Mail outside of Albuquerque will take an additional day to deliver

New Mexicans who live more than 50 miles from Albuquerque will have to wait additional time to receive their mail — the result of another cost-cutting change within the U.S. Postal Service that went into effect Tuesday.

The changes are part of the Regional Transportation Optimization Plan (RTO), which moved the cutoff time for mail collections to 8 p.m. Typically, mail that is received later in the night is brought to a processing and distribution center for processing the same evening it is received. Under the RTO plan, mail will sit overnight until the following morning, causing mail deliveries to take an additional one or two days.

The RTO plan is one of many ways USPS is attempting to cut costs after the recently established Department of Government Efficiency put pressure on the agency to start operating without a loss.

“It’s set up to basically cut costs, but at the same time, it’s degrading customer service,” said Ken Fajardo, president of the Albuquerque USPS union. “Part of the concern is that during election time, ballots, as far as we know, are just going to sit overnight, so some ballots may not be counted.”

The goal of the plan is to bring down transportation costs by eliminating evening runs, therefore reducing “inefficient transportation runs,” the Postal Service wrote in its Delivering for America document, which outlines a 10-year plan to reduce costs.

Under the initiative, mail collected more than 50 miles away from the nearest processing and distribution center would only have morning and afternoon pickups. Any mail received on the weekends or during holidays would be subject to additional transit days.

The processing and distribution center in New Mexico is at Mountain and Broadway SE. More than 24,300 of the country’s 33,700 post offices are subject to the RTO initiative.

“What this equates to is anybody outside of a 50-mile radius is not being provided the universal services as required by statute,” Fajardo added.

USPS said the plan would increase truck utilization and improve efficiency, and the initiative would save an estimated $3.6 billion to $3.7 billion. USPS has saved $2.2 billion as a result of transportation cost reductions to date, according to a fact sheet from the agency.

USPS said that while some services may change, 75% of first-class mail will have the same service standard, 14% will be upgraded to a faster standard and 11% will have a slower standard.

When the Delivering for America plan was implemented in March 2021, the department said it was “on a trajectory to lose $200 billion over the next 10 years” and made changes to try and bring in profits for the agency. USPS projects at least $36 billion in savings over 10 years from further cost reduction plans.

On Feb. 21, President Donald Trump announced he would consider a merger of the Postal Service into the Department of Commerce, which would privatize the department.

Lawmakers in New Mexico voiced their frustration.

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez and the New Mexico Department of Justice are considering filing an injunction order against the administration.

Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D-N.M. wrote a letter to the Trump administration, stating that the push to “dismantle the United States Postal Service (USPS) is a direct attack on rural New Mexico” and demanded that the administration halt any executive orders regarding USPS.

“Families in Columbus, Truth or Consequences, and so many other towns rely on the Postal Service to deliver life-saving medications and critical mail. What happens when their post office closes because it’s not ‘profitable’ enough?” Vasquez wrote in a statement. “The Trump administration is putting corporate profits ahead of the basic needs of working families.”