Name: [USPS Deep Dive] The Ultimate Guide to Maximizing Savings & Speed
Uploaded: 2025-11-16T16:22:05.409Z
Duration: 1 h 6 min 8 s
Description: [USPS Deep Dive] The Ultimate Guide to Maximizing Savings & Speed

Transcript for "[USPS Deep Dive] The Ultimate Guide to Maximizing Savings & Speed": Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. I'm Katie Schroedel, content marketing manager at ProShip. We are gonna give everybody just a couple minutes to join us. So while we wait, so, Juan, how are we doing today? Hey. Hey, Juan. It's great to see you. How's the summer going? Summer's going great. Things have been good, keeping busy. Just got back from a vacation with the family, and that's always nice to be able to disconnect a little bit, spend some time with the family, especially as summer ends. You know, that just means time to get ready for peak season. Yeah. Well, he just dropped, my first away student at college, and, I'm really, really missing him. I know he's a little bit homesick. I think I miss him more because, much like you, I'm a avid DIYer and, you know, when kids get up to that age when they can lift heavy things and they can, you know, kinda take on some of the the shoveling and all that stuff, they go away to college. You miss some Miss them a lot. Yeah. I still, I'm fortunate. I still have a few years before that happens. My son is, just starting his sophomore year in high school. So I'm actually you mentioned DIY projects. Got a couple of them, right now in the pipeline, and I'm trying to get him to start helping me and doing some lift. We're trying to build a little home gym in the house and he's excited about that and well, opportunity for him to learn how to do some DIY projects in the house before he does go to college. Yeah. That's that's awesome. That's awesome. Looking forward to it. Hey. I do appreciate you wearing the green tie, in honor of the post office. I wore a blue one, so, I think we're we're sharing colors. It it shows the partnership. You know, it's just this is actually one of my favorite times. I'm kinda glad it aligns with the colors of ProShip and, kinda just worked out that way today. I, I guess you couldn't set it up any better. Yeah. Well, we appreciate it. Thank you, Juan. Katie, I think, maybe we can get started. Yeah. Looks like we got a good amount of people here. So we are here with, another session for the twenty twenty five pros who know virtual event. Today's session is the ultimate guide to maximizing savings and speed with the United States Postal Service. Before we jump into the content, I have a couple of small housekeeping items. Please submit your questions using the q and a function in the webinar. Or if you're on LinkedIn, you can put those in the chat. We will address those at the end today. This webinar is being recorded, so you'll get that on demand recording, sometime within the next week, and you can download any additional resources, in the webinar platform from the related content section. Finally, we do have a survey, so give us some feedback. Good or bad, we like to hear it all. So today, we are cutting through the noise to get straight to the insights that matter. As I said earlier, I'm Katie Schroedel, content marketing manager at ProShip, and today, I am joined by two incredible leaders. Juan, you wanna give us a quick intro? Absolutely. Katie, thank you so much for for inviting us here today. And, Bill, really excited. We've just been doing so much together over the last few years and, you know, as well as the postal service doing a ton of things. So but it's really, exciting opportunity to be here today, and thank you guys for the invite. Glad to have you. Bill Schroeder, the president of ProShip, before that twenty plus years with FedEx. So I I kinda live and breathe parcel and and have for a number of years. Juan, one of the topics given that this is about speed and and cost savings, I hear about all the time, and and we've got some changes going on at the post office, so maybe maybe the strategy will change. Perhaps it'll stay the course. Interested in finding out about that, but what I hear about all the time is when is my packages when are my packages gonna get there? How much is it gonna cost? Shippers are very centered on on the savings, potential, with using multiple carriers, and I usually enter into that conversation. And every CFO out there knows that 1% savings, two percent savings, 5% savings on their actual shipping spend drops right to the bottom line. And and that's an important factor. And in today's hyper competitive environment, what's the post office doing to support their shippers? And and what do you see the future looking like? And I and I I know we have lots of material to go through. I'm looking forward to it. But I hope you could start off with the, the more more recent news with the postmaster. That was a lot of information there, Bill, to take in. I mean, there is just a ton going on. But I do think it would be appropriate that, you know, we take a minute to spotlight one of the biggest changes, and and that we've recently gone through is and there's two of them. One one is the recent appointment of the seventy sixth postmaster general, David Steiner. You guys know he's a seasoned executive, and he's known for his transformation and his leadership, over at Waste Management. And another big thing that we just, announced and just celebrated actually is a huge major milestone that we just celebrated being our two hundred and fifty years of the United States Postal Service. Yeah. And that's exactly right. Almost, you know, half a century connecting, you know, communities and all about delivering, you know, for the American people. And, you know, it's really exciting that David was able to come in and kick us off, in our celebration. And, you know, one thing that I did get to see, you know, during the celebration is that whole celebration was about every postal worker, you know, whether they've retired, you know, our past or present, that have really helped to develop and to build the institution that is today. And at the end of the day, we're extremely excited to have PMG Steiner at the helm as he honors our legacies moving forward and he embraces all the new technology things that we're developing. But at the end of the day, he continues to reiterate his focus on the delivering for America and the network transformation. You know, we're really excited about everything that we're doing and it's it's really just been a a breath of fresh air to have David come in and just start to sit with us and talk about different strategies and get to better understand the organization. Yeah. I'm I'm really looking forward to seeing what, what David brings to the to the industry and and the post office and the modernization. Hey. When I was a kid, we always talked about the the post office in terms of rain, sleet, or snow. You know? There's a commitment to service with the post office that I think is is a a little stronger than some of the other carriers. Let's talk about the service commitment. Oh, that's a that's a really big one, and we know it's important to customers. Right? And and as you think through all the challenges that we've been facing in the organization over the years as we've been evolving and making the changes that are needed to support the the network transformation plan. You know, there's been some times that we've had some concerns about, you know, the the the mission that we're on in regards to our ability to perform and add service, reliability, but we're doing, it. You know, right now, we are under one of the biggest, network transformations in our history. And a change of this scale, it's never simple. You know, I always like to reference, what we've been doing over the last four years is like flying a seven forty seven, in the air and we're taking off the wheels, we're changing the the wings, we're changing the engine, all while trying to fly that plane. And we've been doing that and we're gonna continue to do that. But it's all about building a network that's gonna make us more efficient, more effective, and it's truly modernizing our facilities as well and providing a better experience for our employees. You know, those are our internal customers and it's about improving the experience for them and driving the right experience for our customers at the same time. The other thing too is, referencing, you know, is on time transit. You know, speed is gonna be important. Now we'll talk a little bit more today about, you know, what we're doing and how you can leverage our network to improve on cost, but also how to improve efficiencies so that we can deliver faster for every single customer that we work with. And that's how we're realigning our network. And, you know, we're always excited in every opportunity I get in my role to talk about our newest product ground advantage. You know, it's truly leveraging and enhancing our logistics space to provide a better service. But, you know, we really never truly had a Ground product, and Ground Advantage has been a game changer. And, we've seen tremendous success since it's gone live and looking forward to continuing to look for opportunities on how we can leverage that product. And with the network changes that we're making with new trips, we're gonna be all about improving the SLAs and the service commitments for our customers. And again, we're hyper focused right now on improving service. Fascinating. Seems to be exactly on target with the, the challenges facing shippers and retailers and manufacturers who are are competing in a in a global environment. And even though we're talking about distributing goods in North America, it's, you know, the single largest market on earth. So in the post office, obviously, moves an enormous amount of the commerce that occurs in The United States, and and globally. I don't want to leave that out, but, you know, we're focusing on North America. So let's talk about price. Let's talk about the investment and the initiatives that the post office is having around cost savings and and how those benefit the the shippers who are customers of the postal service. Yeah, Bill. You know, at the end of the day, our problem is just pretty simple. Right? Our promise is to maintain competitive pricing and be reliable and have faster delivery, and that's what we're doing. And it's truly strengthening the trust in the postal service, and we're excited about everything we're doing. But let's take a look a little bit about all the initiatives that are going on from a cost savings perspective. Right? We're making extremely bold moves on modernizing our infrastructure. And you can see here the cost saving initiatives. You know, this is over 10,000,000,000 swing when you look at what we're trying to do to drive out cost, But also the, you know, the revenue aspect of growing new volume and new business, which we are seeing especially with our ground advantage product. But all this is happening because we're optimizing our transportation routes. We're consolidating trips and reduce reducing our redundancy. This is a huge cost reduction, especially from fuel cost. And by the way, we don't charge any fuel fees. But this redesigning of our network and being able to eliminate, you know, these unutilized trips and and eliminate the waste and inefficiencies, that have been created over decades. This is truly transformational. We're starting to see the successes coming from that. But one of the things too is we're trying to make sure that there's no impact to service. And we know last year there were some opportunities as we were bringing on board new facilities and making changes. But right now, we're like I mentioned earlier, right, we're focused on service and we're trying to make sure that we do all these changes while you're seeing also improvements in service, especially at our new, regional and processing and distribution centers, as well as those that are leveraging access to our sort and delivery centers, our SNDCs. So we are seeing some major improvements and we're gonna continue to see some as we open up new facilities. We have some, about 10 more s and d c's going live this year before peak season. And again, all these combinations of things that we're doing is driving down reduction in cost. I think there's also an opportunity. Now when we drive down cost, we're able to offset that and give a better price for our customers. Yeah. It funny you should mention that. I was just reading in Supply Chain Brain an article. I think Max Garland wrote it. I he comments on the industry quite a bit, and then it's usually very thoughtful, well researched commentary. Ten ten more facilities this year yet before peak, strategically located, I noticed, kinda sprinkled in in major metropolitan areas and and servicing, you know, decent sized regions of the country. So all of these investments, I'm assuming the goal is to provide affordable and reliable service. Any thoughts or comments about how that is accomplished? Give you a perfect example. I mentioned that the 10 sites that you just, discussed and which was brought up in the article just at the SNDCs. And there's a vision that we'll have up to 400 sort and delivery centers in our network. Just think about how our delivery units in the past that would support, you know, last mile delivery was manually sorting volume all the way down to the letter carrier for that last mile delivery before dispatch. These sort of delivery centers are giving us the ability to do sorts all the way down to the carrier route, eliminating cost and improving efficiencies and time. When you go from a manual environment to a, you know, a specific environment with automation capabilities, is really making us more efficient. But again, back to driving out cost that we can then pass back on to our customer base. So as others are seeing record rate increases and announcing record, you know, fuel surcharges. We're in the opposite effect. Right? We're maintaining our cost, and prices. And while we're working through reducing our cost through the transportation and our sort and delivery center efforts. So we're really excited about that. And then you can look here. We're still while we're doing all those initiatives, we're also spending and making capital investments on our network. You know, one thing I wanna highlight is just what we're doing with our vehicles. And that's gonna help us be more effective and efficient, especially in this day and age delivery packages. Right? Our network was built and with the vehicles that we've had for over twenty years now was really designed to help and support with moving letters. And as we continue to see growth in the shipping and the package industry, these new vehicles and the investments we're making are paying off. We've had over 20,000 new vehicles already deployed, and we're looking at already acquiring about another 106,000 new vehicles in the near future. And so that's gonna really help us again reduce costs, from maintenance, from fuel efficiencies. You can imagine a vehicle that's over twenty years old, how fuel efficient that is. And now we have our electric feet fleet that's coming on board. So with an increased cargo capacity, you know, improve fuel efficiencies, less maintenance on vehicles because they're newer so they're not, you know, having as much maintenance requirements. And then one of the added benefits that I like to talk about because as a carrier who started in this organization, really excited to see how we're doing the right thing for our employees and implementing air conditioning in all our vehicles that, all these new vehicles. So, it's improving the experience for our employees. It's gonna provide a much better experience also for our customers. So really excited about everything that we've been doing over the last few years, and, the future is bright. And, as you said, we're gonna be able to press pass on savings and improve experience continually, to every customer that leverages what we're doing. I I'm just absolutely flabbergasted by the amount of investment and how it's targeted, strategically. So if we just look back at, you know, reliable service and cost optimization. Right? It it's it's obvious. It's self apparent that new vehicles are more reliable. They're going to have less breakdowns, and you're gonna have less exceptions because of mechanical failures. It seems so simple, and yet, you know, it's it's a challenge to do that in in today's environment. The technology modernization and the network redesign that you've got going on, I'm looking forward to diving into that as much as we can on the on this this webinar. That sounds like it's creating some new capabilities and and new methods of doing things as well as serving the customers better, and maybe it's a little more flexible. It allows shippers to get creative, find new ways to save money. Let's talk about peak. You know, we're gonna be going into peak pretty soon here. How what are you guys doing to get ready for that other than the obvious things we just talked about? Right? That's a lot. Right? Yeah. Absolutely. And before we kinda chime in a little bit about peak, I think you brought up something that was really important to capture. Right? It's all the investments we're also making in our IT systems. Right? And it's really what's helping us unlock with better tools, visit better visibility. We're enhancing our product tracking systems as well right now. Data's going live very very soon. But, you know, our CIO has been dedicating to improving visibility, but it's really helping us as a sales team. My entire team has been extremely excited about the new tools and the ability to make smarter decisions and real time decisions, but it's also helping us provide better customer, conversations. Right? From a sales team approach, we're doing things that we haven't ever done before. It's it all goes back to the continued investments we're making into our IT investment infrastructure. So that's really exciting. In regards to peak season, Bill, you know Before you go into this, after you throw a tantalizing morsel of meat out like that, you know, we're a technology company, and I do have to say, I would love to have you and Preetha on a future webinar and dive into the technology because you're right. Aside from the physical facilities and trucks, the technology that drives us is more important today than it's ever been. If you'll take me up on that offer, we'll have another webinar. Let's get the audience to to encourage us to do so. Send us a request. Ask us to have that webinar. We will. I'm pretty sure Juan and Preetha would love to show off what they're doing. And thank you for that, Juan. It's it's great stuff. I think you know Preetha well, and most on today's, webinar probably know Preetha would love the opportunity to come on and speak to everyone about all the things that she is doing because you know what? It's you see her glow every time she's talks about the things that she's doing. And that's what's exciting about all the investments that we're making. We're not stagnant. We're making significant improvements in investments that we're becoming more of a leader in the industry. And it's really what's helped unlock and and us to have the ability to work together, Bill, and really excited about all the opportunities that we're gonna continue to do. So I will talk to Preetha as soon as, as soon as this webinar is over today and see if we can look at setting some up in the future. That would be fabulous. Thank you. Absolutely. Alright. So now the topic of peak season. I didn't don't think I'm gonna forget about what we wanna do and and everything that's around peak season. And, you know, just to share with everyone, we're gonna be ready for peak season. You know, we've been building extra capacity into our systems to be able to absorb peak season volumes. Think about it. We've installed over 580 machines, over the last years, and we've developed new, you know, regional distribution centers, that are really helping us like in Indianapolis and Phoenix that's giving us more capacity, more efficiencies, and better visibility as we process in every single package that runs through these plants. And the other part too is that, you know, these plants were all strategically located based off of the need for capacity and to allow us the ability to be more effective in our operational strategy. So, I'm excited about what we're gonna be able to do for peak season and, you know, the other big thing that we don't talk a lot about is what we've been able to do from stabilizing our workforce. You know, when you think about, you know, the reduction of what we've done from a short time hiring, you think about we used to hire over 40,000 seasonal employees just to help us get through peak season. And we were able to right size and make majority of those employees full time. And now during peak season, we estimate we'll hire somewhere between four to 7,000 employees to help support with the demand, that comes through peak season. So that's just, it just goes to show you the investments we've made in our operations, our mail processing equipment, but the investments we've made in the people, and the people who work for the organization. It it goes a long way. You know, the other big part too is that we're doing is we're looking at how we can become more and more flexible with our transportation. You know, making deviations and reacting to real time situations. So when a facility, a regional processing distribution center, or one of our LPCs, our local processing centers, they start to run into capacity constraints where you have the ability to divert volume to another regional processing and distribution center, without hesitation, which we could never have done before under our old operating model. That's gonna allow us to be more flexible, especially when you run into issues with weather. That seems to happen during peak season and you get flight cancellations. All those things impact peak season, not just volume, but the different elements that we have to work through. But because of the efforts and the things that we've been doing and the investments we've made, really excited about the things that we'll be able to do to have a strong successful peak. So, hopefully, that answers your question and and kinda resonates with the audience today. Yeah. Absolutely. It sounds like you're totally ready for peak. I'm expecting it to go very well, at least with our USPS customers and, looking forward to seeing this new network and all of this investment, see it perform. You know? Now that it's built, what can it do? How can we push it? So let's take a look at the network flexibility. For years, hub and spoke has been the primary method that that carriers use to move goods, which, you know, you you take everything to one place, you put it in a big pile, and then you distribute it back out to where it has to go at. How's the post office's network different in design? Oh, just to give you an example, when you had a, NDC, right, the National Distribution Centers and how that model worked, and then you had other facilities that we created because of capacity constraints. So we would set up a hub at one location because that sort sectional facility became constraints. So instead of solving for that problem in a wider scale, well, we would just set up hubs and different hubs to support that facility, which added cost to transportation, It added additional waste to the organization because we would shuttle volume back and forth between these hubs to these sort sectional facilities. All of that is being eliminated and I think this is a great diagram to kinda show you how everything will work and how everything flows in the new modernized network. Right? So just taking a look here. Everything is gonna start from either origin point of a delivery unit, so that's where your local customers are coming in and dropping off either at our retail counters at one of our 30 plus thousand locations, or they're kinda coming to one of our sort and delivery centers because that is an accessible facility. You also have now our local processing centers, which will support with destination entry as well. But that is an entry point. But everything flows logically and sequenced correctly through our regional processing and distribution centers. And as I mentioned earlier, things that we're doing for peak season, this model allows us to flex and be more creative on how we shift volume and send transportation where needed, where we have capacity to be more efficient. You know, I look at the days looking forward and as we talked about technology, how will we be able to leverage this and also look at dynamic pricing to be able to leverage our network? These are things we're talking about. We're excited to look at how we're gonna be able to do this, and I think it'll provide even a better experience for customers. But, you know, our our I wanna highlight a little bit about our regional processing and distribution centers. You know, those are gonna be our largest facilities in our network. And, if you ever had a chance to go and visit one of these sites, it's great to see just how volume arrives on one side of the building. Very minimal touch from a person. It literally goes from the facilities dock right off the truck, right onto sorting equipment, and then exit after it's processed for ready for dispatch. So you have very little handling, and we're gonna have about 56 of these locations across the country. And then closing out, kind of wanna highlight, you know, I mentioned destination entry. You still have the ability now to do that if it's the right mix for the right customer. And that's leveraging our local processing centers at the destination. And and we're looking at being able to expand that ability, and that's providing next day service, one tender tool, a destination entry local processing center. So, really exciting about what we're doing. And, then the last thing, just the delivery units still seem to be the backbone when you have 30,000 plus physical locations and the ability to be able to reach every single residence in every single home six days a week. It's it's just been phenomenal how we've been able to leverage this, and I think we can do something that nobody else can do and and we're doing it. I did amazing. Yeah. It the the fact that you can go to every address in The US every day and do it cost effectively is is amazing in itself. And then, I don't see any of the normal activities, that I see with other carriers around pricing and cost controls that, that are oriented around every single unit in every single address. The the pricing for the post office is significantly simpler, and trust that we have to rate all of the packages that our shipper ship. So we're kinda familiar with pricing, technology and and how it actually accomplishes the job. And, you mentioned it a couple times, no fuel surcharge, no, no volume surcharges, I assume. Is that also true? No accessorial there. No volume, charges. We're, you know, that's what makes us, very easy when you look at from a budgeting perspective and being able to look. Our prices are very simple, and, we try to be very, very transparent with our pricing and allowing the ability to have a very, lean budget because you don't know what your shipping spend is when you're working with the United States Postal Service. Yeah. That's good to know because it's not always easy to predict, especially the way some of the surcharges have a variable nature. All all this the the network together, how has this impacted time in transit? It seems like you wouldn't do this just so you could do the same thing. So let's let's look at how this has improved service. Now talk about time in transit and really how ground advantage has been a game changer. But one thing, you know, wanted to kinda capitalize on and as we were discussing really price. And there's a great opportunity for customers to also look at our cubic pricing. I think that's one of the biggest things that we customers we see every day unlock. And as that becomes more and more of an option for customers to leverage, they really maximize the best cubic sized product and they get the best price. Right? So just wanted to throw that out there. It's really something that gets overlooked, but it is something that I'd recommend everybody to look at. Well, and that just opens up that whole conversation and I think it would it it warrants its own its own session again. So, a dive into technology, a dive into pricing, pricing strategies and impacts, I I think would both be worthwhile sessions for us to to share and help educate the audience. So if you're willing to do the pricing one too, I'd love to have you. Bill, I'm pretty busy, but let's see how we can do that. Because at the end of the day, it's it's important information to share and making sure that everybody is aware. So we'd love the opportunity to do that. And our ability to improve how we communicate all these new products and things that we're doing, and I'm excited. I'm gonna share some new products in a little while, hopefully, with you and and everybody joining us today. But, yeah, love the opportunity to do that. Yeah. Right. Awesome. Well, let's talk about time in transit. These maps look vastly different. Looks like an improvement. Some areas might go a little slower, but for the most part, every everything around you is two days. Yeah. This is a great example. This is using our Chicago regional processing and distribution center. So if you're leveraging the re you know, the regional processing and distribution center out of Chicago, you can see the left side is is was our old service standards, pre July. And you can see significant shifts as you look to the updated maps on the right. And and that light green area, similar to the tie I'm wearing, that represents a two day service standard and the change between our previous service standard to today. Now keep in mind, a lot of the things that we did in the plant processes we had in place, you know, was all historically written around moving first class mail. And now everything is running together. Everything's integrated from our letters to our flats to our packages. But the big thing is is what makes it so special is, you know, we've seen package growth in, of over 200%, over the years compared to the decline in single piece, mail. And having an integrated network is truly the right thing to do. And it goes back to what I was describing earlier about the cost efficiencies that we're looking to get. But really exciting, and I talked about how ground advantage has been a game changer. This is truly the perfect example to show you how expanding our reach for two day and it may be a little bit difficult to see on the map, but not much five day on there for a product that's a two to five day service. You can see we're reaching a majority of the Continental US, within two to four days. So, and as our service continues to improve week over week and as we get ready for peak, this is something that many should be able to look at and start to unlock this as a as a product that they should be using. Yeah. It looks like there's just one tiny little five day area there. It's it's hard to even make out on the map at this size. So yeah. I think it would be fair to say, GroundAdvantage is primarily a a two to four day product. I don't think anyone would ding you for making that that assertion. All of these things together, the the technology, the the price rationale, and the service standards. And did I catch this right? This was since July. So literally just since last month, this became effective? Correct. That was when we updated our service standards and, we're starting to see these changes now. You can't just flip a switch. Right? So all this doesn't happen from one day to the next. We started making the adjustments to our transportation about a month to month and a half prior to the July implementation date. But we did go live with these changes in July, and, we're seeing the significant benefits from these the the expanded reach that we're now reaching with GroundAdvantage. Just in time for peak. Timing's perfect. Yeah. Timing's perfect. Alright. Cool. You mentioned some new products. Can we can we talk about those? Are there ones that you can talk about? I will share. We're doing a lot of things. Right? We're we're we wanna make sure we're the best in class in processing and delivery operations. But because of the changes that we're making with our network, it's also given us the ability to unlock a suite of new products and also develop new solutions. So we've talked a little bit about, kind of what we're doing with the network changes and our facility changes with our vehicles. And all those changes really help us look for new capabilities, so that we can leverage the network that we're building, you know. So so a couple examples I'll share with you today, and it's it's you're sharing it here is the Priority Mail Next Day. Right? We just released the Priority Mail Next Day product and, that has been targeted and being offered in 62 markets. And those 62 markets were developed based off of the expanded reach for those facilities and leveraging those sites. And a lot of that is built off of the ability to reach a site within a 150 miles. We're getting you next day service, but the best part is it's at an incredible rate. To get a next day service using Priority Mail with packaging, within a 150 miles is is a pretty phenomenal service that we're now offering. And the best part is it's logically flowing with our volume today using our network that we're building. So really excited about the things and it's already unlocked new opportunities and expanded relationships with with many customers. So looking forward to that continuing. One thing, Bill, I'll share that we're looking at, and it's still a little early in in the process, but I talked about our sorting and delivery centers. And I talked about how we're looking to have about 400 of those sorting delivery centers across the country. And with the ability now to process volume, right, packages in the sorting and delivery centers, we're looking at how we can potentially unlock same day delivery when you enter into a sort and delivery center. When you think about how the reach of a sort and delivery center changes from a delivery unit, because most of our sort and delivery centers collapse somewhere between five, seven, eight to 10 delivery units. That reach at a store and delivery center has significantly increased. So we're looking to how we can potentially leverage, with a midday drop, and do afternoon deliveries for same day. So all those are things that we're looking at and, really excited about how that might play out. Yeah. Same day is definitely an interesting area of innovation. So I'm I'm looking forward to digging into that more at, at a future opportunity. This is all fabulous stuff. I I'm really excited about how we've been working together with the post office, the last couple years as we've worked on delivery mechanisms for the actual technology, just the bits and bytes that need to be processed to make the physical part of this whole equation work. Before we go into talking about the the partnership with ProShip and and the post office, any last words around, the products, the flexibility of the network, the pricing strategy? Any thoughts about how this is going and and where we're going in the future? Let me highlight a couple of things because the future is all about what we're developing. Right? And there's obviously, as ecommerce continues to explode, we've, looking at new options for returns and how we leverage our expansion of our smart lockers in our delivery units and our retail units. That's gonna be huge for us. Right? There's a great opportunity for us to focus on returns. We just started deploying within the last couple months, to certain delivery units or retail units, what we call bags for returns. So it's it's called packageless returns. Allowing customers to come in with a QR code, and bring bring an item in that does not have a box, scan a QR code, access to a a bag that they can just put the good in, attach a label, and send the item on its way. So that's just one new thing that we brought launched to be able to expand a a simplistic service, to increase our opportunity to drive a better experience for return solutions. Another thing I wanted to share is we're looking at and exploring local fulfillment. And we've been talking about it for a little while is how do we leverage these assets that we have across the entire country and potentially do some type of fulfillment services. But it's early stages. It's still really discussion about what these opportunities may look like. But would love to have the opportunity to talk to customers to see if there's an opportunity so we can explore this further. But what I'm really excited, Bill, to talk about about today is we are working on a new product and and we call it post host. And, it's just launching recently and, it's it's leveraging our ground advantage services and it's just bringing the products using ground advantage closer to consumers. So where a customer wants a same day pickup, this is unlocking that opportunity. So let me kind of give you an example of how that works. So customer, company has x amount of products, they have significant value and and customer base in certain markets, They can forward deploy using Ground Advantage, those products to our post offices. Yeah. And we'll hold those post office in the post office, we'll hold those products, in the original container that it came in as a Ground Advantage. And then in the shopping cart experience, so when somebody's buying an item, on the, you know, on their website, they'll have the option in the checkout shopping cart experience, for same day pickup. And how we would leverage that is they would come in, to the post office and we would fully manage that fulfillment for them. And the customer would be able to come in at one of these locations. Many of them are accessible twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. They can come in, scan a QR code, and use one of our smart lockers or PO boxes, to pick up that good. And I think that's a phenomenal experience if you think about you have, the exploding use of buy online, pick up in store. That's exactly what this is. Post host is a buy online, pick up in store, or would like we like to call it up, buy online, pick up at post office, experience. And and it's at your convenience. So it's just one more way we're looking at how do we leverage our assets, across The United States to breed, you know, bring new solutions and new products to customers. So we're excited about this. We're having some great conversations right now with some customers, to be going live and, again, opportunity. If, if there's anybody who's interested to learn a little bit more about how Post Hosts, can add an additional value to the customer experience for your customers, we'd love to hear from you and, definitely reach out to us, reach out to Bill, and we'll get connected and be able to kind of walk you through of how this whole entire process will work and how this will be able to, you know, again reinforce what we're doing as an agency, to provide new product service. But again, it's all about using Ground Advantage and it's very cost effective to do this and providing an amazing experience for the customer at the end of the day. Wow. It it sounds like the investments and the modernization and kind of the redesign of the network has unlocked a lot of capabilities. It's it's almost like the foundation for a a whole new set of postal services and features, and and we can expect service standards to continue to improve and the efficiencies to to be unlocked with this new network. It it it sounds amazing. Almost too good to be true. I don't, you know, I don't wanna question whether or not you're telling me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but, but it's all logical. It all makes perfect sense that the infrastructure, the vehicles, the people all have to pull together, to deliver what the post office is famous for. And I and that's, you know, rain, sleet, or snow, the package has gotta get there. Right? Absolutely. That that is the truth and that has been our motto for a very long time and we continue to do it every single day. Yeah. That's amazing. Alright. So I I would like to take just a minute here and talk about the partnership because I think it's technology, and and hopefully, we have a future session with Preeta, and we can go into that. But, just a a snapshot for our audience, both postal customers and ones who have yet to become postal customers. ProShip has spent the last year working on, and coordinating with the post office delivery of their technology through the final mile to connect to the WMS ERP systems that are in use already in those enterprises. It could be a homegrown system. It could be an Oracle system, cloud based or on prem. It doesn't matter. We can connect to anything, and we can make that connection then to the postal services technology, which has undergone a modernization of its own that is equal to the physical build out that we've seen. The API is amazing. The Ship product as a spec based solution is amazing. I would we know several of those. I'd say it's one of the best in the industry, if not the best. It's just been phenomenal. And, like I've mentioned, the the the ProShip and Postal, partnership has been strong. The technology is solid and vetted, and and we've built in as many of the bells and whistles as possible. Looking forward to continuing to build out things like PostHub, PostHost, and some of the other, capabilities and products that get launched in the future and making sure that they're accessible to our customers. I like to think of us as the digital final mile. So as you're building out all these APIs and the connections between systems, that last connection between the carrier and and the the actual shipper and their specific systems. That's what we do. And we've done our very best to enable that capability with the post office, in a very complete format and nature so that customers can take advantage of all of the new greatness that's being developed here. So, hopefully, we can continue that in the future. And and, Juan, I think, I think we're about ready to to see if we can answer some questions. The audience has been pretty quiet lately. We'll see if there are some questions popping out. Thanks. I appreciate your time today, Juan. Thank you. And, you know, just to kinda touch on that, you know, at the heart of this partnership is truly finding the right solutions and ProShip, as as you just mentioned, all the suite of offerings you have. And as I as we I just walked through all the new products. It's about having these partners and working with ProShip to be able to unlock the ability to leverage and use them and do them seamlessly. And you guys have been at the forefront of that, and it's been great to work with you directly and and and for the entire team at ProShip. We appreciate the, you know, the opportunity to do this, and we thank you for having us on today. Yeah. Awesome. Alright. Well, we have a few we've got some time left, so we will open it up to the audience. I know we got some questions in, but please keep submitting those questions. We're gonna answer as many as we can today, and then we'll follow-up with those that we don't get to after the event. So here's a question we got. Oh, and it's about the the partnership stuff that you guys just talked about. So how does this partnership make it easier for shippers to use the new products and the pricing that you talked about? Juan, I think I'll probably go to you first for this one. Katie, I I think I was just speaking to that. I mean, at at the end of the day, it's all about working together with partners that are leading in the industry. And and again, it's it's about connecting both the postal service, the customer together, bringing and bridging the gap with all the different solutions that exist, but also taking what we're building. I think Bill talked about it. Right? We're doing a lot newer as to the enhancements with our technology from our APIs, to USPS ship. But when we create new products, a lot of times we need to have customized solutions to support a customer. And that's where the partnership is important. Right? And to be able to provide that seamless transition and build out what is needed, so that any customer is able to leverage these new solutions and not take years. Because some of the stuff is not just off the shelf. Some of the stuff takes some significant work to create and that's exactly what's what's happening. And and then doing it, you know, we talked about the reliability of the shipping and what we're doing on our end. There's the reliability also on the software. And again, that's working together and, and Preet has been heavily involved to make sure everything is good on our end in regards to speed and that reliability is met. So it's been a great partnership and appreciate the opportunity to continue to work together. A lot of things we're gonna be able to do together as well in the future as we deploy these new products. Yeah. Phil, let's let's hear your take on that question. Yeah. Yeah. I I I do have to say I I've been surprised multiple times on this journey, specifically from the technology aspect, with the post office. The I I've been just flabbergasted at the amount of investment, but also the the thinking that went into how it was going to be built, how it was going to be designed, how it was going to service, not only today's needs, but the future needs. That the API is deployed regionally. It is super fast. It doesn't matter where you are. If you're in any region of The US, you can hit that thing and the latency is very, very low. I'm not gonna give you a number because somebody will be two milliseconds longer, and then they'll be like, Bill, you were wrong. It was twelve milliseconds, not ten. So I I not gonna commit to that, but I think if you put it up against any of the others, it is performing at an optimal level, exceeding pretty much everyone's expectations for an API. So that's phenomenal. I mean, it's just amazing the way it works. And the features that are in it, it it is very inclusive. It allows a lot of capabilities. I'd love to tell you that we've exploited all of them and incorporated all of them, and then the first customer we come to invented a new way and wanted some information out of an API that was a little bit off the beaten track, and and we managed to collaborate with the post office and deliver it in no time. So it really great stuff, in the way that the partnership works. Very open and and easy to work with is what I found, our technology endeavors to be. So I'm looking forward to continuing this and and what new stuff's coming next. Yeah. Yeah. It's all about those those shared goals and that we're both on the same page there. Another question here. Juan, I'll probably give this one to you. How does the new network handle those on these unexpected volume spikes that we get year round? I'm not just talking about peak season. Great question. And, I kind of talked a little bit about it, but at the end of the day, what makes the postal services network that we're developing, it it makes it a game changer for us. Because the short answer to your question is it's all about flexibility. And our redesigned network gives us more flexibility that we just we couldn't do it in the past. It just didn't exist. The network didn't allow for it. You know, I'll give you a perfect example. You know, we, we recently brought on a pretty large customer that's in the subscription based side. They only do about, shipments about five days a week. So how do you manage significant amount of volume in five days? You can't just spread that over the entire month. And what that's allowed us to do is get very flexible and creative on our transportation and different regional processing and distribution centers. We're no longer just locked into just using one facility to process that volume. We're dynamically shifting that volume to different facilities so that we can meet the rate, you know, the customer's expectations and our SLAs. We're doing about seven pickups from this one customer every day. And each pickup goes to a different regional processing and distribution center where that volume is unloaded, processed, and already out turned around to start going out to that destination local processing and distribution center. So, again, this is one example of things that we can do during peak season, but throughout the year, obviously, to be able to provide solutions for customers, but also protect the volume of performance that's, at our facility. So, that's what's really exciting, you know. Somebody who's been in operations, worked in mail processing, to be able to see the things that we can do and do it dynamically, it's it's really been a breath of fresh air. It's really exciting, for the organization and the employees to be able to see that we have that ability to do that, make those decisions. So that's it. Again, just an example of things that we're doing to improve the network and handle unexpected volumes. Bill, I know that ProShip has customers that have peak seasons year round, whether that's, you know, the middle of summer or Mother's Day, you know, Valentine's Day, whatever it is. What can you add from the ProShip side? Yeah. It it I'm gonna dive into that. But one of the things I think we need to consider first, and and the peak variability with different industries and and different retailers is part of it. But the other dynamic of that is also the the package type. Right? And that's one of the aspects that I don't think people really consider when they're thinking about a multi carrier system like ProShip. Usually, it's just because they're looking to shop multiple carriers for price. So that's the the impetus that causes customers to begin to look at this kind of technology in order to make their commitments to their customers. Right? But not all the carriers are the same. So the days when you used to bundle all of your volume together with one carrier made sense. That carrier would take all of your packages, big, small, heavy, light. It didn't matter. And today, that's not the case. The the carriers are better at different types of parcels than they are at others, and their networks are designed around that. So the peak variability with things like school supplies, the peak that we've just gone through. Right? Those have a particular dynamic to them and they're different than maybe Halloween peak, Christmas peak, or Valentine's Day peak. Right? Are they flowers? Are they fresh and perishable? Are they in nice little long rectangular shaped boxes? Do those sort well in the carrier system that you're trying to use for those packages? Or another dynamic, t shirts around sporting events. Super Bowl is another mini peak that occurs every year. That's when some of the big players in the sports paraphernalia and and merchandise, they're shipping things that are great for the post office. It's a t shirt or a jersey in a polybag. It fits in your mailbox nicely. So one of the things to keep in mind when picking a carrier and when you're picking technology is, are am I putting the right packages in the right network? The carriers appreciate that. And am I using technology that enables that? And one of the things, without going into any technical detail, we do carrier volume balancing. And that's one of those things that allows you during multiple seasonal peaks to make sure that your packages go into the right network, that you're meeting your contractual obligations with that carrier, and that every all the parameters are lining up for the strategic goals that you have for your fulfillment supply chain needs. So it it it's not just, oh, how how many more packages can the post office take during peak versus UPS. Right? We also have to make sure that the carrier is putting the right packages into the right carrier network during that peak so that the volume can be absorbed easily. If you're shipping a bunch of canoes, the post office is probably not a good choice. You probably wanna look at some white glove LTL carrier. Right? And I know that's an extreme example, except I've been in parcel sort facilities, and I've seen rows of canoes lined up against the door. They didn't belong there. That was a bad choice, and and something probably went wrong. So it's it's peak. It's it's which carrier is good for my parcels and my peak needs and my customers and and variability in in regional effectiveness and everything else comes into play. But, for the most part, make sure you're putting the right packages and the right volumes with the right carrier, and you won't be disappointed by the service levels. Most customers I I've run across, that have major issues with a carrier, they were probably trying to put the wrong parcels into the network, and and it just didn't work out well. Right. Thanks, Bill. Alright. Next one here. Everyone talks about price, but what other metrics should we be measuring to know if the new USPS network is delivering on its promises? Juan, I'll let you tackle this one first. Okay. Thanks for that. But, real quick, wanna kinda lead into something that you're you're just talking about, Bill, and what's important for peak season and even outside of peak season is also kinda getting volume projections. Right? That is really huge for us to have ability to kinda have a better idea of what type of volumes we can anticipate week out, two weeks out, a month out. So we can coordinate and plan better. Right? I I know we I talked a lot about the ability to dynamically shift volume, but sometimes there's no better way than to do it in advance and having a plan on what you're gonna do and being able to communicate that. So just one other example and I and I love the idea. I had brought up cubic earlier and the example you just mentioned on canoes and kayaks. Right? Yeah. I I don't think those make the the cubic rate, exactly. So I I agree. That's not the best fit for us. But that's why there's those are the things that you should be doing and everybody should be doing to make sure that they're using the right product. And any way you can plan and forecast and give us information so we build the right plan for you to build success. That's what it's all about. And then, and and Katie, just to kinda go back to kind of metrics, right, and how we're delivering, you know. I I think on time delivery is it's extremely important. Right? It's a key benchmark not just for us, but for our customers. But I think the other thing that we're doing now that we never used to do because we have more visibility than ever before is, we're not just looking at when an item was delivered and if it was delivered within the SLA, but we're looking at whether the package arrived early as well. And we're seeing a lot of times a product that has a four day service standard, we're actually delivering it at 70 plus percent of the time in three days. And that kinda gets overlooked sometimes. But I also know it's extremely important for customers. Right? The reliability of data is, hey, when am I expecting the item and that they get it within that window. So we're looking at that more now than ever. It's really of how many times we're delivering early, not just on time, and also looking at how do we improve too so that we're more accurate in the real time information of when the product's gonna be delivered. And that's why I always love, you know, our informed delivery app and being able to provide real time communication of one product, when a package is scheduled to be delivered. So a lot of things that we're doing to just get better, but also adapting to real world conditions. You know, I mentioned earlier. Weather can be an impact during peak season. And it's how do we prepare and do things and and make dynamic changes so that we're ahead of the game when different conditions occur. And then we'll continue to look at how we perform and I like I said, excited about what we're gonna be doing in peak season. Lots of things going on and, looking forward to working with, with many of you on making sure our peak season is successful. Awesome. Alright. So what are you hearing from customers and and others in the industry about metrics? So the data is very, very important. And with some of the new tools we have with AI and machine learning and the evolution of our ability to do really deep complicated analytics on the networks. Initially, it it arose out of the freight audit and pay functionality, and and that was really just about recouping some costs and and recovering some revenue, depending on what side of it you looked at. But that's grown and matured into a very advanced analytical science and discipline, and there's a number of of companies out there that do it, ProShip partners with a few of them, those metrics really guide us to optimize our ability to interface with the carriers. So as shippers or as a technology platform that enables shippers and carriers, the the intersection of the data and the advanced analytics is now revealing opportunities where we can selectively, and strategically select parcels for a particular carrier network based on more metrics than just, the size and weight of the package. And and I'll give you an example, and and Juan brought it up. So, packages sometimes get delivered early. Right? So if your delivery commitment with a customer is to have it there on Tuesday, and that would be a day early for a particular service, yet the analytics tell us that that service gets there 89% of the time a day early, a day earlier than the published time in transit or a day earlier than the service standard that it's committed to, and you're looking at your data and analyzing it, then you know that. Now you also know that you can deliver that package on Friday, the previous week. It's gonna be there on Tuesday, even though the service standards may indicate to you that it would be a Wednesday delivery. It allows you to keep your promise to the customer with a certain degree of confidence, and the analytics allowed you to save a little bit of money on that shipment. You get to pick a more deferred service versus upgrading it to a priority service. Those are the kinds of things people are looking at metrics to give them today, insight into how exactly, at the time of shipment, should they make the best decision for that parcel. You take the same parcel. Two hours later, you may have missed the cutoff for the carrier that's gonna get there in three days. Now you have to upgrade it. So, again, the analytics have determined that you should pull those packages, fill them, pack them, and get them ready to ship before that carrier pulls their trailer for the day. All of those are factors that you have to take into consideration, and the modern optimization of transportation spend is a science in and of its own. There is enormous resources dedicated to it because, again, the CFOs out there know if I can if I can eke out just a tenth of a percent of additional savings in my transportation, that goes right to the bottom line. E commerce is a fiercely competitive business. All of us service e commerce, shipping, and and, the all of the activity that goes with it. And key metrics are the data drives the world, in our world. Yeah. Well, appreciate that example. Alright. We are getting out of time, so I think we'll squeeze in one more quick question. Bill, I think this one is more directed towards you. So with new network and services and carriers out there, our options are getting more complex. What's the best way a shipping system can help us make the right routing decisions in real time and then get the most change out of get the most out of those changes? Well, that's a that's a big question. There there's an entire PhD set of educational material that goes with this. To make it real simple, it let's let's just talk about the analytics and the data and that drives decisions. Right? So if you don't have systems that are capturing the data at the relevant points, you can't execute good decisions on the front end. So making sure that you understand how your carriers perform, where they perform best, and making sure that they get the right packages, you can sum all that up into what is your transportation strategy. And every company has a different strategic approach to it, how they're gonna optimize their spend to accomplish their mission, which is delivering to their customers. So at the end of the day, when you when you analyze all the data and you have a good playbook, now you have to execute that playbook, and that's what ProShip does, and that's where we really fit in the industry. If you don't do those two things and you put the canoes into the postal network, Juan is gonna call you and tell you, those do not qualify for cubic pricing. It's too big. It's the wrong size. You shipped it on the wrong day. So all of that tied together is really part of a a a strategic plan that gets actually coded into algorithms, and those algorithms execute perfect flawless decisions hundreds of thousands of times a day. And and, really, I I I think we're beyond the point where humans can just pick, oh, that one goes on the FedEx pallet, that one goes on the UPS, this one gives us to DHL, And then these are our small packages. They go with the post office. May or may not be true. If you don't actually analyze all the data, you don't know. The best choice is not simply the cheapest one anymore. If you just pick the cheapest option, you're probably putting some parcels into the wrong network. Mhmm. Yeah. Sounds like it's it's all about the data there. If one has any thoughts about that as well, I'm sure they would prefer not to have the canoes and kayaks as well. No. Our our preference is not. But I will tell you as we're getting smarter and as we're putting in new equipment sets in our organization across the network, we will be able to be more effective and efficient with larger packages. So don't count us out, when we just say small. There's a lot of opportunity and as network evolves, our product profile is gonna be able to shift a little bit more to be able to provide more of a solution for our customers as well. So the canoes, yeah, likely not gonna be our preference. Yeah. You actually hit on an interesting point in the middle of all that, and that is that the the the customers putting the parcels into the network have a lot of choices. Right? And the choices don't stay the same. As USPS's capabilities for different sizes, shapes, or better performance in specific regions, we just saw the change that occurred in time and transit service standards for you just last month. Right? So if you don't go back to your strategy and take that into consideration, then you're missing a two day delivery service window that the system probably automatically picked it up. But if you don't rethink your strategy and optimize for it again, you may be missing opportunities. Absolutely. Yeah. Alright. Well, with that, we are out of time. So thank you so much, Juan and Bill, for your incredible insights today. This was a master class in what the USPS is doing to drive probability and efficiency. So to our audience, thank you so much for joining us, and, have a great day, everybody. Thank you, everyone. Yeah. Thank you.