Vermont’s U.S. Postal Service has implemented changes to how mail is transported within the state that advocates say could slow delivery for many categories of mail, according to reporting distributed by the Associated Press.
The Postal Service said Vermont has joined a strategy called Regional Transportation Optimization, which ends evening collection of mail more than 50 miles away from regional mail centers. The reporting described Vermont as the latest region to adopt the approach.
The Postal Service did not answer questions about when the program was expected to come to Vermont, the reporting said. But it said that on Jan. 16 the Postal Service filed data with the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission showing the Regional Transportation Optimization program had already been implemented in every ZIP code in Vermont.
Regional Transportation Optimization is described as part of Delivering for America, a years-long plan the Postal Service began rolling out in 2021 under former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. The Postal Service has said the plan is essential for making operations efficient and financially self-sustaining, while critics have argued there has been a lack of transparency about how the plan could affect speed and quality of service.
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 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. He also said postmarks could be applied a day later than customers expect, potentially affecting bill-payment deadlines and mail-in ballots.
Amy Gibbs, a USPS strategic communications specialist, said the closest regional processing center for Vermont is in Springfield, Massachusetts, more than 40 miles from the state border. Gibbs said that previously postal trucks went to post offices twice per day, in the morning and in the evening, to pick up mail and bring it to Springfield, and that the new plan eliminates the second pickup. Under the new plan, Gibbs said any mail that arrives after the morning pickup will stay at the post office until the following day.
Hutkins said USPS has published a map showing the impact of the change on service standards for first-class mail, including shifting many parts of Vermont from a two-day service standard to a three-day service standard, with other parts of the country potentially taking up to five days. He said there are exceptions, including local mail in places close to Vermont’s two local processing centers in Burlington and White River Junction, which could still be processed more quickly than mail going to Springfield. The reporting said USPS proposed closing the two local centers in 2024 but abandoned the plan after political pushback.
The reporting also described a separate USPS change involving postmarks. It said that on Dec. 24, 2025, USPS revised rules to clarify that the postmark does not “inherently or necessarily align with the date” a piece of mail came to the Postal Service. The reporting said U.S. senators sent a letter to USPS on Jan. 15 expressing concern that the change could lead to 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 instead tries to improve public understanding of what postmarks convey. Hutkins said the combination of the transportation change and the postmark clarification could complicate deadlines that rely on postmarks, including for election materials.
Hutkins said he began Save the Post Office in 2011 after learning his local post office was threatened with closure. On how things have changed over the last 15 years, he said: “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.”
The reporting said much of the slowdown has been pinned to DeJoy, who resigned in February 2025. After DeJoy resigned, Sen. Peter Welch issued a statement saying “Good riddance,” and Welch said DeJoy’s restructuring plan has led to “unacceptable mail delivery delays across Vermont, especially in rural areas of the state.” The reporting said it remains to be seen what next steps the newly appointed Postmaster General David Steiner will take; before his appointment, it said Steiner served on the board of FedEx for over a decade.
The reporting said USPS’s own dashboard shows hardly any change in the percent of first-class mail arriving within service standards in the Vermont-New Hampshire-Maine region, while Hutkins said service standards have changed, making conclusions harder to draw from the limited data available. The reporting also noted complaints in Montpelier after four postal routes were left vacant due to a staffing shortage.
Elizabeth Newman of Hinesburg said delivery improved after 2023 and 2024, when she was getting mail just once a week. She said that even now, one mail carrier getting sick can lead to all the mail in town coming to a halt, and that she and others switched to paying bills online when possible after delays and trouble reaching credit card companies. Newman said: “Regularly, we were having to call our credit card companies, and they hadn’t received stuff or it was delayed.” She also said it was hard for the average customer to understand the effects of the regional transport and postmark plan because USPS felt like a “black box” of information.
The story was originally published by VTDigger and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.