[10] The United States Information Agency (USIA) helped the Post Office Department, during the Cold War, to redesign stamps to include more patriotic slogans.

[16] In 2012, in order to be able to meet obligations for payroll and continuing its operations, the Postal Service defaulted on payments due for retirements benefits in August and again in September that year.

[16][23] As of 2023, the Postal Service operates 33,641 Post Office and contract locations in the U.S., and delivered a total of 127.3 billion packages and pieces of mail to 164.9 million delivery points in fiscal year 2022.

[25] The holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas is the peak period for the Postal Service,[28] representing a total volume of 11.7 billion packages and pieces of mail during this time in 2022.

The LLVs were built from 1987 to 1994 and lack air conditioning, airbags, anti-lock brakes, and space for the large modern volume of e-commerce packages, the Grumman fleet ended its expected 24-year lifespan in fiscal year 2017.

The LLV replacement process began in 2015, and after numerous delays,[30] a $6 billion contract was awarded in February 2021 to Oshkosh Defense to finalize design and produce 165,000 vehicles over 10 years.

[64] In 2012, USPS reported that approximately 40% of postal revenue comes from online purchases or private retail partners including Walmart, Staples, Office Depot, Walgreens, Sam's Club, Costco, and grocery stores.

[91][92] S.1486,[93] also with the support of Postmaster General Donahoe,[94] would also allow the USPS to ship alcohol in compliance with state law, from manufacturers to recipients with ID to show they are over 21.

[117][118] A March 2021 report from the Postal Service's inspector general found that the vast majority of mail-in ballots and registration materials in the 2020 election were delivered to the relevant authorities on time.

[143] Unlike a state-owned enterprise, the USPS lacks a transparent ownership structure and is not subject to standard rules and norms that apply to commercial entities.

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld this monopoly against a First Amendment freedom of speech challenge; it thus remains illegal in the U.S. for anyone, other than the employees and agents of the USPS, to deliver mail pieces to letter boxes marked "U.S.

[149] President Trump's administration proposed turning USPS into "a private postal operator" as part of a June 2018 governmental reorganization plan, although there was strong bipartisan opposition to the idea in Congress.

Security for the individual is in this way protected by the United States Post Office, maintaining confidentiality and anonymity, as well as government employees being much less likely to be instructed by superiors to engage in nefarious spying.

as a dangerous step to extract the universal service principle from the post office, as the untainted nature of private communications is preserved as assurance of the protection of individual freedom of privacy.

It said no changes to the USO and restriction on mailbox access were necessary at that time, but increased regulatory flexibility was required to ensure affordable universal service in the future.

A variety of other transportation companies in the United States move cargo around the country, but either have limited geographic scope for delivery points, or specialize in items too large to be mailed.

[168] Amazon controls one-fifth of the delivery market, and is on track to overtake UPS and even the US Postal Service (USPS), according to data from the logistics firm Pitney Bowes.

[170] The Post Office Department owned and operated the first public telegraph lines in the United States, starting in 1844 from Washington to Baltimore, and eventually extending to New York, Boston, Buffalo, and Philadelphia.

[174] Some economists have argued that because public enterprises may pursue objectives different from profit maximization, they might have more of an incentive than profit-maximizing firms to behave anticompetitively through policies such as predatory pricing, misstating costs, and creating barriers to entry.

The USPIS has the power to enforce the USPS monopoly by conducting search and seizure raids on entities they suspect of sending non-urgent mail through overnight delivery competitors.

According to the American Enterprise Institute, a private conservative think tank, the USPIS raided Equifax offices in 1993 to ascertain if the mail they were sending through FedEx was truly "extremely urgent".

The primary purpose of the OIG is to prevent, detect and report fraud, waste and program abuse, and promote efficiency in the operations of the Postal Service.

Mail from individual customers and public USPS mailboxes is collected by letter carriers into plastic tubs, which are taken to one of approximately 251 Processing and Distribution Centers (P&DCs) across the United States.

[218] Since the late 20th century, the USPS has been reducing point-to-point links in favor of a spoke-hub distribution paradigm, with sorting work tightly concentrated at the hubs.

[222] Mail for which they are the same (because the senders are located in the same region as the recipients) is either trucked to the appropriate local post office, or kept in the building for carrier routes served directly from the P&DC itself.

At the destination P&DC, mail is again read by a DBCS which sorts items to local post offices; this includes grouping mailpieces by individual letter-carrier route.

The changes are a result of the declining volumes of single-piece First-Class Mail, population shifts, the increase in drop shipments by advertising mailers at destinating postal facilities, advancements in equipment and technology, redundancies in the existing network, and the need for operational flexibility.

In December 2012, the USPS began a limited one-year trial of same-day deliveries directly from retailers or distribution hubs to residential addresses in the same local area, a service it dubbed "Metro Post".

[258] In November 2013, the Postal Service began regular package delivery on Sundays for Amazon customers in New York and Los Angeles,[259] which it expanded to 15 cities in May 2014.

"[274] In the documentary Murder by Proxy: How America Went Postal, it was argued that this number failed to factor out workers killed by external subjects rather than by fellow employees.