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12/17/2025
Regional Transportation Optimization ends evening collections at nearly 12,000 post offices
Source: Postal Times, December 3, 2025
Over the past two years, the Postal Service has been quietly eliminating the evening collection of mail at thousands of post offices. Rather than going out the same day to a processing center, the mail, packages, and Priority items sit overnight in the back of the office, waiting to be collected the next morning, when the day’s mail is dropped off. The initiative is called Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO).
RTO began in October 2023 as a pilot called Local Transportation Optimization (LTO). It was relaunched as RTO per se in February 2025. The Postal Service has been sharing monthly reports on the latest activations with the PRC. The eighth such report was shared on Monday of this week.
Together, as of of December 1, 2025, LTO and RTO had been activated at about 11,900 post offices.
The eighth report indicates that no further activations will take place in December. Presumably they will resume after the holiday mailing season. The plan calls for ending the evening collection at about 24,000 post offices, so the implementation process is about half done.
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