The U.S. Postal Service’s governing board plans to select FedEx board member and former Waste Management CEO David Steiner as the next postmaster general after he was approved by President Donald Trump, according to an exclusive report by The Washington Post.
The newspaper said FedEx, which competes and partners with the Postal Service on package delivery, pushed Steiner before the White House as a candidate for the job. Last year, the mail service replaced FedEx with UPS on a major contract to provide domestic air cargo service. And in recent years, FedEx has insourced final-mile delivery of low-value, non-urgent parcels that it previously handed to the Postal Service in certain areas.
The White House’s role in directly picking the postmaster general for the board of governors to rubber stamp is unprecedented and illustrates the degree to which the Trump administration is working to undermine the agency’s independent status.
The board meets Friday, but the official agenda doesn’t show a vote scheduled for a new postmaster general.
A major postal union condemned the possible choice of Steiner, saying he is anti-union and has a conflict of interest because FedEx and other private parcel haulers have been angling to take more package business from the Postal Service.
The selection of Steiner is “an aggressive step toward handing America’s mail system over to corporate interests. Private shippers have been waiting to get USPS out of parcel delivery for years. Steiner’s selection is an open invitation to do just that,” said Brian Renfroe, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), in a statement Tuesday evening.
“During his tenure as Waste Management, Inc.’s CEO, Steiner took a stand against unions. He built his brand on union-busting, slashing jobs, and replacing workers with machines. He has publicly bragged about shrinking the union footprint. Now, he’s being handed the keys to one of the nation’s largest unionized employers,” Renfroe added. “At a time when collaboration with workers helped USPS turn a $144 million profit in the last quarter of 2024, this decision flies in the face of everything that’s working.”
But a Postal Service employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect against any job retribution, suggested NALC’s opposition could be overblown. He suggested that the interests of members and union leaders aren’t always aligned, pointing to an agency effort last decade to eliminate Saturday delivery, which would have saved billions of dollars. Rank-and-file workers cheered the move, but union leaders blocked it because it meant about 40,000 fewer dues-paying letter carriers.
“The national unions are worried about Number 1 and that Steiner might put a dent in union rolls and dues,” he said.
Steiner would succeed Louis DeJoy, who instituted an aggressive 10-year plan to turn around Postal Service finances and improve efficiency but abruptly left office on March 24.
Many agency stakeholders and observers have said DeJoy was ousted by Trump, who is looking to exert control over the agency and has talked about placing it within the Department of Commerce. The Washington Post previously reported that DeJoy was forced out because he wasn’t willing to fully comply with directives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, an office tasked with rooting out waste, fraud and abuse that so far has fallen far short of delivering promised savings. Trump and his aides have also openly talked about the possibility of privatizing the Postal Service.
Renfroe claimed letter carriers are outraged by Steiner’s selection as postmaster general because private parcel carriers will be less interested in serving rural communities, where low population density makes it much more expensive to make residential deliveries. With fewer parcel responsibilities, the Postal Service will cut more jobs, he warned.
Amazon, however, last week announced its intention to invest $4 billion to build out delivery infrastructure in rural areas.
“The board has the responsibility to do what is best for USPS. This decision is not only a failure in that responsibility but shows open contempt for the work of America’s letter carriers and the public good,” Renfroe said.
Sources also told the Post that Trump is maneuvering to give Jim Cochrane, president of the Package Shippers Association, a senior position at the agency.
The Package Coalition, which represents large e-commerce retailers that rely on the postal system to deliver orders, in mid-April called on the board of governors to move quickly on filling the postmaster general position to ensure stability and provide a vision for the future. Doug Tulino, the deputy postmaster general, has led the agency on an acting basis since DeJoy’s departure.
Click here for more FreightWaves and American Shipper articles by Eric Kulisch.
Contact Reporter: ekulisch@freightwaves.com
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