Attention to me at this time. Thank you for attending. Just briefly for those that may not know your background you are the 75th postmaster general. The first one is behind you i can see, Benjamin Franklin, that he was the inventor of the post office, Postal Service. You are a native of new york. You went to college in florida and then he went back to your families a business and you built it up, moved it to greensboro, North Carolina, build it into one of the larger Logistic Companies in the united stateses ultimate merged with another company of been involved in philanthropic activities at my alma mater, Duke University among other places so thank you for giving us your time today. Let me ask you at the outset, when you agreed to become postmaster general did you realize youre going to get this much attention . Because its not normally the most famous position in washington, d. C. And about many people can name your immediate predecessors. You are very well known. Did you expect you would get this much attention . So david, ifhi i may, i think when i accept the role we need remember the situation of the Postal Service was in at the time. It was right at the height of the beginning ofin the pandemic, and were having significant financial consequences at the time. I was kind of urgently asked to join, and i thought most of the attention would be around the issues of running out of cash in september of 2020, loss going from 7. 8 billion to 20 billion in the projection and having no help in sight. Thats what i thought the attention would be spent. Instead, we had a lot of media and political attention on things that were very much removed from that. And that was the unexpected sense of attention. Ninetysecond thoughts about having taken a job . You had a comfortable life in greensboro, North Carolina, very active in philanthropy and your wife was ambassador. Or with the manometer to be an ambassador to canada. Any second thoughts about taking this job . No, none at all. This was a fantastic organization with very committed people. I think we have a very promising future if we get a few things aligned and move forward with them. I i think i have a certain typef expertise and availability also and willingness to engage in this type of activity. I am happy. Im excited. Ive had a warm welcome from the team here at the Postal Service. We arehe working hard to move forward to get to the election and get on with our ambitions to be an exciting player in the marketplace. So as i may have told you i have a special interest in the Postal Service because myal fatr worked in the Postal Service his entire career, retired when he was 55. And i had a er summer job once at the Postal Service. My job in college when i was at duke in between freshman and sophomore years i was a mail carrier which was one of the best jobs i ever had and i enjoyed it saw him a a special interest in Postal Service. I never got invited back for the second year and i dont know whether you can figure out whether, i didnt do it good job in the first year, you can take out the reports. I thought i did a good job but they they have high standards for carriers and it is a chop job. Its not easy. It was that easy. They gave me a can of mace for when dogs come after you. So on the first day on the job a dog was coming after me so i got out the maze cant and i sprayed it, unfortunately, three houses later the owner of the docking up and said, did you spray my dog . I said yes. She said, couldnt use his blind and has no teeth . I i said it did no, im sorry. Anyway, that was the last time i used the maze and thats made to i didnt get offered the job for the second summer. We have about 400 or 500,000 dog bites a year. Its a big problem are carriers. Okay. Maybe i just picked the wrong dog, i dont know. Im going to ask you a number of questions which young been asked ad nauseam im sure but for our audience i would like to go through them again. When you took the job, we asked by anybody at the white house or the president to slow the mail down . Did anybody say slow it down . No, no, no, a million times no. I said very little conversation with the h administration. Postal service is an independent organization. I report to a board of governors, bipartisan board of governors, and thats where my plans for what we do at the Postal Service get approved, goes beyond my authority. So to date we have no real input, no input from the white house on anything, nor with any authority to direct me to do anything. While that may have some great ideas, i dont know, i havent heard any yet concerning us, but all of these would be our normal leadership process and the board of governors and thats how we run this organization. Nobody said slow the mail down and nobody called julie audited you doing a good job of slowing the mail down. They didnt call you about that . No one said slow the milton from the white house, no. Some of the actions you take and let mewn go through some of them and t ask you why you did some of them. So, for example, it is that you eliminate overtime for postal workers i guess to save money. Was at right . No, no. David, thats a little bit of misinformation. We ran 13 overtime before i came here. C 13 overtime now. Part of the reason were running over time because of the pandemic, we have a a lot of absenteeism in certain hotspots and we need, so that that we supplement our labor. But in thehe long what that is a problem for the Postal Service and after we get through the election of the pandemic that is something a very much going to be focusedy on. We incur 5 billion over time each year. It brings instability into workforce. Thats one of the things im looking at doing trying to bring stability into the organization, its good for everybody. Another thing you did is you had some mail sorting machines and you kind of took them away from like the Postal Service somehow. Why did you get ride of those mail sorting machines . Again no, no, no, 1 million times no. I didnt do that either. I dont know the circumstances come out of if i mentioned this in the show when we were talking prior, the circumstances when i came into the organization where we had just reached congress when we would lose 20 billion, run run out of cash in september and have no answer to that, we had no are terrorist act loan was on the sidelines can we couldnt get to negotiate a deal. thats what i i focused on in e beginning. These sorting machines, theres a process thats been around for aa long time. They ran at about 3540 utilization. There are experts inot the field that understands our capacity to process mail and so forth. These machines are costly, costly to keep up with that type of utilization those decisions were made at the field level. I heard about sorting machines when read in the newspaper. What about the collection boxes . We are all familiar with his blue collection boxes they seem in peoples neighborhoods and it is said you get rid of a lot of those collection boxes. Is that truth and why did you do that . No, its not true. We have about 140,000 collection boxes throughout the nation and that hasas been, you know, our address base has grown significantly so it gives us larger geographic areas to cover. The mail volume has dropped significantly over the last ten years to somebodys collection boxes have very few pieces of mail. Its been an ongoing process over the last ten years. We remove about 3000 collection boxes a year. Theres a process thats within the organization, spread throughout the area as to which ones get moved. That was another what i read in the paper. There are plenty of places when we make these changes we also evaluate other access and you can access another blue box which would be close by. You can go to one of our 30,000 post offices spread the route which is basically in every American Community or you can give it to our mail carrier who shows up up and out six days a week. This is part of the input that we make when we take these boxes away. When the other charges that has been made is you told workers if the mail is a ready to be delivered, leave and go out on your route without all the mail. In other words, you told people to dont wait y for all the mail to be given to them, just get out onut the route and start delivering what our behalf. Is that fair or true . No, no, y no. The big change, so lets talk about the two big changes that i made one was to run our trucks on type typing we went about 4850,000 trucks a day. They were running late and the running based on judgment. This is the essence of the key attribute in running a network and if our trucks dont run on time, downstream processes which are mail carriers dont run a time and our plants dont produce, dont produce to a schedule and create chaos and additional cost. I worked with the team to get those trucks to run on time with the mail in them. That was that the direction. That was a good plan. We couldve had a better execution but we are recovering from that right now. The other big change is reorganizing the Postal Service, 55,000 administrative personnel throughout seven regions in the nation. When i leave here to me thats going to l be, and i believe we will see this manifests itself, one of the most impactful changestf that i will make becae it is creating better lines of control and authority and responsibility and clarity. Those with were the two changet i made. The rest are pieced together stories. So the was a federal judge in Washington State that has against issued an injunction saying all these things that are being done, dont do them for a while. The question is, aredo you going to appeal that decision . We are in negotiations right now. I didnt look at my email from late last night until this morning because i knew i would be on the show and it did want to get upset or anything, but many other things that judges have decided that we already announced we were doing a month and a half ago when i put a stop to some off these things that were normal processes for us. When we are in negotiations with them and hopefully we will come to a conclusion without having to appeal them. The American Public needs to know we are prepared and committed to deliver election mail, and these rulings are really not necessary. But at the end of the day we abide by the law and the decisions will be made between us and the Justice Department whether we peel them or not. The decision to appeal or not, is that the Postal Service decision, the Justice Department decision or the white house . Who was in charge of making that decision . At the white house. White house is not the Justice Departmentus will be the entity that organization that leads us through this and makes the decision. In conjunction with our Legal Department which is working very closely with them. One of thehe other decision s made by a new york judge last week as well, and he said yes to make certain that all election mail is considered firstclass mail. Is that a problem for you . Are you going to appeal that decision . That is a typical process, hes making decision on something that we already do. First class is a definition of a class of and as a certain treatment to that class of mail. Youre talking but the physical handling of ballots and in many cases we treat ballast with a higher priority than firstclass mail. We will be advancing will maintain the processes we have always in the past which is we see about wee want to get it through the systemwa and get it delivered quickly. You had a call with i guess 50 secretaries of state in the country from each of the states relating to a postcard i guess you would set a out to people about the mail and you said in that call, as reported in the press, that maybe you shouldve consulted them. What was all that about . Will i think what i said is, we got so heres what its about, okay . The Postal Service is probably the most, it is the most stable part of our mail in vote process over the last several years. Our processes have been the same. Delivery time is up and so for the benefit at our messages been the same. Its basically vote early. Its like you dont send your mothers day card on mothers day. If you want to get it before mothers day. I dont knoww if my mother is washing but votes are more important. I suggest you take a look more care than you would a mothers day card. States, theres 50 states all with different requirements ands they are fishing some states have made the decision yet. We set out at the beginning of the year to recognizing it would be more mailin votes this year to educate the public and work with the state electoral boards. We had election committees here from our poor, our board has had election committees to my Management Team come to our Union Leadership is involved right down to our districts and our people throughout the whole nation. The purpose of that is to educate the public on our physical distribution processes and the timing of voting. We have a website. We have commercials we put out, videos, meetings. We have made like 10,000 contacts throughoutt the country at different electoral personnel. This was a the postcard we set out was a general statement to the public to basically request your bound about earlys going to vote by mail and vote early. It was a high level message, and in some cases it wasnt hot enough and it conflicted with a couple of the states and thats where we got some of the complaint. Say though, we had a great deal off appreciation from many states in her efforts to educate the public on voting by mail. Did you say your mother was watching . No. I dont know if she was but if she was, i wanted her to know that mothers day card is important. And your mother is alive . She is. Did she ever say why did you take this job . Did she ever say that to . She said whys everyone picking on you . Let me go back to the firstclass mail situation. If somebody wants to mail their ballot in, the best thing to do is mailed as soon as possible, is that right . I would say yes, as much time as you can give us to handle it, the better. It just makes common sense to get your c vote, get your ballot and make a decision and get in early. Some people say the Postal Service loses lots of money and maybe it could be more efficient. I think one of your mission is to make it more efficient but shouldnt the Postal Service make money or should a breakeven or doesnt matter if it loses money . Itttt matters. It kind of violates the law if we dont cover our costs. We are legislative to be self sustained, and it just kind of amazes me how that has never entered the discussion. We lost 10 billion a year without change, we plan that will happen for the next ten years. With regard to efficiency theres two ways i look at that. One is, we are required, our universal Service Obligation is to deliver to every house, every address in america, 161 billion addresses six days a week. That is an inefficient thing, a private sector businesses would not be able to do that. We deliver mail on mules in the grand canyon and on small airplanes up in alaska each day. Its really thats our mission and i am a defender of that and believe in that. Longterm thats our strength. Those types of inefficiencies exist just in the nature of what we do. Then theres our operational which what im working on with the team and we have goals that will get you right after the election. At least we can get at them and they are not small. They are real dollars and that will help us build sustainability. Some people say why dont we privatize the Postal Service and take away fromhy the government completely and let the private to makeorgot how Something Like thatt work . You have you on whether that is a good or bad it gets . I think its a a bad idea. First of allde i dont think it wouldd work is not something the American Public would want to see. Second of all, we would who would get them youll run down the grand canyon for 55 cents . In the private business that wouldnt happen. The last thing is we wouldnt require legislature for that in we know how that goes. Not anything on my agenda nor do i think its important. Some people have said the Postal Service is losing money for two reasons in addition to some of the things you mentioned, the mules going down the grand canyon, but when it is because of email people not sin as much firstclass mail as it used to and firstclass mail is relatively speaking more profitable. Is that fair or o unfair . Some of it is an inaccurate statement, that firstclass mail is down and we have an industry that has evolved that compete with us, and that is electronic communication, Digital Marketing and social media and so forth. Whether firstclass mail is unprofitable or not, this is what i look at it, david. We have a network in network costs us 80 billion a year to to deliver our service. We charge 70 billion and thats the difference, the 10 billion, and how we get at that involves both legislation, freedom from that tenure model, where waiting decision on that, and as driving Operational Efficiency getting costs out a a new revenue growh which were plantst for. Its a bunch of Different Things that drive together, where, in fact, we make or lose money is still under discussion here under my tenure. Some people say in fact, i think the president has said a lot of Companies Like amazon, they are using the service and they are not fully paying the full freight of what it costs. Amazon is usingt all these for ecommerce and amazon and other ecommerce companies. Is it fair to say youre not charging enough . Is that a big problem . I dont, i mean, i think when we, you know, if you look a