Even more mail delays: How two USPS changes are reshaping delivery in the Upper Valley

The U.S. Postal Service in Vermont has quietly implemented changes to the way mail is processed that are expected to further slow down the delivery speed of many mail categories for Vermonters.

Vermont is the latest region to join Regional Transportation Optimization, a new strategy that ends evening collection of mail that’s more than 50 miles away from regional mail centers.

Last week, a postal service spokesperson did not answer questions about when the new program was expected to come to Vermont. But on Jan. 16, the postal service filed data in response to questions from the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission that shows the program has already been implemented in every zip code in the state.

Regional Transportation Optimization is one part of the Delivering for America plan, a years-long strategy of service cuts and other changes that began in 2021 under former Postmaster Louis DeJoy.

The postal service has said the plan is essential for making its operations efficient and financially self-sustaining. But critics of the program say there’s been a lack of transparency in how the plan could affect the speed and quality of service throughout the country.

Steve Hutkins, an advocate who runs the Save the Post Office website, said there have been no signs at post offices or other notices to customers letting them know that their mail will be sitting at the back of the post office overnight.

“The Postal Service doesn’t want the public to pay any attention to this change in its transportation policies and the slower service standards (delivery times) that the change is causing,” Hutkins said via email.

Postmarks now could be applied to mail a day later than customers expected — meaning that a bill payment could be considered past due, or even a mail-in ballot could be disqualified, Hutkins said.

How does Regional Transportation Optimization work?

The closest regional processing center for Vermont isn’t in Vermont. It’s in Springfield, Mass., more than 40 miles from the state border, Hutkins said.

Previously, the postal service would send postal trucks to post offices twice per day – once in the morning, the other in the evening – to pick up mail and bring it to Springfield, Amy Gibbs, a strategic communications specialist for USPS, said via email. The new plan eliminates that second pickup, meaning that any mail that arrives at the post office after the morning pickup will stay at the post office until the following day.

The postal service has published a map revealing the effect of this change, Hutkins said. For first-class mail, USPS has shifted many parts of Vermont from a two-day service standard to a three-day service standard, and it can take up to five days to reach other parts of the country.

There are some exceptions, Hutkins said. Local mail in places close to Vermont’s two Local Processing Centers, located in Burlington and White River Junction, could still go to those facilities and be processed more quickly than mail going to Springfield. The postal service proposed closing the two local centers in 2024, but abandoned the plan after political pushback.

The one-day additional delays in local deliveries come as USPS is also redefining the postmark. On December 24, 2025, the postal service changed its rules to clarify that the postmark does not “inherently or necessarily align with the date” that the piece of mail came to the postal service.

One key concern for opponents is how both these changes could combine to affect mail-in ballots, since election officials often rely on postmarks to determine whether a ballot was received on Election Day. On January 15, 16 U.S. senators sent a letter to USPS expressing fear that this change could mean more mail-in ballots being rejected.

In an email, USPS spokesperson Gibbs said the new postmark system does not “signal a change in postmarking procedures,” but only tries to “improve public understanding of the information postmarks convey.”

Hutkins, a retired New York University professor, began Save the Post Office in 2011 when he learned his local post office was threatened with closure.

How would he describe the last 15 years for the post office?

“It’s been: Things get worse slowly, you adjust to it as things go by, and it all gets slower than it used to be,” he said.

Much of that slowdown has been pinned to former U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. When DeJoy resigned in February 2025, U.S. Senator Peter Welch issued a statement that said “Good riddance.”

“DeJoy’s restructuring plan has led to unacceptable mail delivery delays across Vermont, especially in rural areas of the state,” Welch said in the statement.

Yet it remains to be seen what next steps the newly appointed Postmaster General David Steiner will take, Hutkins said. Before his appointment, Steiner served on the board of FedEx, one of USPS’ top competitors, for over a decade.

Have these changes had an effect on on-time performance? The postal service’s own dashboard shows hardly any change to the percent of first-class mail, the cheapest category of mail for letters, postcards and envelopes, that has arrived within service standards in the Vermont-New Hampshire-Maine region. But Hutkins noted that the standards themselves have changed, making it hard to draw conclusions from the limited data available.

For some Vermont communities, staffing levels at the post office appears to be a key reason for delays. Montpelier residents have complained about delayed mail and packages in recent weeks when four postal routes were left vacant by a staffing shortage.

Hutkins said that the overall level of postal workers hasn’t changed much over the years, but retaining part-time workers has been a longstanding challenge. He cited a 2016 USPS report that found the annual turnover rate for non-career employees was over 40%.

“It’s a really hard job,” he said.

Elizabeth Newman, of Hinesburg, Vt., said that her mail delivery has improved since 2023 and 2024, when she was only getting mail just once a week. But even now, a single mail carrier getting sick seems to lead to all the mail in town coming to a halt.

She said she’s one of many people in town who have switched to paying her bills online whenever she can.

“Regularly, we were having to call our credit card companies, and they hadn’t received stuff or it was delayed,” she said.

Regarding the potential effects of the regional transport and postmark plan, she said it was hard for the average customer to understand because the postal service was like a “black box” of information.

“You can never find out what happened or why,” she said.

This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.