Through the dedication and hard work of
our employees, we have accomplished all of this while
consistently being rated the most favorable and trusted
federal agency and the most efcient and affordable
postal operator in the industrialized world.
However, the combination of unfavorable market
dynamics, legal restrictions on price increases and cost
reductions, an expanding universal service requirement,
and growing employee pension and health benet
funding requirements have put the Postal Service in an
unsustainable nancial condition.
Since 2007, we have suffered 13 years of consecutive
net losses totaling $77.8 billion, with an $8.8 billion net
loss in 2019 alone. Of those losses, $54.8 billion were
directly attributable to Postal Service Retiree Health
Benets Fund (PSRHBF) lump sum payments that
were due between 2007 and 2016. An additional $8.7
billion was attributable to PSRHBF normal cost and
amortization payments due between 2017 and 2019,
and $8.2 billion due to amortization expenses for the
Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and Federal
Employee Retirement System (FERS). Altogether, these
retirement-related lump sum payment requirements
totaled $76.3 billion from 2007-2019, or roughly 98
percent of losses. Even when PSRHBF normal costs
are excluded, PSRHBF lump-sum payments, plus
FERS, CSRS, and PSRHBF amortization expenses total
$65.5 billion, or 84 percent of 2007–2019 losses.
Although the vast majority of the recent net losses are
attributable to the retirement benet-related lump sum
payments, structural changes in the marketplace have
had a signicant impact on our nancial results. These
include declines in high-contribution mail volume, a
rigid rate structure on Market-Dominant products which
limits our ability to raise prices, limited product freedom
which inhibits our ability to introduce new products, and
high legislatively-mandated costs.
Unfortunately, growth in the packages business and
signicant cost reductions have not been enough to
forestall 13 consecutive years of net losses. As a result,
we have been forced to default on PSRHBF prefunding
payments, PSRHBF normal cost, and PSRHBF,
CSRS, and FERS amortization payments. We have
an underfunded balance sheet, signicant debt, and
insufcient cash to weather unforeseen cyclicality or
changes in business conditions.
Growing Package Revenues and Cost Reductions Are
Insufficient to Offset Growing Mandated Costs
Our revenues have declined almost 5 percent over
the last 13 years, with a growing proportion coming
from Package Services (from 13 to 32 percent) as
shown in Exhibit 1. Since the low point in 2012, our
total revenues have grown almost 9 percent, when
revenue gains from Package Services began offsetting
the declines in mail revenues. Package revenue growth
was driven primarily by volume growth due to the
affordability and scope of our last-mile delivery services.
Mail revenue losses have been due to declines in
mail volumes. The greatest volume decline has
been experienced in First-Class Mail, our most
protable product, where volumes have declined
by more than 40 billion pieces, or 43 percent,
since 2007. Marketing Mail, which comprises the
majority of our mail volumes, declined by more than
27 billion pieces (26 percent) from 2007 to 2018,
mainly due to the increasing diversion of advertising
spending from Marketing Mail to digital media
(the internet, email, mobile, or social media).
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 13
Exhibit 1. Trend in Total USPS Revenue by Product
Also between 2007 and 2019, the number of delivery
points (excluding Post Ofce Boxes, or PO Boxes)
increased by 10 percent, or 12.8 million. During this
same time, pieces delivered per delivery point fell
by 39 percent, and revenue per delivery point fell by
14 percent, but cost per delivery point fell only by 9
percent. In 2019, our large physical footprint required
to serve the 160 million delivery points six days a
week amounted to 31,000 Post Ofces, stations,
and branches with approximately 633,000 total
employees. Additionally, approximately 36 percent of
retail locations are retained (as required by law) despite
being unprotable. As a result of a combination of these
factors and price caps on 67 percent of our revenues,
we lost over $62 per delivery point served in 2019.
This is due to the fact that the signicant and growing
institutional costs driven by the USO and our large
retirement-related liabilities are incurred regardless of
the volume delivered.
CPI Price Cap Has Resulted in Undersized Revenues for an
Oversized Universal Mail Delivery Service
The price cap on Market-Dominant products
signicantly disadvantages the Postal Service; relatively
low postage rates and a lack of pricing exibility are
key contributors to our nancial situation. As a result,
in 2019 the Postal Service lost about 6.1 cents for
every piece delivered and that gap will widen in the
future, as costs will continue to grow, especially for
mandated federal benets programs, while revenue
growth is constrained by the Consumer Price
Index (CPI) price cap and competitive dynamics.
The Postal Service has the lowest price relative to
comparable international posts. As shown in Exhibit
2, our First-Class Mail single-piece postage rates are
dramatically below the average of other comparable
global posts. Further evidence of the Postal Service’s
inadequate pricing can be seen by comparing margins
of earnings before taxes (EBT) of the Postal Service to
those of the most comparable global posts. The Postal
Service’s average EBT margin over the past ve years
was negative 7 percent, in sharp contrast to the break-
even or positive EBT margins for our foreign post peers
charging higher rates for products comparable to
First-Class Mail.
14 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Exhibit 2. Rate Comparison of the Postal Service to Other Global Posts
A Competitive Landscape Across all Services
Notwithstanding the regulatory classication of
Postal Service products as Market-Dominant and
Competitive, we compete for business across all
of our different market segments. A wide variety of
communications media channels compete for the
same types of transactions and communications that
are conducted using our mail delivery services. These
channels include, but are not limited to, newspapers,
telecommunications, television, email, social
networking, and electronic funds transfers.
The most signicant competitor for First-Class
Mail is digital communication, including electronic
mail, and other digital technologies such as online
bill payment and presentment. For Marketing
Mail, digital forms of advertising, including email,
digital mobile advertising and social media, are
the most signicant forms of competition.
The package and express delivery business is highly
competitive, with both national and local competitors.
The primary competitors of our Shipping and Package
services are FedEx and United Parcel Service, Inc.
(UPS), as well as other national, regional, and local
delivery companies and crowd-sourced carriers, many
of which are also customers of the Postal Service for its
last-mile services.
The Postal Service’s Shipping and Package business
competes on the basis of the breadth of our service
network, convenience, reliability, and affordability of the
service provided. Although the Postal Service competes
with FedEx, UPS, Amazon, and others when shipping
packages long distances, our existing door-to-door
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 15
delivery mandate has historically proven cost-effective
for competitors to outsource many of their last-mile
deliveries to the Postal Service. The growth in our
Competitive products revenue over the past ve years
is largely attributable to our Parcel Select product,
which provides last-mile delivery for parcels deposited
deep into our network (typically at the delivery unit).
However, the Postal Service has more recently seen
increased competition in last-mile delivery from both
current customers and traditional competitors. The
major Parcel Select customers are actively building out
their own last-mile delivery capabilities to enable them
to divert volume away from the Postal Service. This
resulted in a decline in package growth over the last
two quarters of FY2019.
As other customers insource last-mile delivery
operations in the most protable geographies, our unit
costs increase thereby escalating competition and
reducing reliance on the Postal Service’s network. To
the extent these programs expand, the Postal Service
believes that it could see increasingly negative trends in
package volumes.
Key Forecasted Trends
The rapidly changing business conditions under which
the Postal Service competes, coupled with the evolving
needs of our customers, require us to adapt in order
to maintain our relevance to the American consumer
and to strengthen our business. The next ve years are
likely to usher in dramatic technological, social, and
environmental changes that will fundamentally change
the way we live, work, and relate to one another. We
are seeing rapid technological advances across many
areas that include articial intelligence, advanced
energy storage devices, next-generation broadband,
autonomous machines, augmented reality, social
networks, internet of things, and quantum computing.
Beyond the dramatic technology advancements, we
are facing continued and signicant environmental and
demographic changes. Experts forecast that every year
the United States will experience more extreme weather
events. In addition, the Census Bureau estimates
that the United States will continue to see population
growth, but with more growth in citizens older than 65
than younger than 18 over the next ve years. Beyond
the trends that are established and signicant, these
technological, social, and environmental changes will
drive changes in ways that we do not yet understand.
Over the next ve years, the three trends described in
the following paragraphs are expected to become more
pronounced and will signicantly impact our current
business model.
Delivery Points Grow and Mail Volumes Decline
The transition from print to digital communications and
business transactions will continue. Businesses will
continue to conduct more transactions electronically
with consumers, putting continued downward pressure
on First-Class Mail volume, which currently provides the
greatest contribution toward covering our institutional
costs. Digital advertising currently captures more than
50 percent of advertiser spend and is forecast to
continue to increase almost 10 percent each year, while
the portion captured by direct mail (postage costs only)
is expected to decline by almost 5 percent per year.
Our forecasts for delivery points (excluding PO Boxes)
assume a growth of 5 percent, or 6.9 million delivery
points by 2024, as shown in Exhibit 3. Meanwhile, our
baseline forecast for total mail volume anticipates a
decline of 18 percent over the same period, leading to
a decrease in revenue per delivery point of 4 percent.
This will continue to cause declines in daily pieces per
delivery point, which has gone from 3.8 in 2014 to 3.3
in 2019, and is forecast to drop to 2.6 daily pieces per
delivery point by 2024.
Although our baseline forecast shows continued
decreases in the demand for mail delivery services,
there will still be signicant demand and the expectation
that all United States residents will retain the ability
to send and receive mail delivery services from
their homes and businesses. We believe there is
an opportunity to reposition the value of mail with
businesses, retailers, and marketers by integrating
digital features with the physical delivery experience
to enhance their omni-channel communication and
marketing campaigns. Successfully repositioning mail
as a value-added feature to digital communication
opens new opportunities to retain existing customers
and reach new ones.
16 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Exhibit 3. Delivery Point (not including PO Boxes) and Mail Volume Forecasts
Source: USPS baseline mail volume forecast assumes CPI-U price cap and 6-day-a-week mail delivery.
Note: Daily pieces per delivery point = deliveries per day/delivery points (based on 302 delivery days per year). Delivery points exclude PO Boxes.
Competition Increases for Last-Mile
Package Delivery Services
We believe that the growth in domestic mobile
e-commerce sales will continue to outpace the growth
in brick-and-mortar retail sales. Historically, the growth
in domestic e-commerce sales has correlated well
with the growth in the number of domestic parcel
shipments. We see this relationship changing in the
future as consumers buy more expensive items online
and e-commerce companies combine more products
within a single shipment.
In addition, we envision more downward pressure on
the growth of parcel volumes shipped via the Postal
Service due to continued growth in competition in rst-
and last-mile delivery services, especially from large
retailers and other domestic carriers using part-time
on-demand workers.
The following trends will continue to fundamentally
transform the prole of the shipping market.
Consumer demand for accelerated shipping and
retailer investment in supply chains will lead to strong
growth in the one-day and local shipping markets
and increase demand for local entry.
The two-day and regional markets will remain
relevant for shippers with fewer distribution centers
and stabilize demand for competitive network
products.
The distance that parcels travel for delivery will
continue to decline and the 3-day+/national markets
will shrink.
Marketplaces will continue to rely on network
products but will face increasing pressure for delivery
in two days.
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 17
Package volumes, which have more than doubled
since 2010 and have been the Postal Service’s primary
source of revenue growth, began to demonstrate
slowing growth beginning in 2017, as customers began
to insource more of their last-mile deliveries. Year-over-
year growth declined from a high of 16.2 percent in the
rst quarter of 2016 to negative 2.4 percent in fourth
quarter of 2019. As such, we forecast that package
volumes delivered through the Postal Service network
may decline slightly in 2020 and 2021 and grow
modestly thereafter.
In response to these trends, the Postal Service
has a parcel strategy that underpins our forecast.
The strategy is to grow product value by both
enhancing our offerings and keeping prices
competitive. In summary, the core elements of
our parcel strategies are to continue to leverage
the strength of our last-mile delivery services by
expanding Sunday deliveries, expanding same-day
and next-day deliveries, enhancing return services
for business and consumers, and enhancing our
end-to-end network to meet the growing demand
for low cost, reliable, ground shipping. Continuing
to grow protable parcel delivery operations is key
to supporting the revenue forecast in the baseline.
Absent Legislative and Regulatory Changes, USPS
Financial Losses will Continue
Despite continued innovations across our existing
service offerings, expanded digital offerings, and
implementation of aggressive cost controls, we project
continued annual losses over the next ve years
assuming no legislative or regulatory reform. Volume is
expected to decline while revenues stay relatively at
due to a price cap and other marketplace trends.
Our nancial challenges reect the dynamic that our
largely xed and mandated costs continue to rise at a
faster rate than the revenues we are able to generate
in a highly competitive marketplace. Without more
exibility to respond to the changing market in an
economically rational way, we expect to run out of
liquidity by 2021 if we pay all our nancial obligations
— and by 2024 even if we continue to default on our
year-end, lump sum retiree health-benet and pension
related payments.
Our Vision for 2024 — A Financially
Sustainable Postal Service that Delivers
Products and Services that Customers
Value in a Digital Economy
In 2024, we envision a Postal Service that enables
all Americans to connect, businesses to grow, and
communities to thrive in an increasingly digitally-
connected world, including individuals in rural or urban
communities that are digitally underserved.
Specically we envision a Postal Service grounded in
its core public service mission of providing universal,
affordable, high-quality mail and parcel delivery to
all residents of the United States, and expanding
that public service mission to include the provision
of essential e-government services. We envision a
business model that enables the exibility to best serve
the changing needs of our customers and respond
to marketplace trends, including continued and
signicant declines in mail volumes due to electronic
diversion and continued but lower growth in parcel
deliveries due to increased last-mile competition.
We envision a Postal Service that is an employer
of choice able to attract, retain, and develop high-
quality, customer-focused employees. And nally,
we envision that the Postal Service will maintain its
position as the world’s most efcient and affordable
postal operator and the most trusted federal agency.
Broad Transformations Required to Achieve
this Vision
The following paragraphs summarize the broad
transformations we intend to make over the next ve
years to realize this vision.
Transform from Deriving Value Solely by Providing a
Physical Delivery into an Organization that Launches
New Products and Services that Add Value Through a
Digital Connection
We envision transforming from an organization that
generates its revenues from the physical transport,
processing, and delivery of letters, ats, periodicals,
and parcels into one that also generates signicant
revenues from offering digital and other value-added
features that enhance the value of our physical delivery
services. Although our projections suggest continued
decreases in the demand for mail delivery services,
there will still be signicant demand and the expectation
18 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
that all residents of the United States will retain the
ability to send and receive mail delivery services
from their homes and businesses. We believe there
is an opportunity to reposition the value of mail with
businesses, retailers, and marketers by integrating
digital features with the physical delivery experience
to enhance their omni-channel communication and
marketing campaigns. Successfully positioning mail as
a value-added feature to digital communication opens
new opportunities to retain existing customers and
reach new ones.
A key strategy for mitigating the volume decline of
our mail delivery services is the enhancement of our
Informed Delivery platform with features to attract a
wider user base, enable it to operate on all major smart
devices, and seamlessly connect to key e-commerce
and social platforms. Another initiative will provide
businesses that purchase mail and package delivery
services with the ability to communicate with their
customers via the Informed Delivery digital platform.
This will allow businesses to combine key features of
digital and social communication platforms with the
visceral experience of a physical delivery.
We will also leverage our infrastructure, retail locations,
vehicles, and information architecture to explore new
digital products and services that help the American
public to securely communicate, exchange goods, and
connect to essential e-government services.
Transform from Being the Most Efficient Last-Mile Mail
Delivery Service Provider into the Most Efficient Local
Logistics and E-commerce Delivery Platform
We envision transforming from operating the most
efcient mail delivery service to operating the most
efcient, frictionless, and secure local logistics platform
that will provide all residents of the United States, every
small and medium business, and every community with
the maximum degree of access to participate in the
ever-increasing e-commerce economy. A key to this
vision is the enhancement of our local processing and
delivery network to enable retailers and other logistics
companies the capability to deliver e-commerce
orders securely and affordably within 24 hours from
local businesses and within two calendar days from
businesses located within the contiguous United
States. To enable this, we will build out our platform to
enable exible and frictionless returns from every home
and expand seven-day-a-week parcel delivery service.
This transformation will be enabled by our ability to
equip our employees with the latest technologies and
predictive analytics tools, connect our employees to our
customers, and empower our employees to deliver the
best customer experience at every touchpoint.
Transform From Operating a Fixed Network to
Managing a Faster, More Efficient and More Resilient
Logistics Ecosystem
Over the next ve years, we envision embarking on a
broad transformation from operating a xed processing
and transportation network to managing an adaptive
domestic and international integrated processing
and transportation logistics ecosystem that is faster,
more visible, more efcient, more automated, digitally
integrated, and supported by more public-private
partnerships. This logistics ecosystem will enable
our local delivery platforms to provide our customers
with efcient and visible end-to-end transportation,
sorting, and warehousing solutions across the country
and across the world. Two key elements required to
successfully achieve this transformation will be the
ability to effectively deploy autonomous and big data
technologies at scale and to form new and innovative
partnerships that unleash the innovation capacity of
private companies to meet the needs of our customers.
One Thing Will Remain the Same: We will Sustain the Trust
of the American People
No matter what the future holds, one thing will remain
the same: we will sustain the trust of the American
people by delivering excellent and secure services
every day. We were the most trusted and favorably
rated federal agency in 2019. We will continue
to work very hard to sustain that position of trust
over the next ve years. We envision leveraging
our services to enable people and companies to
more securely interact within the digital economy.
Creating a Financially Sustainable Postal Service
Requires Legislative and Regulatory Changes
We cannot realize this vision alone. Most of our
efforts to enable this vision over the long run require
changes to existing laws and regulations and new
agreements with our labor unions. Congress has the
authority to enable this vision or to direct the Postal
Service toward a different vision. Therefore, we will
continue to do all that we can to effectively manage
the Postal Service within our current authorities while
we work with Congress, the Administration, and
the PRC to identify and implement legislation and
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 19
regulations that enable nancial sustainability while
best meeting the needs of the American public. The
following sections lay out our ve Ready-Now —
Future-Ready strategic goals and, for each, the key
strategic initiatives we will undertake over the next ve
years. Our plan focuses on those initiatives that are
within our control, but also identies the areas we will
work on to inform the public debate and decisions
from Congress, the Administration, and the PRC.
20 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
USPS Ready-Now – Future-Ready Goals and Key
Strategies for FY2020-FY2024
No matter what the future holds, we believe we must
deliver excellent services every day while we work with
Congress, the PRC, and key stakeholders to make this
vision a reality. We cannot expect to sustain the trust of
the American public or win new business if we deliver
poor customer service and experiences today. That is
why we titled our Strategic Plan, Ready-Now — Future-
Ready. The term Ready-Now reminds us that our ability
to build new Future-Ready capabilities depends on our
ability to continue to deliver excellent services today
and every day.
To accomplish this vision, we have laid out the following
Ready-Now — Future-Ready strategic goals and key
initiatives to help focus all that we do.
Goal 1: Deliver World-Class
Customer Experiences
Goal Description
We will endeavor to build a Postal Service culture that
focuses on delivering services that provide excellent
customer experiences in order to encourage loyal
customers and sustain the trust of the American
people. We believe that continued growth in
e-commerce, customer demands for faster services,
and advances in autonomous technologies will result
in delivery services continuing to be more competitive
and commoditized in the future. Although we will
strive to be the low-cost leader for delivery of mail
and parcels, we also see consumers more frequently
choosing businesses based not only on price, but also
based on the quality of the overall experience provided
and the trust that the business has earned from
previous customer interactions. Only by maintaining
an obsessive focus on delivering services that provide
excellent customer experiences and sustain the trust of
the American people will the Postal Service continue to
keep existing customers and earn new ones.
A critical part of our efforts will be to look beyond only
delivering excellent experiences at different touchpoints
to looking at the end-to-end customer journey with
us from the perspective of each of our residential and
commercial customer segments. By looking at the
entire customer journey, we will be best able to develop
excellent customer experiences across all our services
and channels.
The key initiatives described in the following paragraphs
include the following:
Improving the way we acquire new customers.
Helping customers select the right products
and services.
Improving how we collect customer feedback.
Improving how we resolve customers’ issues.
Key Strategies and Initiatives
Improve Visibility and Control of Mail and Package Delivery
Services for Residential and Small Business Customers
We will continue to work to provide a seamless
experience for sending and receiving mail and
packages. Efforts related to this initiative include further
enhancements of our Informed Delivery platform.
Informed Delivery is a notication service that gives
residential consumers and small business customers
the ability to digitally preview their letter-sized mailpieces
and manage packages that are scheduled to arrive
soon. Informed Delivery makes mail more convenient
by allowing users to view what is coming to their
mailboxes whenever, wherever — even while traveling
— on a computer, tablet, or mobile device. Informed
Delivery benets the entire household, ensuring that
everyone has visibility into mail and package delivery
each day. Informed Delivery allows users to take action
before important items reach their mailboxes.
We will continue to enable users of the Informed
Delivery smart phone application to do more, including
providing carriers instructions on where to leave or pick
up packages, notifying the Postal Service to hold mail,
or scheduling redelivery of packages.
Improve the Commercial Mailer, Shipper Onboarding, and
Payment Experience
Commercial mailers and shippers are the Postal
Service’s largest customer segment. We will continue
our efforts to create a frictionless mailing and shipping
entry and payment experience. The Postal Service
continues to modernize the payment experience by
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 21
enabling a single, secure, self-service online account
management and payment system. To encourage
widespread adoption, we will do the following:
Promote initiatives designed to streamline
the acceptance, induction, and verication of
commercial mailings.
Enhance programs designed to streamline the
acceptance and verication of commercial parcels to
improve functionality and availability.
Leverage electronic documentation, package
barcodes, and digital visibility to simplify the process
of accepting, verifying, and returning parcels to
merchants.
Optimize the network of Business Solutions Centers
to provide world-class, one-stop, solution-oriented
customer service by identifying the best mailing
solutions for customers’ commercial mailing
needs through consultation, diagnostics, research,
recommendations, and hands-on assistance.
Expand our capability to expedite and streamline
the returns payment process, charging mailers for
returns only when the return packages are received
and weighed by our automation equipment.
Improve Retail Customer Experiences Through Expanded
Self-Service
Though our customers prefer more and more to do
business online, we will continue efforts to provide an
excellent customer experience at our brick-and-mortar
retail Post Ofces. Efforts will include initiatives that
effectively integrate our physical, digital, and alternative
access retail channels and will make doing business
with us simple and convenient for all our customers.
We will make package mailing and delivery more
convenient by expanding 24-hour access self-service
kiosks and our network of parcel locker solutions.
We will continue to invest in improving retail channel
experiences for all customers with a special focus on
small business customers, rural customers, online
customers, and package customers.
Enable a Seamless Cross-Border Experience for Customers
In support of the new Universal Postal Union
agreement, the Postal Service will continue to assess
and enhance the current International Systems
architecture and develop an integrated and optimized
ecosystem that drives business value and growth,
increases efciency, and improves customer experience
for international mail and packages.
Deliver a World-Class Customer Care and Issue
Resolution Experience
We will continue to improve the customer care center
experience by the following:
Reducing wait times for calls.
Implementing new customer inquiry channels, such
as live agent chat, and increasing rst-call resolution
by closing agent knowledge gaps.
We are working to improve the claims process by doing
the following:
Understanding the customer journey.
Redesigning the customer interface.
Improving backend systems.
We will continue to enhance and improve overall
customer satisfaction for the issue resolution
experience by doing the following:
Using customer experience (CX) and operational
data to target critical issues.
Optimizing the case routing process to resolve
customer issues more quickly.
Better equipping our employees with skills for
effective case management.
We are also enhancing customer self-service
capabilities across our digital channels (such
as usps.com, social media, mobile) to address
customer issues and reduce the volume of
calls to the Customer Care Centers.
We realize these initiatives are only part of the solution.
Creating great customer experiences requires that we
equip, connect, engage, and empower our employees
to best serve our customers. This element is so
important that it is the focus of our second Ready-Now
—Future-Ready goals.
22 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Goal 2: Equip, Connect, Engage, and
Empower Employees to Best Serve
USPS Customers
Goal Description
We will endeavor to enhance the Postal Service’s role
as a preferred U.S. employer, offering stable jobs with
more exible compensation and benets packages to
attract and retain highly qualied employees who are
best equipped, connected, engaged, and empowered
to serve our customers and to identify and implement
new innovative products and services.
Our employees are our greatest asset and have a
vested interest in a strong Postal Service. They are
our most passionate and articulate advocates for our
customers. The core value we deliver to the American
people is and will continue to be enabled by our
employees. Although we envision a smaller number
of Postal Service employees, a workforce comprised
of healthy, enthusiastic, engaged employees who are
better connected to each other and to our customers
will continue to be the foundation for bringing this
vision to life.
Key Strategies and Initiatives
Our efforts are aimed to enhance the Postal Service’s
status as an “employer of choice” that hires the
most effective employees, and develops, equips, and
empowers them to best serve our customers, and
implements programs to keep them safe and healthy.
Key initiatives include those described in the
following paragraphs.
Align Employee Leadership, Development, and Incentive
Programs to Delivering Excellent Customer Experiences
We will continue to implement a comprehensive
process for developing our leadership and employee
skills necessary to deliver great customer experiences
in this competitive environment and increasingly
digital world. This will include efforts to rene training
requirements and career paths for employees. To
better understand the changing training needs and
demographics of our workforce, we will develop
predictive models and data-driven approaches for
assessing our talent pipeline. We will evolve our
Human Resources (HR) services platform to be a
single stop for all HR needs for employees while
continuing to modernize and improve HR processes
and technologies to drive employee access and
platform adoption. Finally, we will continue to rene
and adapt our employee Pay-for-Performance (PFP)
systems to ensure that we incent and reward the best
performance. Altogether, these efforts will improve
leadership and employee readiness to drive the culture
changes necessary for long-term success.
Equip, Connect, Engage, and Empower Employees to Better
Serve USPS Customers
Informed and connected employees are better able to
serve our customers and drive better business results.
USPS efforts to enable this initiative include
the following:
Involving our employees in designing new
technologies and processes to help them do their
jobs better.
Deploying our Informed Mobility and Informed Facility
tools to better inform and connect plant and Post
Ofce employees.
Leveraging those technologies to enable our
employees to better communicate with each other
and with our customers.
The Postal Service collects a great deal of information
about our operations, transportation assets, equipment
status, location of mail and packages, and customer
feedback. We will continue to expand and enhance the
sharing of the right information, at the right time, with the
right frontline employees though our Informed Facility
and Informed Mobility technology platforms.
Informed Facility — Informed Facility is our facility-
based content delivery platform capable of rapidly
providing information to frontline employees via facility-
based interactive displays. These displays are located
throughout our processing plants and Post Ofces
and provide a diverse selection of facility performance
information, employee feedback, and real-time customer
feedback.
Informed Mobility — Our Informed Mobility effort is
designed to equip our plant and Post Ofce supervisors
with mobile devices and smart applications that enable
them to maintain visibility and control facility operations
as they move about operations while interacting directly
with employees and customers.
Equip, Connect, Engage, and Empower Employees to Improve
Employee Safety and Well-Being
Over the next ve years, we will continue to build upon
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 23
our current excellent safety programs to create the safest
and healthiest environment possible for our employees.
Postal Service efforts to enhance safety programs
include the following:
Rening training for new employees.
Deploying new equipment with additional smart
safety features.
Equipping employees with smart devices.
Empowering employees to identify, record, and
report safety concerns in real time with the goal of
reducing all accidents (motor vehicle and industrial).
By providing the tools and resources employees need,
we will empower our employees to play a more active
role in creating a safer work environment. Our efforts
will improve employee availability, enhance customer
service, create an overall more engaged employee
base, and reduce our total operating expense.
Goal 3: Innovate Faster to Deliver Value
Goal Description
For our business to grow, we must create new solutions
that meet the rapidly changing needs of our customers.
Customer needs, business conditions, and technologies
are changing faster than ever. The Postal Service has
been a leader in embracing new technologies for the last
245 years. The rate of change over the next ve years
will be more rapid than ever and we must keep pace. We
must accelerate our testing of new approaches to better
serve our customers’ changing needs by integrating mail
into their digital lives.
We will accelerate innovations to sustain mail volumes
for delivery of domestic First-Class Mail, Marketing Mail,
and Flats by improving in-home reliability, enhancing
USPS digital value-add services, and leading the
adoption of digital features across the mailing industry.
We will test digital services to increase the loyalty of
current customers while developing deeper relationships
with digitally connected customers who may not fully
appreciate the value of mail. We must anticipate the
impact of digital technologies on how businesses interact
with their customers domestically and abroad, with the
growing expectation that any service, such as mailing
and shipping, must seamlessly support and integrate
digital technologies.
We will accelerate innovations to improve the
parcel delivery and return experience and enhance
the Postal Service’s parcel delivery digital and value-
added services.
We will accelerate innovations to grow domestic digital
service revenues from federal agencies by leveraging
retail, delivery, network, and IT platforms with a focus
on in-person digital identity verication services,
address and geospatial data services, and digital or
e-government services.
Building on our long and bold history of innovation, we
will continue to explore advances in technology and
adapt to the changing marketplace. The faster we move
innovations from an idea to actually delivering a new
service that customers value will be the key for us to
enable stable and protable revenue.
Key Strategies and Initiatives
Lead the Adoption of Digital Features Across the Mail
Industry to Enhance the Value of Physical Mail
The Postal Service continues to drive innovations that
give consumers more control over the mail they receive,
make direct mail simple to send, enable multimedia
touch points, and reinforce the resiliency of mail as
a trusted, effective communications channel. Mail
continues to be the primary revenue source for the
Postal Service, so sustaining mail revenue by offering
mail products and features our customers value is
essential to our success.
We will ensure mail remains relevant and viable by
merging physical mail with digital features. We will
continue to expand the following initiatives:
Increase the functionality of our Informed
Delivery application.
Promote new digitally enhanced mail solutions.
Create solutions to help mail drive e-commerce.
Develop digital promotions to accelerate adoption of
digital features across the mailing industry.
For example, in mailing campaigns linked through
our Informed Delivery platform, customers
receive detailed mail campaign data (such as
density and email statistics, email open rates,
and click-through rates) to provide insights into
campaign reach and results to help demonstrate
the return on investment of their campaigns.
Retargeted Direct Mail — Retargeted Direct Mail helps
mailers handle online shopping cart abandonment.
24 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
When e-commerce consumers nd items they want,
put them in the virtual shopping cart for purchase, and
then leave the site without completing the transaction,
Retargeted Direct mail helps e-commerce customers
close the sale by providing additional incentives through
the mail to drive purchase actions.
Next Generation Campaign — We are also leveraging
our customers’ best practices in the mail through our
Next Generation campaign awards featured at the
annual National Postal Forum where we showcase
best-in-class mailing campaigns that incorporate
digital features, such as Informed Delivery and branded
QR codes, blended with many other innovations we
have been talking about for a long time, such as data
personalization and creative paper textures. Customers
can learn from the best real-world examples that
demonstrate the value that mail can provide when
using the latest innovations. Another way that the
Postal Service has been able to engage mailers in
some of these new technologies is by offering pricing
promotions to entice them to try new innovations.
Academic Outreach Program — To help maintain
the relevance of mail for future commercial customers,
we are actively recruiting colleges and universities
to help get marketing mail back into the college
curriculum though the Postal Service’s Academic
Outreach program. With a focus on marketing
and communications, advertising, graphic design,
entrepreneurship and business courses, more than
60 colleges and universities will be actively incorporating
our curriculum and materials in the coming academic
year helping to develop these future leaders.
Enhance the Value of the Informed Delivery Application for
Mailers and Shippers
In a world inundated by digital ads, businesses are
challenged to reach their audiences effectively. To
meet these customers’ needs, the Postal Service will
continue to integrate the physical features of direct mail
with the digital features of digital advertising to help
marketing messages make a greater impact.
With Informed Delivery, businesses are able to connect
one direct mail campaign with potential customers
three times: through email, digital ride-along content,
and the mailpiece itself. We will continue to incent
adoption across more customers by enhancing the
Informed Delivery application for the end user and
integrating it with more devices and platforms.
Enhance Parcel and Post Office Box Services
The Postal Service will continue to look for innovative
ways to leverage our retail stores, digital channels, and
alternative retail network to best offer services to meet
the growing and changing needs of our customers,
including small business, e-commerce, and rural
customers. In today’s market, consumers are making
shopping choices based, in part, on returns options.
Our research shows that shoppers will complete their
purchase if the returns process is an easy one and that a
majority of customers will purchase again from a vendor
if they are satised with that vendor’s return process.
The Postal Service is moving to establish a prominent
role in the returns industry. Innovative strategies and
pilot programs allow shippers to dynamically route
their returns to either the closest or most appropriate
facility in order to expedite the return process and get
the product back on the shelf. We are implementing
self-service returns solutions to allow consumers to
easily access printed labels when not provided with
shipments. Consumers can visit a local Post Ofce
and scan the QR code on a phone to receive a label or
even notify the ofce that a return package is ready for
pickup. These innovations remove the customer friction
point of bringing the package to a store or shipper to
return it. These strategies and pilots, along with Informed
Delivery for packages, will provide shippers with
opportunities to generate mail and additional packages.
We will continue to pilot efforts to lower costs for serving
existing customers, attract new digital and mobile
customers, and increase revenue from retail store and
Post Ofce Box services. Every employee will have
ownership over building the business by focusing on
what customers value.
Leverage Postal Service Infrastructure and Services to
Deliver Government and Digital Solutions
The Postal Service has built an unparalleled physical and
digital infrastructure over the past 245 years to enable
the efcient universal delivery of mail, packages, and
services to American businesses and consumers. The
physical and digital infrastructure and the capabilities built
upon it provide signicant value to the Postal Service, its
customers, and our country. There is inherent value to
an infrastructure of this size, scale, and scope coupled
with the capabilities the Postal Service has developed
and matured. These capabilities can be harnessed
by other organizations and agencies to promote the
public good and create an independent revenue stream
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 25
for the Postal Service. Over the next ve years, we
will explore ways to leverage these assets to provide
additional services that support the Postal Service’s
universal service obligation while developing revenue
streams that enable investments in the Postal Service.
Goal 4: Invest in Our Future Platforms
Goal Description
Though we envision being capital constrained over
the next ve years, we believe it is critical that we
strategically invest in the operations and infrastructure
of the Postal Service to continuously improve and
digitally integrate our business capabilities and adapt to
emerging market opportunities.
We must make critical investments necessary to optimize
cost efciencies and service reliability in the short term
and strategic investments in new platform capabilities
that will enable us to meet changing customer needs
over time and remain relevant in the digital economy.
We will continue our relentless pursuit of process
improvements and automation to maximize operating
efciencies, optimize customer experiences and service
reliability, increase security, increase employee safety,
and improve environmental sustainability. In particular,
we will continue management actions to maintain low
USO delivery costs and improve service reliability by
deploying advanced automation and data analytics and
rationalizing infrastructure to match volume. We will also
continue to engage our suppliers and industry partners
to enhance public-private partnerships to keep costs
affordable and add value over time.
We will build new capabilities to better serve the growing
domestic and international e-commerce market,
especially for parcels entered at delivery units for last-mile
delivery, automation-compatible parcels shipped under
600 miles, and e-commerce parcel returns. We will be
investing in automated processing equipment, process
improvements, and public-private partnerships to build
out a low-cost, highly reliable one-to-two-day ground
service, seven-days-a-week delivery, and a frictionless
returns platform.
We believe that excellent service and customer
experiences are foundational for revenue growth. It is
our strategic investments that will enable us to equip,
connect, engage, and empower the workforce, innovate
faster, and achieve world-class experiences for our
customers over the next ve years.
Key Strategies and Initiatives
Optimize the Network Transportation and Processing
Platform to Improve Reliability, Speed, and Efficiency
Optimize Network Platform Initiative — The
Optimize Network Platform initiative is responsible
for evaluating, right-sizing, and equipping the mail
processing infrastructure and transportation networks
to increase operating efciency, reduce costs, and
improve reliability. We will continue to digitally integrate
our transportation and processing operations to enable
near real-time visibility into postal and partner network
operations from the time mail and packages are
accepted, throughout the mail stream, to the moment
it is delivered — making every mailing effective and
keeping every customer informed. We call this collection
of sensors, data exchange protocols, data processing,
and data display capabilities our Informed Visibility
platform. Over the next ve years, we will further amplify
the power of Informed Visibility by enabling users to
directly connect to their data through mobile devices
and share it easily throughout their own businesses.
Informed Mobility Platform —Through our Informed
Mobility frontline supervisor mobile device platform,
we will continue to leverage the vast amount of
data generated by our Informed Visibility platform
to equip and empower our frontline employees with
the right information at the right time to improve
business decisions, increase efciencies, develop new
capabilities, and improve customer experiences.
The initiative has targeted activities to accomplish
the following:
Continuously optimize location of network processing
operations and equipment as mail volumes decline
and parcel volumes increase.
Improve and expand surface transportation center
hubs to enable longer and more reliable ground
delivery services.
Continue to deploy dynamic routing technologies and
processes for plant-to-plant and plant-to-Post Ofce
transportation.
Deploy advanced equipment, such as automated
guided vehicles for moving containers within our
facilities, advanced delivery unit sorters, and high-
tech parcel lockers.
26 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Expand partnerships where best aligned to
improve service reliability, lower costs, and
increase capabilities.
Develop and deploy advanced sensors and
information systems to enhance the Informed
Visibility platform to enable real-time visibility of every
product moving across the postal and
partner networks.
Our employees will continue to play a key role in
optimizing network performance. As such, we will
continue to improve and expand our Informed Facility
and Informed Mobility tools to equip, train, empower,
and incent our network personal to create lean and
standardized work processes, maximize service
reliability, optimize customer visibility, minimize costs,
and increase network exibilities.
Optimize the Delivery and Retail Platform to Improve
Reliability, Speed, and Efciency
Over the next ve years, we expect the number of
delivery points we serve to grow by 1 million every year
while mail volume will continue to decline and package
volume will grow modestly. Therefore, we will continue
to improve work processes, route structures, and
delivery hub locations; deploy advanced technologies;
and increase public-private partnerships to augment
the reliability, speed, and efciency of our local delivery
and retail operations.
We believe a digitally integrated delivery service
enhances the value for our employees, businesses,
and customers. We are deploying next generation
applications to monitor the status and performance of
mail and packages throughout the supply chain.
This initiative also aims to ensure the Postal Service
maintains a nancially viable retail network of physical
stores, digital channels, and alternative access points
that consistently provide simple, convenient, and
friendly services in both urban and rural areas. Initiatives
over the next ve years include the following:
Begin production and deployment of our next
generation delivery vehicles.
Pilot and deploy advanced technologies to help
our carriers get out for delivery more quickly by
reducing time spent manually sorting mail and
packages to routes and delivery points and loading
delivery vehicles.
Increase visibility, optimize route travel, and
connect carriers to their customers after carriers
are out for delivery. We will be deploying the next
generation Mobile Delivery Device (MDD) to provide
an unprecedented level of visibility once mail is out
on the street. Furthermore, these devices will help
carriers improve route efciencies, connect with
other employees, and communicate with customers
about their delivery preferences. These tools will
enable our employees to better serve our customers
and keep delivery costs low.
Expand Post Ofce Box and parcel locker operations
to better support the growing demand for packages,
improve our customers’ experiences when dropping
off and picking up packages, and reduce the costs
of redelivery of undelivered packages.
Expand the deployment of self-service kiosks and
lobby assistants equipped with mobile point-of-
sale (mPOS) technologies to reduce wait time and
improve the customer experience.
Improve retail ofce environments and enhance
employee training.
Our delivery and retail initiatives will aim to improve
customer experience scores, increase revenue from
retail transactions, and optimize the cost to serve
our customers.
Build a World-Class Domestic Parcel
Delivery Platform
We are continuing to build out a cost-efcient parcel
delivery platform that meets growing customer
expectations for a low-cost, highly-reliable same-day
and two-day ground service for shipping distances less
than 600 miles, frictionless e-commerce returns, and
seven-day-a-week home deliveries.
We are building our product portfolio and the supporting
infrastructure needed to meet these expectations and
grow the packages business of the future, increase
efciency while decreasing costs, and offer highly
competitive service features. We are deploying advanced
package sorting and transportation equipment solutions
within the network, local delivery, and retail platforms.
We are creating innovative digital solutions that enhance
the value of the postal package delivery services.
Local delivery, or last-mile service, will continue to be a
core service offering. As shipping and package volumes
and revenues continue to grow, the Postal Service will
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 27
continue to simplify our products to offer customers
more control over where, when, and how they receive
packages. We will innovate with expanded seven-days-
a-week parcel delivery services, enhanced same-day
last-mile and regional next-day delivery services to
expand features without sacricing affordability to benet
both senders and receivers of packages. We continue to
explore innovative public-private partnerships to leverage
the Postal Service’s rst-mile parcel collection and last-
mile parcel delivery services.
In today’s market, consumers are often making online
shopping choices based on the ease of returns options.
Our research shows that shoppers will complete their
purchases if the returns process is an easy one and
that a majority of customers will purchase again from
a vendor if they are satised with that vendor’s return
process. The Postal Service is moving to establish
a prominent role in the returns industry. Innovative
strategies and pilots allow shippers to dynamically route
their return to either the closest, or most appropriate
facility, in order to expedite the return process and get
the product back on the shelf. We are implementing
self-service returns solutions to allow consumers to
easily access printed labels when not provided with
their shipments. Consumers can visit local Post Ofces
and scan the QR code on a phone to receive a label
or even notify the local ofce that a return package is
ready for pickup. Other initiatives such as ship-from-
store expansion, improved Parcel Select partnerships,
predictive delivery, and package-less returns are
examples of how the Postal Service continues to evolve
with changing market conditions.
These innovations remove the customer friction point of
bringing packages to a store or shipper to return them.
These strategies and pilots, along with Informed Delivery
for packages, will help meet the growing needs of
retailers and shippers.
Maintain a Safe and Secure Network to Prevent Illicit Drug
Distribution and Delivery
The growth of e-commerce in the last 10 years has
dramatically increased the volume of packages shipped to
and within the United States. The nature and associated
risks of drugs in the mail have evolved in recent years.
Drug trafckers, particularly those who use the internet
to run their businesses, are also increasingly using
package shipping providers to transport their products. In
2017, in response to the signicant increase in the sale,
distribution, and delivery of illicit (primarily opioids) drugs,
President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic
a Public Health Emergency, which was followed by the
en
actment of the Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose
Prevention Act (STOP ACT) by Congress in 2018.
The Postal Service, in conjunction with our law
enforcement arm, the Postal Inspection Service, is firmly
committed to eliminating the distribution of illicit drugs
through the mail and has worked for decades to combat
the use of its network to facilitate illicit drug distribution.
Through the increased use of technology, sharing of data
between the Postal Service and foreign posts, improved
interdiction processes and working closely with our
partners, including the Department of Homeland Security,
Customs and Border Protection, and other federal law
enforcement agencies, we will continue to investigate
criminal activity and fight the trafficking of illicit drugs.
Culture of Conservation
As we invest in future initiatives, we will continue to
improve sustainable and environmentally focused
solutions that decrease our greenhouse gas emissions.
We remain committed to being a sustainability leader by
creating a culture of conservation throughout the Postal
Service.
Initiatives to make these goals a reality include:
Diverting over 58% of our waste from landfills.
Alternative energy projects, including hydrogen fuel
cell and solar projects.
Sustainable packaging.
USPS BlueEarth Federal Recycling and Carbon
Accounting services.
Lean Green Team employee engagement.
Annual greenhouse gas inventory reporting.
Annual sustainability reporting in accordance with
Global Reporting Initiative standards.
Proactive environmental management.
As the foundation for this vision, we strive to ensure
compliance with environmental and energy regulatory
requirements in all aspects of our operations. Learn
more by visiting usps.com/green.
28 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Goal 5: Support the Legislative and
Regulatory Changes to Enable This Vision
Finally, we cannot create this vision on our own. Since
we rely on congressional and regulatory actions, in
addition to the initiatives within our control outlined
above, to enable nancial stability necessary to
create this vision, we will do all in our power to inform
Congress, the Administration, the PRC and the public
about the implications of different options to address
our nancial situation.
Ultimately, to enable the Postal Service to achieve
nancial stability in a self-sufcient manner, Congress
and the PRC must enact legislative and regulatory
changes that address the restrictions on our ability
to lower our costs and to grow our revenue. If
this does not occur, Congress will need to identify
other means of nancing our costs. The following
list identies the drivers of costs, and the legal
constraints on revenue growth, that constitute the
underlying reasons why our current business model
does not enable the Postal Service to achieve
nancial stability in a marketplace characterized by
secular declines in mail volume and an increasingly
competitive environment for the delivery of packages:
Federal benets programs as currently structured
impose liabilities that we cannot afford to fund.
Retiree pension and employee health care and
benet costs mandated by the Federal Employee
Health Benets Program alone represent 35 percent
of the Postal Service’s direct personnel costs and
have been rising faster than the rate of ination as
measured by the CPI-U.
Our universal service mandate as currently
structured imposes xed and growing infrastructure
and delivery costs, even as the mail volume being
delivered to each address continues to decline.
The current CPI-U price cap imposes strict limits
on our ability to set prices for Market-Dominant
products, which provide 67 percent of our revenues.
Revenue growth is also limited due to legislative and
regulatory limits on the products and services we
can offer.
For 245 years, the Postal Service has delivered on its
mission, and the next ve years will be no different. We
will continue to boldly transform our network, delivery,
and retail operations while building new capabilities
that will position the Postal Service to meet the rapidly
changing needs of our household and business
customers for e-commerce and digital solutions. The
goals and initiatives outlined above and described in
our Ready-Now — Future-Ready Strategic Plan lay
out a path to realize this vision and create a nancially
viable Postal Service.
How We will Measure Success
To assess our efforts in achieving these goals and
strategies, we have establish detailed metrics and
targets organized within the following corporate
balanced scorecard performance categories:
High-quality service metrics.
Excellent customer experience metrics.
Safe workplace and engaged workforce metrics.
Financial health metrics.
For each of these performance categories, we have
developed detailed metrics to assess our progress
and targets to achieve continuous improvement,
which are described in the following subsections.
We track and report progress against these metrics
monthly to internal stakeholders as part of our
National Performance Assessment (NPA) system.
These metrics and targets also form the basis of
our employee PFP system. Every executive and
administrative non-bargaining employee participates
in the Postal Service’s PFP system. This system
compensates employees based on how well the
Postal Service achieves its goals and targets as
measured by the NPA system. Appendix A contains
a detailed overview of the NPA PFP systems.
Every scal year, we establish a budget to achieve
these corporate performance targets. We report the
budgeted expenses and revenue plan in our Annual
FY Integrated Financial Plan (IFP). We establish our
corporate-wide targets to be achievable given the
planned nances in the IFP. In addition, we produce
an Annual Report to Congress that describes our
performance against established targets for the
previous scal year and our detailed targets for the next
scal year.
Exhibit 4 shows our performance from FY2016-FY2019
and our targets for FY2020-FY2024 for each balanced
scorecard performance metric.
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 29
Exhibit 4. FY2016-FY2019 Results and FY2020-FY2024 Targets for Corporate-wide Performance
Corporate
Performance
Measure
Metric in
PFP
FY2021-24
Target
FY2020
Target
FY2019
Actual
FY2018
Actual
FY2017
Actual
FY2016
Actual
First-Class Mail Letter and Flat
Composite (FCLF)
Y Improve 96.00 92.02 92.07 93.29 92.34
High-Quality Service Marketing Mail and Periodicals
Composite
Y Improve 91.80 89.25 89.26 91.44 90.01
Composite Priority Mail
Products
Y Improve NP NP NP NP NP
Composite Parcel Select
Products
Y Improve NP NP NP NP NP
Composite First-Class Parcel
Service Products
Y Improve NP NP NP NP NP
Customer Experience
Composite Index
Y Improve 75.73 69.04 67.47 88.30 87.6 2
Excellent Customer
Experiences
Business Service Network
(BSN)
Y Improve 96.73 96.68 95.90 96.25 95.13
Point of Sale (POS) Y Improve 90.42 87.7 7 87.98 88.53 86.38
Delivery Y Improve 86.33 80.40 80.47 83.22 76.26
Customer Care Center (CCC) Y Improve 55.00 46.94 39.19 86.80 85.18
Enterprise Customer Care
(eCC)
Y Improve 55.00 37.4 5 36.73 3.78 5.19
USPS.com Y Improve 72.58 72.94 57.54 NA NA
Business Mail Entry Unit
(BMEU)
Y Improve 96.01 96.00 95.33 NA NA
Safe Workplace and
Engaged Workforce
Total Accident Rate Y Improve 15.00 14.19 15.09 15.43 16.09
Engagement Survey Response
Rate
N Improve 0.51 0.38 0.42 0.46 0.30
Financial Health Controllable Income (Loss) ($
in billions)
Y Improve
(4.00)
1
(3.42) (1.95) (0.81) 0.61
Deliveries per Total Work Y
Hours, % Change
Improve
1.50
1
(0.60) (0.50) (0.50) 0.10
Note: NP indicates that this target is not publically reported, but provided to the Postal Regulatory Commission under seal.
1
The FY2020 IFP information contained in this document will be revised if needed upon approval by the Board of Governors.
High-Quality Service Metrics
To measure our performance relative to service quality,
we continuously sample random mailpieces and
measure the time between when the mail is deposited
in a postal facility and when a USPS employee delivers
it at a home, business, or PO Box.
Below we describe the categories of mail standards
that we use to gauge the quality operations to achieve
our delivery service standards.
On-time Delivery Performance of Letters, Flats
and Periodicals
Composite On-time Delivery Performance of
First-Class Mail Letters and Flats. The First-Class
Mail Letter and Flat (FCLF) Composite service metric
is comprised of the weighted average of the on-time
delivery performance of Single-Piece First-Class
Mail and Presort First-Class Mail across all service
standards, weighted by volume of pieces delivered in
each category.
Composite On-time Delivery Performance of
Marketing Mail and Periodicals. The Marketing
Mail and Periodicals Composite category is a
composite indicator of the percent of all Marketing
Mail and Periodicals that were delivered within the
service standard established during the year. This
metric includes on-time performance for Marketing
Mail letters, Marketing Mail ats, and Periodicals.
30 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Approximately two-thirds of mail volume in this
composite is Marketing Mail letters, while the
remainder is Marketing Mail ats and Periodicals.
On-time Delivery Performance of Parcels
Composite On-time Delivery Performance of
Priority Mail Products. Priority Mail and Priority Mail
Express performance is measured using a composite
score of performance across our Priority Air, Priority
Surface, and Priority Mail Express volumes. To
calculate the service performance, on-time volumes
for Priority Mail Air, Priority Mail Surface, and Priority
Mail Express are combined and divided by the total
volumes for the same to determine the composite
on-time performance.
Composite On-time Delivery Performance of
Parcel Select Products. This indicator measures
the on-time percentage of Parcel Select that is
entered at the destinating delivery unit. On-time
performance is based on capturing a stop-the-clock
event on the expected delivery date.
Composite On-time Delivery of First-Class Parcel
Service Products. First-Class Parcels performance
is measured using a composite score of Commercial
and Retail 2-day and 3-5 day. To calculate the
service performance, on-time volumes for 2-day
and 3-5 day First-Class Parcels are combined
and divided by the total volumes for the same to
determine the composite on-time performance.
Excellent Customer Experience Metrics
We will measure customer experiences using a
composite measurement system to provide a
comprehensive view of the customer experience across
the most frequently used postal customer contact
channels. The metric CX Composite Index is comprised
of component surveys of the customer experience
touchpoints. Each of the component surveys is
described below.
Point of Sale (POS) Survey. The POS survey
measures customers’ overall satisfaction with their
experiences at retail locations.
Delivery Survey. The Delivery survey measures the
overall satisfaction of residential and small/medium
business customers’ delivery experience.
Business Service Network (BSN) Survey. The
BSN survey provides nationwide support to qualied
business customers on service issues, information,
and requests. The BSN survey measures a
business’ overall satisfaction with its BSN account
representative in resolving issues.
Business Mail and Entry Unit (BMEU) Survey. The
BMEU survey measures each commercial mailers’
overall satisfaction and customer opinion of BMEU
employees, the service received, and suggestions for
areas of improvement.
Enterprise Customer Care (eCC) Survey.
The eCC survey measures resolution
satisfaction of customers who le complaints
through either a live agent or online.
Customer Care Center (CCC) Survey. The CCC
survey measures customer satisfaction with calls
made to our customer care centers.
USPS.com Survey. The usps.com survey measures
customer satisfaction with the USPS website as well
as solicits customer opinion of website elements.
Safe Workplace and Engaged Workforce Metrics
We will measure our progress against this goal by
tracking employee engagement and employee safety
performance against targets for achieving continuous
improvement and external benchmarks.
Total accident rate. This metric is the total
accident count for the year, multiplied by the
approximate number of annual work hours per
employee (2,000), multiplied by 100 and divided
by the total yearly number of work hours. This
yields, approximately, the annual accident
frequency per 100 employees. This rate uses the
same calculation developed by the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for
OSHA Illness and Injury rates but expands it to
include accidents that do not result in medical
expenses, days away from work or restrictions
from performing full duty. Using the total accident
rate is an industry best practice that enables us
to design targeted prevention strategies designed
to eliminate accidents and reduce the severity of
impact on both the employee and the organization.
The safety performance metrics are included in
the USPS NPA process (see Appendix A) and are
reviewed every year when we assess performance
and set targets to achieve a goal for continuous
improvement and relative competitive benchmarks.
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 31
Employee Engagement Survey Response Rate.
We believe that an engaged workplace is one in
which individuals and teams thrive, consistently
perform at high levels, and achieve positive
organizational outcomes. To measure the level of
employee engagement within our organization, we
administer the Postal Pulse survey, a 13-question
instrument developed by Gallup, Inc., and have
established the Engagement Survey Response
Rate as the corporate measure of progress. The
Engagement Survey Response Rate measures the
level of participation of all potential respondents
during each survey administration.
Financial Health Metrics
We measure nancial health using the metrics that
cover revenue, expenses, net income (or loss), delivery
efciency, and total factor productivity. We develop
an annual IFP to be consistent with our forecasted
workload, planned work hours, and forecasted
expenses. As noted earlier, we establish our annual
IFP to enable business units to achieve corporate-wide
non-nancial targets.
Controllable Income (Loss)
Controllable income (loss) is a non-GAAP (accounting
principles generally accepted in the United States)
measure dened as total revenue less controllable
expenses and one-time accounting adjustments. Our
nancial results are signicantly affected by expenses
that are not reective of our operational decisions and
are subject to large uctuations outside our control. We
use controllable income (loss), rather than net income
(loss), to assess our nancial performance as net
income includes the effect of non-controllable expenses
such as interest rate changes that cannot be controlled
or inuenced by management.
Controllable Expenses
Controllable expenses include the following categories
of expenses:
Compensation and benets expenses include
salaries, basic retirement, and employee health
benet expenses for our active employees and
workers’ compensation cash outlays.
Postal Service Retiree Health Benets
Fund (PSRHBF) normal cost expense is the
expense we incur to fund retirement health
benets for our active employees.
Transportation expenses include the costs we incur
to transport mail and other products between our
facilities, including highway, air and international
transportation contracts, plus contract delivery
services. Transportation expenses do not include
the compensation and benets of employees
responsible for transporting mail and other products
between our facilities or to delivery points. The non-
personnel costs of transportation to delivery points,
excluding contract delivery services, are included in
rent, utilities, and other expenses.
Depreciation expense allocates the cost of
long-lived assets to the periods in which they
are used. These assets include items such
as buildings, equipment, vehicles, leasehold
improvements, and capitalized software.
Supplies and services expenses include minor
equipment, spare parts, furniture, services, cost of
sales, and ofce supplies.
Rent, utilities, and other expenses include the cost
of leasing buildings, utilities, building repairs and
alterations, vehicle fuel, information technology,
interest expense, and all other miscellaneous items.
Controllable expenses exclude certain items that
we consider non-controllable, discussed in the
“Non-Controllable Expenses” section of this plan.
Our ability to affect the amount of controllable
expenses is limited by various legal requirements,
including our universal service obligation, our
collective bargaining obligations, and our obligation
to participate in federal benets programs.
Non-controllable Expenses
Non-controllable expenses include revaluations of
the PSRHBF normal cost by the Ofce of Personnel
Management; the amortization of our unfunded
PSRHBF liabilities; the amortization of our unfunded
liabilities for our participation in FERS and CSRS; any
changes in accounting estimate of Deferred revenue —
prepaid postage liability for Forever stamps; and non-
cash expenses related to the changes in our liability
for participation in the federal workers’ compensation
program. We exclude these items from the calculation
of controllable income (loss).
Fluctuations in these expenses are caused by changes
in actuarial assumptions, such as interest and ination
rates, and employee and retiree demographics. We can
32 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
only inuence these expenses over the long term by
changing the number of employees or compensation
rates, but this effect is very small and gradual compared
to the effect of external factors.
The Postal Service PFP system includes overall
corporate achievement of targets for Revenue to Plan
and Controllable Income.
Deliveries per Workhour
To measure changes in our overall delivery efciency we
use the metric Deliveries per Total Work Hours, Percent
Change (DPTWH, % Change) relative to the previous
scal year. This metric is calculated by multiplying
the total possible deliveries by the number of delivery
days and dividing that product by total work hours.
We establish targets for our percent improvement in
DPTWH % Change from year to year. We adjust work
hours to reect changes in workload compared to the
prior year. This adjustment accounts for changes in
the network size (e.g., the addition of delivery points),
changes in the number of non-Sunday delivery days,
and changes in the mix of mail types (e.g., a package
usually contributes much more to workload than a
letter or at). The adjustment ensures that DPTWH
% Change is comparable from year to year. Finally,
DPTWH % Change is calculated by comparing the
current year DPTWH % Change (based on adjusted
work hours) with prior year DPTWH % Change (based
on unadjusted work hours).
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 33
Conclusion: Delivering Excellent Service
Today Is the Key to Future Success
The Postal Service remains committed to our
fundamental mission to provide timely, reliable,
secure, and affordable mail and package delivery to
all businesses and households throughout the nation.
With an eye to external factors beyond our control
in current and future business environments, we are
wholly focused on the expectations and experiences of
our current and future customers, the American people.
We will equip our employees with the knowledge, tools,
and resources they need to be empowered in their
day-to-day activities and customer interactions,
enabling them to feel ownership over what they do
through engagement.
We will continue to improve service through the
application of innovative technologies, effective
management of performance, and improvements in
operational processes. We will innovate faster to deliver
value to our customers and the communities we serve.
Finally, we will be strategic in our investments, investing
in the right people, processes, and technologies at the
right time for maximized effectiveness.
Deeper partnerships with customers, suppliers, and
the mailing industry will improve the quality of mail,
package, and service delivery. In addition, the Postal
Service will continue to develop pricing incentives and
invest in platforms that reinforce efciency and service
improvement. Our mission is an important one —
exemplied by more than 245 years of service to the
American people. We strive to continue to transform
the Postal Service to not merely adapt to ever-changing
customer needs but to anticipate, prepare for, and
implement solutions as a leader in the industry —
Ready-Now and Future-Ready.
34 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Appendices
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 35
Appendix A: USPS National Performance Assessment System
The USPS National Performance Assessment (NPA)
system enables Postal Service employees to track
and report progress against its strategic goals using
a balanced scorecard of key performance indicators
(KPIs) categorized by service quality, customer
experience, employee well-being, and nancial health.
NPA is a system that collects KPI information from
source systems across the organization. These metrics
are translated into scorecards that are used to monitor
the performance of both the entire enterprise and of
individual units across the nation.
The NPA system also serves as the foundation of the
employee Pay-for-Performance (PFP) program and
Performance Evaluation System (PES). The PFP is the
primary pay program for executives, professionals,
supervisors, Postmasters, and non-bargaining technical
and clerical employees. For most eld employees, NPA
corporate and unit indicators are the sole measure of
performance. For headquarters employees, national
NPA serves as the target performance level along with
individual assessments on performance objectives and
core performance dimensions.
To help ensure communications between PFP
participants and their evaluators, PES is web-based
and has been designed to assist in the scal year
objective-setting process, a mid-year review process,
and the end-of-year feedback and evaluation process.
The nal step in the PFP Program is the linkage of pay
actions to performance ratings.
By instituting these standardized, objective
measurements, the NPA system does as follows:
Increases the objectivity of the USPS PFP Program.
Provides employees access to their current
performance data.
Empowers employees to take a more active role in
the tracking, improvement, and evaluation of their
own unit performance.
To establish annual goals and targets for the KPIs
within the NPA system, the Postal Service operates
a multi-year USPS enterprise strategic planning
process (see Exhibit 5). The enterprise strategic
planning process begins with a review of USPS
mission, vision, and goals by both the Postal Service’s
Executive Leadership Team (ELT) and the Board
of Governors. This phase includes assessments
of the Postal Service’s business environment
and major enterprise risks. Every three years, we
review and update our Five-Year Strategic Plan.
On an annual basis, the Postal Service conducts
a complex set of enterprise-wide activities on the
planning, executing, monitoring, and controlling phases
of USPS strategic efforts, as well as an end-of-year
assessment of our performance. These annual activities
include the following:
Evaluating progress against goals and
rening NPA KPI measures and targets.
Developing and aligning senior leadership
performance and accountability goals.
Preparing area and business unit operating
plans to achieve goals and targets.
Assessing and modifying the portfolio
of strategic initiatives.
Formulating a nancial plan forecast
for the following year.
Developing goals and objectives
by individual employees.
The Postal Service publically releases quarterly
performance reports via our Form 10-Q and Revenue,
Pieces, and Weight (RPW) reports to provide public
insight into our progress throughout the year. Internally
the organization conducts portfolio, program, and
project-level reviews on a daily, weekly, and monthly
bases.
At the end of each scal year, the Postal Service
conducts annual assessments of our performance,
reports this publicly through the Annual Performance
Report required by USC 39 Section 2803 (describing
the last scal year performance), and issues rened
NPA metrics and numeric targets for each NPA metric
in our Annual Performance Plan for the next scal year.
These two reports are included in our Annual Report to
Congress. In addition, we produce a detailed report of
our annual nancial performance via our annual Form
10-K report and submit to the PRC a comprehensive
Annual Compliance Report.
36 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Exhibit 5. USPS Strategic Planning Process
1. 5-Year Plan Initiation Phase
■
ELT and BOG review of mission,
vision and principles
■
Assess business environment
■
Assess enterprise risk
■
Update every 3 years
2. Annual Planning Phase
■
Determine PMG focus areas
■
Align ofcer goals
■
Develop NPA targets and measures
■
Prepare Area/business unit
operating plans
■
Assess Ready Now — Future Ready
strategic initiative portfolio
■
Write IFP
(corporate and eld budgets)
■
Create business unit plans
■
Build employee goals and objectives
3. Annual Execution Phase
■
Assign accountable business unit
or executives
■
Prepare business unit and
initiative execution plans
■
Form strategic initiative teams
■
Resource teams
■
Manage initiative communications
■
Engage stakeholders
■
Conduct procurements
4. Annual Monitoring and Controlling Phase
■
Monitor and control strategic initiative and business unit work
■
Hold HQ and Area monthly NPA reviews
■
Provide 10-Q reports to stakeholders
■
Develop quarterly Revenue, Pieces, and Weight (RPW) reports
■
Perform initiative change control processes
■
Complete cost, quality and schedule management
■
Conduct risk management
5. Annual Assessment Phase
■
Assess EOY performance
■
Assess business unit NPA goals and metrics
■
Perform initiative and business unit reviews
■
Conduct annual PFP process
■
Write and prepare the following for release:
■
Annual Report to Congress
■
Comprehensive Statement of Operations
■
Annual Performance Plan
■
Annual Performance Report
■
10-K Report to stakeholders
■
Annual Compliance Report to PRC
Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024The U.S. Postal Service — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 37
Appendix B: Postal Service Strategic Planning Stakeholder Outreach Efforts
We develop our strategic plan and the associated
goals, objectives, performance indicators, and
targets in a process that relies heavily on participation
by postal stakeholders. We attempt to balance
competing demands by effectively addressing the
key requirements of stakeholders. To effectively reach
the stakeholder community, we have developed an
inclusive list of key stakeholders (see Exhibit 6).
Exhibit 6. USPS Stakeholder Outreach Efforts
POSTAL SERVICE
Customers
■
Timely, reliable, and accurate
delivery
■
Products and services that meet
needs
■
Convenient access and ease of
use
■
Timely, relevant, and accurate
information
■
Responsive customer service
■
Innovative, effective solutions and
results
■
Condence security, trust
■
Affordable prices
Mailing Industry
■
Effective consultation and
responsive problem solving
■
Ease of use and payment
■
Seamless integration
(partnership)
■
Growth and prot opportunities
■
Reasonable standards
consistently applied
■
Investments in infrastructure and
improvements that will grow the
industry in the future
Competitors
■
Level playing eld
■
Fair competition
Suppliers
■
Fair and efcient purchasing
process
■
Effective consultation
■
Timely, relevant, and accurate
information
■
Prot opportunities
Other Stakeholders
■
Citizens — trust and consumer
protection
■
Foreign posts — effective and
efcient mail exchange
■
Other governmental agencies —
use USPS for non-mail services
(e.g. State Department passport
applications)
Employees, Unions, and
Management Associations
■
Fair employment practices
■
Competitive wages and benets
■
Safe and secure workplace
■
Relevant and effective training
■
Opportunity to contribute
■
Fair and effective supervision
■
Open and honest communication
■
Opportunities and job security
■
Recognition for performance
Congress, Administration
and Regulators
■
Adherence to regulatory
requirements
■
Timely, relevant, and accurate
information
■
Effective management control
systems
■
Effective consultation and
response
■
Recognition for performance
38 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
We devote a signicant amount of resources to
determine the requirements of each stakeholder
group, work out reasonable compromises
among the various groups, and assess
the effectiveness of postal programs. The
methods employed include the following:
Surveys.
Focus groups.
Market research studies.
Consultant studies.
Media tracking and analysis.
Complaint analysis.
Meetings with customers, employees, union and
management associations, suppliers, and the public.
Working groups and industry task forces.
Participation in public policy and industry
conferences.
Oversight hearings and testimony.
Collaborating and Communicating With Industry
The input and feedback from our industry
partners are essential as we introduce new
products and services. We will continue working
closely with our mailing industry partners
because their success is also our success.
National Postal Forum — Since 1968, the National
Postal Forum (NPF) has been the leading mailing
industry conference, bringing together the Postal
Service and our major customers. The goal of the NPF,
a not-for-prot educational corporation, is to bring
industry professionals together to interact with Postal
Service management and learn about existing and
future USPS products and services.
NPF annually showcases the latest in technology
and innovation, providing a unique opportunity for
mailers to network with each other as well as talk
to potential vendors and suppliers. It also features
educational workshops on topics ranging from
marketing to operations through general sessions
with senior postal leadership, certication courses,
focus group sessions, and other activities. We will
continue to leverage NPF to assist us to collaborate
and help strengthen the relationship between
us and the mailing and shipping industries.
Mailers’ Technical Advisory Committee — The
Postmaster General’s Mailers’ Technical Advisory
Committee (MTAC) is another outlet for the Postal
Service to share technical information with mailers and
to receive advice and recommendations from them on
matters about postal products and services. MTAC is
comprised of nearly 175 executives and sponsors who
represent more than 50 associations and is organized
into four key focus areas: mailing preparation and entry;
visibility/service performance; product development and
payment; and acceptance.
Postal Customer Councils — Postal Customer
Councils (PCCs) consist of Postal Service leaders and
business mailers who work together at the local level to
promote the value of mail, address mailing concerns,
and exchange ideas. Through regular meetings,
educational programs, and seminars, PCC members
learn about the latest Postal Service products and
services that will help them grow their businesses.
There are more than 155 PCCs nationwide. Each year
the importance of PCCs and their contributions to the
success of the Postal Service are celebrated during
National PCC Week.
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 39
Appendix C: Postal Service Products and Services
Exhibit 7 contains a summary of the revenue and
volume for the major categories of Postal Service
products and services.
First-Class Mail Delivery Services
This category of services includes the collection,
sorting, transportation, and last-mile delivery of letters,
cards, or any at advertisement or merchandise
destined for either domestic (up to 13 ounces) or
international (up to 4.4 pounds) delivery. First-Class
Mail letters include postcards, correspondence, bills
or statements of account, and payments. Prices for
First-Class Mail are the same regardless of the distance
the mail travels. This service includes forwarding for
change of address and return services for mail that is
undeliverable as addressed.
Marketing Mail Delivery Services
This category of services includes the collection,
sorting, transportation, and last-mile delivery of
advertisements and marketing packages, weighing less
than 16 ounces that are not required to be sent using
First-Class Mail. Marketing Mail is typically used for
direct advertising to multiple delivery addresses. Every
Door Direct Mail enables customers to prepare direct
mailings without names and addresses for distribution
to all business and residential customers on individual
carrier routes.
Shipping and Package Delivery Services
This category of services includes the collection,
sorting, transportation, and last-mile parcel delivery to
include the following:
First-Class Parcel Service — Commercial, which
is a shipping option for high-volume shippers of
packages that weigh less than 16 ounces.
First-Class Parcel Service — Retail for shipment of
boxes, thick envelopes or tubes of 13 ounces or less.
Parcel Services for merchandise or printed matter,
such as library and media mail.
Parcel Select last-mile delivery services.
Parcel Return services.
Priority Mail, which offers a 1-3 day specied (non-
guaranteed) delivery.
Priority Mail Express, which provides an overnight,
money-back guaranteed service which includes
tracking, proof of delivery, and basic insurance up to
$100. Priority Mail Express delivery is offered to most
U.S. destinations for delivery 365 days a year.
International Mail and Shipping Services
This category offers international mail and shipping
services, including through individual customer
contracts and agreements with other postal
administrations. Priority Mail Express International
and Priority Mail International services compete in
the e-commerce cross-border business, providing an
option for Postal Service retail and business customers
for much of their shipping needs to more than 180
countries. Global Express Guaranteed is the premier
international shipping option that offers reliable, date-
certain delivery in 1 to 3 business days to major
markets, with a money-back guarantee.
Periodical Delivery Services
This category encompasses newspaper, magazine, and
newsletter distribution. Customers must receive prior
authorization from the Postal Service to use this service.
Post Office Box, Money Orders, and Other Services
In addition to domestic and international delivery of
mail and parcels, the Postal Service offers the following
other ancillary services:
Post Ofce Box services, which provide customers
an additional method for mail delivery that is private
and convenient.
Money Orders, which offer customers a safe,
convenient and economical method for the
remittance of payments. Money orders are available
for amounts up to $1,000, and can be purchased
and cashed at most Post Ofces or can be
deposited or negotiated at nancial institutions.
USPS Extra Services, which offer a variety of
service enhancements that provide security,
proof of delivery or loss recovery. These
services include: Certied Mail, Registered Mail,
Signature Conrmation, Adult Signature, and
insurance up to $5,000 and are available online,
at Post Ofces or at self-service kiosks.
40 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
Exhibit 7. Revenue and Volume (in Millions) by Mail Category
(in millions) 2017 2018 2019
Operating revenue:
First Class Mail
1
$ 25,689 $ 24,948 $ 24,435
Marketing Mail
2
16,626 16,512 16,359
Shipping and Packages
3
19,529 21,467 22,787
International 2,614 2,630 2,466
Periodicals 1,375 1,277 1,194
Other
4
3,760 3,949 4,065
Total operating revenue $ 69,593 $ 70,783 $ 71,306
Volume:
First Class Mail
1
58,834 56,712 54,943
Marketing Mail
2
78,329 7 7, 271 75,653
Shipping and Packages
3
5,758 6,149 6,165
International 1,001 941 855
Periodicals 5,301 4,993 4,635
Other
4
367 336 319
Total volume 149,590 146,402 142,570
Note: The totals for certain mail categories for prior years have been reclassified to conform to classifications used in the current year.
Non-operating revenue is no longer included in this schedule.
1
Excludes First-Class Package Service - Retail and First-Class Package Service - Commercial.
2 Excludes Marketing Mail Parcels.
3 Includes Priority Mail, USPS Retail Ground, Parcel Select Mail, Parcel Return Service Mail, Marketing Mail Parcels, Package Service
Mail, First-Class Package Service - Retail, First-Class Package Service - Commercial and Priority Mail Express.
4 Revenue includes PO Box services, Certified Mail, Return Receipts, Insurance, Other Ancillary Services, Shipping and Mailing
Supplies, Collect on Delivery, Registered Mail, Stamped Envelopes and Cards, money orders, and other services.
5 Volume includes Postal Service internal mail and free mail provided to certain congressionally-mandated groups
The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 41
Appendix D: Selected Links to Learn More or Provide Feedback
1. United States Code Title 39, Chapter 28, gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2014-title39/pdf/USCODE-2014-title39-
partIII-chap28-sec2802.pdf and gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2014-title39/pdf/USCODE-2014-title39-partIII-
chap28-sec2805.pdf, [sections about Strategic Planning and Performance Management]
2. United States Postal Service 2019 Annual Report to Congress,
about.usps.com/what/nancials/annual-reports/fy2019.pdf.
3. United States Postal Service Fiscal Year 2019 Integrated Financial Plan,
about.usps.com/what/nancials/integrated-nancial-plans/fy2019.pdf.
4. United States Postal Service Final Revenue, Pieces, and Weight by Classes of Mail and Special Services Report
(RPW) for Fiscal Year 2019, about.usps.com/what/nancials/revenue-pieces-weight-reports/fy2019.pdf.
5. United States Postal Service Form 10-K,
about.usps.com/what/nancials/10k-reports/fy2019.pdf.
42 Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready — The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024
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The U.S. Postal Service Five-Year Strategic Plan FY2020-FY2024 — Ready-Now ➔ Future-Ready 43
Additional Information
For more information on our services, products,
programs, and policies, visit usps.com.
Trademarks
The eagle logo, the trade dress of USPS packaging,
the letter carrier uniform, trade dress of the round top
collection box and the postal truck and the following
word marks are among the many trademarks owned
by the United States Postal Service®: Certied Mail®,
First-Class™, First-Class Mail®, First-Class Package®,
Forever®, Global Express Guaranteed®, Informed
Delivery®, Informed Visibility®, Parcel Select®, PO
Box™, Post Ofce®, Postal Pulse®, Postal Service™,
Priority Mail®, Priority Mail Express®, Priority Mail
Express International®, Priority Mail International®,
Putting our Stamp on a Greener Tomorrow®, Standard
Mail®, Standard Post™, United States Postal
Inspection Service®, United States Postal Service®,
U.S. Mail®, U.S. Postal Service®, USPS®, USPS
BlueEarth®, USPS Marketing Mail®, USPS Retail
Ground®, USPS Tracking®, usps.com®, Village Post
Ofce™, and ZIP Code™.
Year References
All references to a specic year or “the year” refer to the
Postal Service scal year ending Sept. 30. However,
specic month and year references pertain to the
calendar dates.
