Russell Gardner
District Manager, Greensboro District

As District Manager, as well as a former Postmaster and Post Office
Operations manager, I am very familiar with the challenges of being a Postmaster. You have my utmost gratitude and appreciation for the efforts you all put forth daily to overcome and work through those challenges to help make our district one of the top five districts nationally over the past several years.

The challenges we have all faced in recent years may actually pale in comparison to upcoming changes this year. A declining mailing industry, unprecedented financial losses and rising costs in so many areas have led our organization to really look hard at how we do business now and how we are going to adjust to the future.

The sheer numbers alone are staggering. We lost $2.6 billion in revenue last year and are projected to lose another $6.5 billion in 2009. Much of the revenue lost can be aligned with a decline of over 10 billion pieces of mail in 2008, with another 8 billion pieces fewer expected to hit our mail stream in 2009. The mail volume has not been this low since 1997.

We are asking all of you to think about how you can do your part to help keep us solvent, to keep us thriving, and to keep us financially viable. We need to save $4.4 billion in operational costs this fiscal year. We will ask Congress for the $2 billion they owe us from previous agreements and we will implement a new price change next year, which we hope that, with some new volume discounts and different seasonal pricing, will help keep us on track for another successful year.

And what will be the biggest challenge of all? Maintaining our excellent service to our customers, which in our case means delivering every piece, every day is the biggest challenge we face. For FY 2008, we finished #3 in the country in Total Service, which is the combination of Overnight, 2-Day and 3-Day Service. With the tremendous financial burden we are facing, we know it will not be easy, but the Postmasters in North Carolina have overcome strong challenges before. I am confident that we can help you overcome these challenges again.

Sincerely,
Russell D. Gardner