U.S. Postal Service shippers will be able to directly access the agency's last-mile infrastructure for fast delivery next year via a bid solicitation process commencing in late January or early February, according to a Wednesday news release.
Interested parties can "propose a combination of volume, pricing and tender times at each location, with deliveries for successful bidders being made by USPS that same day or the next day, at the customer’s preference," per the Postal Service. The agency expects to notify winning bidders in the second quarter of 2026, with service beginning in the third quarter.
The Postal Service said the process will allow both large and small shippers to use the agency's delivery destination units, or DDUs, which are the last stop in its network before mail and packages reach their final address. There are more than 18,000 DDUs nationwide.
DDU access has typically been limited to a handful of high-volume shippers, such as package consolidators. These companies historically have dropped off volume at the facilities to avoid potential upstream chokepoints in the Postal Service's network while still leveraging the agency's robust final-mile coverage.
That longstanding approach changed under the USPS' former leader, Louis DeJoy, who shook up consolidator partnerships in part by eliminating contracted rate discounts that incentivized DDU injection. Postmaster General and CEO David Steiner has pushed to change the course set by DeJoy in the early stages of his tenure, engaging with UPS, retailers and others on ways to utilize the agency's last-mile assets.
"We want to make this valuable service available to a wide range of customers that see the worth of last mile access — other logistics companies and retailers large and small,” Steiner said in Wednesday's release.
Steiner added that the bid solicitation process will enable companies "to find the best mix of local shipping attributes for the best volume-driven pricing" while drawing in more revenue for the financially ailing agency. Non-DDU entry point locations further upstream in the agency's network will continue to serve customers.
Before establishing a platform for bid solicitations, the agency said it will gauge interest among shippers and fine-tune the process based on their feedback.
“We want to allow customers to custom-build their last mile solution,” Steiner said. “We want to make the service as convenient, cost-effective and efficient as possible. We have achieved impeccable service performance scores for our last mile, which reflects the simple, quick-turn processing that occurs at a local DDU.”
The announcement comes after a report earlier this month from The Washington Post, which said a reverse auction process would make top USPS customer Amazon compete with other businesses for postal capacity. Amid this change, Amazon is mulling whether or not to stop using the Postal Service for some deliveries and expand its own network instead, per the report.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Supply Chain Dive on Wednesday.
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