The U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday it will open up its vast last-mile delivery network to more shippers via a solicitation process and will begin accepting bids in late January or early February.
The Postal Service has been selling delivery service direct from its Destination Delivery Units (DDUs) for years—generally for a limited number of large customers like UPS, FedEx and Amazon.
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The organization is seeking to open up DDU delivery to a broader audience—“to all business types, big and small,” USPS told CCJ Wednesday—to “help shippers reduce their costs, while generating much-needed revenue for the Postal Service,” added Postmaster General and CEO David Steiner.
Shippers wanting access to more than 18,000 USPS DDUs nationwide will have the ability to propose a combination of volume, pricing, and tender times at each location, with deliveries for successful bidders being made by USPS that same day or the next day.
Steiner noted USPS currently delivers to more than 170 million addresses at least six days a week, “so we are the natural leader in last-mile delivery. In the logistics business, the most expensive part of delivery is generally the last-mile portion of a route.”
USPS, in a statement to CCJ, said it has the capacity to meet a much larger percentage of America’s shipping needs, adding, “We need to utilize and better monetize our assets efficiently and effectively, and doing so will benefit the sustainability of the Postal Service as a whole.”
USPS could certainly use the cash infusion, having reported a net loss of $9 billion last fiscal year.
“We want to allow customers to custom-build their last-mile solution,” added Steiner. “We want to make the service as convenient, cost-effective, and efficient as possible. We have achieved impeccable service performance scores for our last mile, which reflects the simple, quick-turn processing that occurs at a local DDU... Because our delivery operations are already visiting every home and business daily, we can help shippers reduce their costs while generating much-needed revenue for the Postal Service.”
