Keep US Posted, an alliance consisting of consumer interests, industry groups, newspapers, nonprofits and businesses, applauds the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations for directing the Postal Regulatory Commission, which governs the U.S. Postal Service, to study the impact of planned postage increases. The Committee’s action, included in the 2023 spending package, is a direct response to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s announcement that stamp prices will increase July 31 and every six months thereafter, despite this year’s bipartisan postal reform law designed to fiscally stabilize the Postal Service and prevent unnecessary postage hikes. “It is destructive for Postal Service leadership to squeeze every last drop of revenue from the mail at the expense of the American people,” said Keep US Posted Executive Director and former Congressman Kevin Yoder (R-Kans.). “In just a decade, Americans could be paying well over $1 to mail a single letter. Using the mail will become unaffordable for American families, as well as newspapers, nonprofits, and businesses that depend on the Postal Service. These excessive postage increases will decrease volume and revenue so much that it will ultimately hurt the Postal Service’s 650,000 workers and their ability to keep delivering for our country. Projected mail decline will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Overall, the Postal Service’s total investment in vehicles is expected to reach $9.6 billion, including $3 billion from Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funds. The December 2022 plan announced intended acquisitions over the next five years of a 75 percent electric fleet of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV). Acquisitions of NGDV after 2026 will be 100 percent electric. As part of the earliest stages of the delivery vehicle replacement plan, a contract for 9,250 commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) internal combustion engine vehicles will also be concurrently awarded to fill the urgent need for vehicles. The specific locations for deployment of the vehicles and infrastructure have not yet been finalized and will depend on route characteristics, including whether a left-hand drive vehicle is mission-suitable as well as other business considerations. The Postal Service plans to begin building out its charging infrastructure across a minimum of 75 locations within the next 12 months, and thereafter to continue the infrastructure build out in the succeeding years at many additional facilities as a part of our delivery vehicle electrification strategy.

The United States Postal Service provided new service performance data today to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, indicating continued improvement while ensuring trucks run on time and adhering to the Postal Service’s existing transportation schedule. This data, available through the week of August 29, marks an uptick in service performance, consistent with recent trends. The percentages reported – 88.04 for First-Class Mail, 89.56 for Marketing Mail and 78.24 for Periodicals – represent service performance by the Postal Service from acceptance of a mailpiece into our system through delivery, measured against published service standards.