The postmaster basic is liable for getting billions of items of mail around the globe, managing masses of hundreds of workers and taking good care of one of the vital nation’s maximum inclined American citizens.
The company is lately run via Postmaster Common Louis DeJoy, who served in President Donald Trump’s first management and all over President Joe Biden’s time period as neatly. He is among the few key advisers to serve in each Trump administrations.
I’m a regulation professor who has studied the US Postal Provider and the position of the postmaster basic.
Right here’s what having the activity of overseeing the Postal Provider involves. Spoiler: It’s about greater than getting your mail delivered.
Sprawling tasks of the postmaster
The postmaster basic out of the country an infinite operation.
Over 44% of the arena’s mail is processed and delivered via the U.S. Postal Provider, making it the biggest supply carrier on the earth.
In 2023 by myself, the Postal Provider treated 116.2 billion items of mail. And whilst processing and turning in mail is the important thing part of the Postal Provider’s project, it has different obligations as neatly.
In some ways, actually, it’s the nondelivery portions of the group that experience the largest affect at the U.S. financial system.
In 2023, USPS owned or leased 22,873 houses across the nation. To position this in point of view, the Common Services and products Management – referred to as “America’s landlord” – owns or rentals simplest 8,800 houses.
The company additionally paid US$2 billion in wage and advantages to its 525,469 profession workers and processed greater than 8.5 million passport programs.
In the end, USPS has a mandate that helps the well being of many American citizens. The carrier’s “last mile” supply dedication guarantees that each one American citizens – even the ones dwelling in rural communities – obtain mail supply six days every week. That is in particular essential for other folks with out simple get admission to to clinical products and services, because it incessantly supplies lifesaving drugs to other folks in want.
The ones are all professional tasks. Unofficially, the Postal Provider has lengthy been identified to help aged voters and reply to emergency eventualities that happen on letter carriers’ routes. In early January 2025, for instance, a Massachusetts mail provider was once in a position to save lots of a area from burning via temporarily extinguishing a hearth.
As my co-author Matt Titolo and I’ve written somewhere else, “Americans depend on USPS for a host of essential services including food, medicine, paying bills, shopping, and running small businesses.”
Deep roots in US historical past
That deep reference to communities has been part of USPS since its founding. In truth, the postal device is older than the country itself, with Benjamin Franklin serving as the primary head of the group starting in 1775.
When the U.S. Charter was once ratified in 1789, it integrated Article 1, Segment 8 – usually referred to as the postal clause – which explicitly offers Congress the ability “to establish Post Offices and post Roads” and “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” to put in force the duty.
A pale postcard despatched in 1912.
Jena Ardell by way of GettyImages
Till 1971 the postmaster basic was once a Cupboard-level place and 5th within the presidential line of succession – coming proper after the legal professional basic and proper sooner than the secretary of the Inside. The postmaster basic was once got rid of from the Cupboard, and the road of succession, in 1971 when Congress reorganized the Put up Workplace and gave it its new identify of the U.S. Postal Provider.
Since that reorganization, the president now not has the ability to nominate – or fireplace – the postmaster basic. That energy lies with the Board of Governors of the Postal Provider, whose contributors are appointed via the president with the recommendation and consent of the Senate.
The way forward for the Postal Provider
Over time, postmaster generals have mentioned shifting USPS clear of its roots as a service-oriented group and towards a standard industry operation. Presidential applicants, together with Trump, have known as for both complete or partial privatization of the company.
Certainly, USPS faces steady deficit issues. However privatization and a ensuing center of attention on earnings would most likely build up the price of mailing a letter, a metamorphosis that may disproportionately impact low-income people and small companies – and may just even lead to carrier cuts to rural spaces, making lifestyles for American citizens dwelling there tougher and not more wholesome.
As Forbes studies, critics and proponents of the transfer to denationalise recognize it would lead to “fewer days of mail services, longer mail delivery timelines or less access to USPS services.”
This tale is a part of a chain of profiles of Cupboard and high-level management positions.
