It hasn’t been announced anywhere that we know of but saw UPS drop off to our USPS post office this morning Thursday February 19, 2026.
We question our post office person when we saw this happen and she verified that UPS was indeed dropping off packages again to USPS for delivery at our post office. It has been happening for about a month; however she has not receive any notification from USPS to date. We asked what type of label was being used and she said that they were all the UPS SurePost labels.
Since we are a rural post office serving a rural area, it might just be that UPS has reconnected with USPS for these types of areas.
It will be interesting to see if the two have again joined up for UPS SurePost.
We had posted on another thread about having a package coming that is DHL with USPS as the final delivery. This was something new for us.
Maybe USPS realized they were missing volume and $$$ by not having agreements with UPS, DHL and the likes?
It’s somewhat active, but it’s rebranded to UPS Ground Saver
USPS doesn’t do the last mile, so it’s a no go to POBoxes. Basically it’s just UPS Ground but slower and cheaper
ETA, or edit to correct… according to the website it does offer POBOx, so maybe it’s just a rebrand with less usps, but still some
SO funny story, just has some things made at send cut send and they can’t understand the difference between bill to and ship to, they shipped ups to my po box (It wouldn’t even let me put “PO Box” in the bill to, so it was just “Box ####”). It says delivered, I’ll see in the next day or two when it hits my box.
Wish we could have taken a picture. UPS dropped off 4 packages today to our post office for last mile delivery. Everybody that lives in town has a post office box and there is one rural route that is run from our post office. We will check tomorrow if any of the packages were being delivered to in town or if they were all rural route addresses.
UPS has reached a tentative agreement with the U.S. Postal Service to provide last-mile parcel delivery for its low-cost Ground Saver shipping service, company officials disclosed on Tuesday, patching up a relationship that ruptured in late 2024 over rate hikes.
The move is part of a multi-pronged effort at UPS to reduce costs in the face of declining volumes in its domestic parcel business.
UPS (NYSE: UPS) has a “preliminary understanding” on revenue and rates with the Postal Service to resume home delivery for Ground Saver, CEO Carol Tomé said during a briefing with analysts about third quarter results. Details of the deal are expected to be ironed out by the end of the year.
Ground Saver is the name UPS gave early this year to its cheapest ground service after insourcing the final-mile component of its SurePost product when the Postal Service raised prices. With SurePost, UPS inducted huge parcel volumes deep into the postal network for last-mile delivery to residences. As the cost difference between the USPS and its own ground network narrowed, management determined it could provide better service on its own.
Ground Saver, which usually takes one to two days longer than regular Ground delivery, is primarily used by large businesses to ship low-value e-commerce packages to shoppers’ front doors.
UPS executives quickly realized they couldn’t achieve the benefits of end-to-end service because their delivery expense was higher than expected and didn’t support Ground Saver’s lower price. Delivery expenses in the second quarter were $85 million higher because UPS was unable to cut as many delivery stops as projected to optimize density, which offset a 5.5% increase in domestic revenue per piece and weighed on profitability.
In response, the company significantly raised Ground Saver rates, hoping to push retailers to more premium products. But as the spread between Ground Saver and Ground became tighter, Ground Savers’ value proposition evaporated.
The price increases drove away retailers. They bear the cost of e-commerce shipping more than 90% of the time, to ensure online shoppers don’t abandon their cart, and are intent on finding the least expensive shipping option. Studies have shown that a day faster delivery isn’t necessarily important to consumers when they get shipments for free. The TD Cowen/AFS Freight Index and data from ShipMatrix shows that UPS and FedEx have been losing market share to Walmart, Amazon and smaller independent couriers in recent years.
In the third quarter, UPS Ground Saver average daily volume declined 32.7% year over year. Tomé attributed the drop to this year’s decision to phase out 50% of Amazon volumes by mid-2026 because they are unprofitable and to trim lower-yielding e-commerce volume. Three months ago, the CEO said Ground Saver average daily volume fell 23.3% because of the Amazon glide down and volume declines from non-U.S.-based e-commerce companies — an apparent reference to Chinese marketplaces Temu and Shein, who are maniacally focused on low costs and imported fewer packages after the Trump administration in May ended duty-free status for low-value shipments from China.
UPS gave the Teamsters Union what everyone, UPS management, the Union, and the investment community thought was a great package of raises and benefits in their contract.
Since then, UPS has been reorganizing, cutting costs, and laying off employees.. And they have also decided that Amazon has not been paying enough to cover their labor costs.
I doubt if they will go so far as adopt the FEDEX and Amazon use of independent contractors, or that the union will allow that. USPS has many independent contractors who deliver rural routes, so UPS may share that savings.
Remember that UPS replaced FEDEX as a long haul provider for USPS. They have remained friendly.
They have!. It commenced Jan 2026, some of the enhancements in terms of shipping to post office boxes and military bases will be rolling out shortly. I work for UPS that’s how I know.
