Mail Carriers Keep Making the Rounds, Despite a Murky Future

As the much-derided agency loses billions, postal workers quietly, and sometimes heroically, serve their communities.

There is something elemental about the mail. Like the rain, snow, heat and “gloom of night” cited in the unofficial motto of the U.S. Postal Service, it is simply a part of everyday life.

Until one day, perhaps, it isn’t.

These days, the Postal Service is losing money — more than $100 billion since 2007; $9 billion in fiscal year 2025 — and its future is uncertain. President Trump has called it “a tremendous loser for this country.” He has also floated the idea of privatizing the institution, which has roots going back to 1775, when Benjamin Franklin led the colonial mail service.

Another threat to its current structure came last week, when the postmaster general, David Steiner, announced he was seeking bids for so-called last-mile deliveries at 33,000 locations across the United States. “You know, within probably 12 to 24 months, we are out of cash,” said Mr. Steiner, a logistics executive and onetime FedEx board member who assumed his current role in July.