By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) – The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday reported a net quarterly loss of $1.25 billion as it faces ongoing liquidity concerns and renewed calls for reforms to address its financial difficulties
Operating revenue in the three months ending December 31 fell 1.2% to $22.2 billion over the same quarter in 2024, when it reported a $144 million quarterly profit.
Officials on Thursday called on policymakers to reform the Postal Service Civil Service Retirement obligations, give USPS more flexibility over pricing and increase its $15 billion statutory debt limit.
“Where we’re falling behind is a misaligned financial and business model,” said Postmaster General David Steiner on Thursday, saying USPS has created a team to review all aspects of the business to reduce costs and capital spending citing its “dire financial situation.”
USPS has reported net losses of about $120 billion since 2007 as first-class mail, its most profitable product, has fallen to its lowest volume since the late 1960s.
Steiner told Reuters in December the agency faces a precarious cash position, warning that without reforms it could be out of cash in early 2027. There’s only one thing I am absolutely certain of — if we continue to do things the way we’re doing it today, we’re dead in about a year,” Steiner said.
USPS last month launched an online bidding platform to take proposals for access to its last‑mile delivery network, opening more than 18,000 destination delivery units and local processing centers nationwide to a broader range of customers that could raise badly needed funds. Steiner said Thursday more than 1,200 companies and individuals have requested to join the bidding.
USPS delivers to more than 170 million U.S. addresses six days a week, with the last mile the most expensive part of deliveries. The last mile is also hugely expensive for companies like FedEx, UPS and Amazon.
Steiner, who took over in July after the White House pushed out the prior postal leader, told Reuters it was “never even feasible” to privatize USPS. “There’s nobody in the private sector that would want the Postal Service … The delivery of the mail is an unbelievably costly endeavor.”
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Diane Craft)
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