Some Evansville mail is going to Louisville and coming back... to Evansville

EVANSVILLE — You might have noticed it on snail mail sent from within Evansville. Local mail, sent to local addresses from local mailboxes. "LOUISVILLE KY," proclaims the postmark in bold letters.

The U.S. Postal Service acknowledged to the Courier & Press this week that since early May, it has been sending Evansville's outgoing letters and flats — magazines, catalogs and such — to Louisville for processing. That includes a relatively small percentage of the total outgoing mail that is destined for addresses within Evansville. Packages that enter the mail stream in Evansville, however, are still being processed in Evansville.

The USPS's Louisville Processing and Distribution Center already had been processing outgoing mail for Evansville on Saturdays for more than a decade, Postal Service spokeswoman Susan W. Wright said by email.

Packages, letters and flats sent to Evansville and surrounding areas from outside of Evansville are still being processed and sorted for delivery in Evansville, Wright said.

There are no delays in delivery as a result of the changes, the USPS spokeswoman said.

"The mail will be delivered within the delivery standards for the class of mail (class means type, such as First Class letters, Priority packages, etc.)," Wright wrote in an email answer to a question.

That's what is important to Valerie Gibson, a Henderson, Kentucky, resident who works in Evansville. Moments after leaving the Lawndale post office in Evansville, Gibson said she hasn't noticed delivery delays and doesn't see why any would be necessary.

"I work in logistics, and they have trucks that constantly are going every single day, and even several times a day," Gibson said. "As long as it gets there in time, I don't really care how they do the specifics of it."

USPS delivery network is getting 'biggest shakeup'

The little picture may be that taking time and effort to separate out Evansville-to-Evansville letters and flats from the total mass of outgoing mail from within the city would work against the big picture.

And the big picture, Wright told the Courier & Press, is the Postal Service's 10-year Delivering for America Plan , now in its third year. In that spirit, as Wright put it, "we have consolidated some processing operations at the Evansville Processing and Distribution Center."

Wright offered no estimates of specific savings USPS might be achieving with its changes in Evansville. She did say the postal service "do(es) not anticipate any career layoffs as a result of this operational upgrade."

"The goals of DFA are to restore long-term financial sustainability, dramatically improve service across all mail and shipping categories, and maintain the organization as one of America’s most valued and trusted brands," Wright said by email.

Neither did Wright's message go into any detail about the postal service's longstanding financial challenges. But a Federal News Network report in February stated the Delivering for America plan was intended to address, among other problems, "inefficient practices at an agency that has been slow to evolve with the age of e-commerce."

One of the objectives is to better position USPS to compete with private-sector companies like UPS, FedEx and Amazon.

Federal News Network is a Washington, D.C. area-based news organization that covers federal agencies. Its February report was published about two months before USPS effected its changes to processing operations in Evansville.

As part of its plan to improve its long-term financial performance, the postal service is implementing "the biggest shakeup of its delivery network in the agency’s history," Federal News Network reported.

When it was completed, the network modernization would bring mail and packages through 60 regional processing and distribution centers, 190 Local Processing Centers, 600 Sorting and Delivery Centers and 15,000 “delivery units" — primarily post offices, Federal News Network reported.

USPS had already saved some $1 billion annually by shifting more than 85% of mail and package volume that it had been paying contractors to fly across the country, Federal News Network reported. The postal service now delivers that volume on its ground transportation network of trucks.

This is how big the Postal Service problem is

"Even with this plan in place, USPS faces an uphill battle to dig out from more than 15 years of net losses," Federal News Network reported. "It ended fiscal 2023 with a $6.5 billion net loss, and expects to end this year with a similar net loss — falling short of its break-even goal."

Federal News Network reported that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told congressional leaders in January that USPS aimed to cut $5 billion in operating costs and grow its revenue by the same amount over the next two years.

The changes in Evansville are just part of the big picture that the Delivering for America Plan was intended to address, Wright said by email.

"We are transforming the organization, into a vibrant one – which is necessary, for the long-term service the nation requires," the USPS spokeswoman wrote.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Some Evansville mail is going to Louisville and coming back... to Evansville