Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) Moves Forward

The Postal Service continues its move forward onboarding additional ZIP Codes under the RTO platform. The Postal Service is mandated to regularly report to the PRC the status of which Post Offices are losing their evening collection under RTO. The latest report was issued on May 8th, 2026, showing 15,347 ZIP Codes now under RTO.

If your ZIP Code is less than fifty (50) miles from one of the RPDCs (56 are planned) you continue to receive morning and nightly collections, if you are outside of that region, you will only have morning collection services. 

There are approximately 31 thousand post offices today, when RTO is fully implemented it is expected that about 23,000 will no longer receive twice daily pickups. While that number is about ¾ of the post offices, it is not ¾ of the population. Many of the post offices within the 50-mile range of RPDCs are more densely populated urban areas. 

The map below, as posted on Save the Post Office website, displays in yellow the areas that are eligible for RTO but have not yet been activated. Blue are the areas under RTO now, and the orange are areas within 50 miles of RPDC coverage. 

You can launch into a larger interactive map where you can scroll over cites to get specific geographic information about their RTO status here: https://clausa.app.carto.com/map/42d02237-1c76-4c6d-8a4c-ab776a331863

Save the Post Office also provides a RTO STATUS CHECKER, this tool allows you to enter your ZIP Code and learn if it is within an RTO zone or not. The example below shows ZIP 33912, Fort Myers Florida. It has not yet been RTO activated, but as its RPDC is Tampa, and the Ybor facility became RPDC activated on May 25th I expect to see Fort Myers RTO activated since it is outside the 50 miles of Tampa with the next launch. Once launched if outside of 50 miles the RTO status will show activated as the Missoula MT example below.

Presorted Marketing Mail represents over one half of USPS mail volume now; those volumes are sent through BME and drop ship so are excluded from the RTO which applies to single piece mail. Direct Marketers and Business Mailers are impacted by RTO due to the large volume of business reply mail they receive, over 310 million pieces, half which may come from RTO offices.