Regional Transportation Optimization ends evening collections at nearly 12,000 post offices

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, 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.

Together, as of the end of December 1, 2025, LTO and RTO have been activated at about 11,900 post offices.