REGIONAL — In a stated effort to save money, the U.S. Postal Service has enacted new rules this past week which will delay postal delivery for customers in northeastern Minnesota.
The new policy, part of what’s been dubbed the “Route Transportation Optimization” plan, will hold letters dropped off at local post offices until the following day. Along with another new policy, which delays postmarking mail at local post offices, mail may now go two days before it is postmarked at a regional sorting center. Individual pieces of mail can get postmarked the same day by a post office worker if requested in person when dropping off a letter, bill payment, or mail-in ballot.
Previously, area post offices had incoming mail dropped off first thing in the morning. Postal delivery trucks then stopped back at each post office several hours later to pick up any outgoing mail. This meant that any mail dropped at the post office in Tower before 11:30 a.m. was sent out the same day. Mail dropped after that time would not go out until the following day.
The new policy limits visits by delivery trucks to local post offices to once daily.
The Timberjay learned of the change just last Thursday, shortly before delivering the week’s papers to the Tower post office for processing and delivery. The Timberjay, like most small-town newspapers, relies heavily on the post office for delivery of its papers. The change will not affect delivery times for papers addressed to Tower, Soudan, Ely, Babbitt, Cook, and Orr, because newspaper staff drop papers at each of these post offices directly. But for subscribers outside of these areas, paper delivery will be delayed at least one additional day.
The new delivery standards are frustrating to businesses that depend on the postal service.
“We have seen our delivery times getting longer and longer as it is,” said Timberjay publisher Marshall Helmberger. “It just makes life harder for small town businesses that depend on mail service.”
“The Postal Service’s Regional Transportation Optimization plan — on top of its policy changes and rate hikes in recent years — has real impacts on local newspaper delivery, and local journalism and their subscribers are already paying the price. The United States Postal Service should be helping these local newspapers reach their communities, not making it more difficult for them to do their critical work,” wrote Sen. Klobuchar in a letter she directed to Postmaster General David Steiner, after being informed of the decision by the Timberjay.
Klobuchar also noted that in January 2025, the Postal Regulatory Commission issued an advisory opinion that raised “serious concerns about the plan’s negative impacts on rural communities while slowing mail delivery and failing to save costs. Despite the advisory opinion and opposition from postal workers and customers, USPS has continued to implement the policy which has resulted in disrupted service for local newspapers in Minnesota, especially those serving rural communities.”
Newspaper subscribers can take advantage of the Timberjay’s e-edition, which is posted online on Wednesday afternoons, and the e-edition is available at no extra charge for paper subscribers. Digital-only subscriptions are also available, which include a PDF version of the paper that can be read online or downloaded. The Timberjay also sends out an email reminder each week when the new e-edition is posted. To get on the e-edition notification list, email timberjaynews@gmail.com.
But for out-of-town readers who want to read the paper on newsprint, the post office change means they will be waiting at least one additional day for the paper to arrive in their mailbox.
Tower Postmaster Matthew Ray said this change will not decrease the workload at local post offices. The new policy, he said, is being implemented nationwide.
A press release from the U.S. Postal Service said the new service standards “are estimated to save the Postal Service at least $36 billion over the next decade through reductions in transportation, mail and package processing,and real estate costs.”
The plan was put in place to allow “flexibility in regional transportation schedules, which may extend service expectations by one day for mail collected at certain post offices, while overall improving delivery speeds for mail and packages between regions.”
Desai Abdul-Razzaaq, from USPS Corporate Communications, wrote that the change “is the postal service’s effort to align transportation schedules between processing facilities and post office locations to improve operational efficiencies. It is one part of nationwide service standards refinements which were fully implemented in July 2025.”
Abdul-Razzaaq said the “RTO does not impact retail or post office hours, nor mail carrier delivery or pickups. The initiative is focused on more efficient collection, transportation, and processing of mail and packages. Customers, regardless of where they live, will still receive delivery six and sometimes seven days per week. The collection of mail and package volume within local communities, including carrier pickup from homes and blue collection boxes, is also not changing. What we are changing is the timing of transportation from select post offices to USPS processing facilities. And we are processing and transporting mail and packages faster within our network.”