July 17, 2025

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Dear Colleagues:

On July 15, I began my tenure as America’s 76th Postmaster General.  I am incredibly proud and honored to have been asked to lead an organization that I have admired throughout my life and to now join all of you in our shared mission of service to the nation. 

You should know that I believe strongly in the role of the Postal Service as a pillar of America’s democracy and economic infrastructure, in the important support and services we provide at every business and residence, as a positive and competitive force in the marketplace, and in our enduring mission to bind the nation together. 

I am convinced that a strength of the Postal Service resides in our structure as a self-financing independent entity of the executive branch, functioning much like a business but with a public service mission.  I am confident that we will be able to demonstrate that the Postal Service can operate successfully under this structure in meeting the financial and service performance expectations of the nation, and in so doing justify and preserve our independence far into the future.

While I certainly bring the perspective of an outsider, I know the Postal Service well enough to see that there is much to build upon in the years ahead.  Recent transformation and modernization efforts have brought the Postal Service substantially closer to private sector logistics practices, and pricing and product strategies have improved competitiveness.  Fully realizing the potential of this progress will be a priority, and I hope you will enthusiastically join these efforts.

I am most attuned to the foundation of our commitment to the American public: On-time delivery of their mail and packages.  As someone who led a large private sector logistics operation, I am certain that the Postal Service will continue to improve and achieve on-time performance objectives.  Better operational performance is what our customers expect and meeting that expectation on a sustained basis will unlock strong long-term revenue growth, and for that reason driving continuing service improvement will certainly be a high priority.

The other major commitment of the Postal Service is to operate in a financially self-sustaining manner.  While the impacts of inflation and the dynamic and changing business environment have negatively impacted our ability to achieve financial sustainability, we must reverse that trend. The Postal Service needs to be on a realistic path to match costs to revenues on a consistent, long-term basis. I believe this is achievable, but only through effective organizational commitment, alignment, and execution to drive new operational efficiencies and generate sustained revenue growth.  These are complex challenges we will tackle together, but I am confident we can do so successfully.

I am fundamentally someone who embraces the effort of tackling difficult problems and I am committed to the process of finding lasting solutions.  In my experience, the best solutions result from a lot of listening, understanding varied perspectives, finding commonalities to rally around, and defining courses of action that provide long-term meaning and value to all involved. 

I will be engaging with our various management teams and visiting facilities, meeting with you and our postal unions and management associations, and other interested stakeholders, because it is important to me that we build and align the organization around strategies that strengthen our business and reflect and accommodate the widest set of needs. 

As we move forward, I will also prioritize strengthening the Postal Service reputation, brand and culture.  My aspiration is that every employee can be proud of their work at the end of every day, proud of their colleagues, and proud of the organization, our mission and our performance.  All of this depends on aligning around the right goals and putting every employee in a position to perform at a high level so that the organization can perform at a high level.  The Postal Service has a rich history and rightly benefits from a deep reservoir of goodwill and support from the American public.  I look forward to our collective efforts to earn more of their goodwill, and hopefully a larger share of their business.  

As I start my journey with the Postal Service—and I will take it as an auspicious sign that next week the Postal Service will observe the 250th anniversary of our founding—I do so with great enthusiasm and reverence for the institution.  I intend to be a strong advocate for you and your work, and for our customers, and I am confident that together we will shape a stronger future for the United States Postal Service and a stronger future for you and your loved ones.

My final thought, but the most important tenet of my beliefs, is that I want each of you to return home safe at the end of every day, so please always be safe yourself, and demand safety from your colleagues.  We have a lot of goals, but none are more important than your safety.

I look forward to working with all of you,

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/s/

 

David P. Steiner

 

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