The U.S. Postal Service has hired Matt Connolly, a logistics and supply chain industry veteran with more than 20 years experience at parcel giant UPS, as chief solutions and strategy officer, Postmaster General David Steiner said Friday.
At UPS (NYSE: UPS), Connolly developed air freight, ocean freight, parcel and third-party logistics capabilities and played a key role in reshaping the UPS domestic network to handle the rise in e-commerce shipping.
“Matt’s expertise will help us sharpen our network planning, execution and alignment across operations, sales and marketing as we continue driving service excellence,” Steiner told the board of governors while presenting the organization’s second-quarter fiscal results.
Connolly has worked as a special advisor to Steiner for the past seven months, according to his LinkedIn profile. Steiner spent several years on the board of directors at FedEx before becoming postmaster general.
The Postal Service lost $2 billion in the second quarter and has lost more than $30 billion since the close of fiscal year 2021. Steiner has said the agency can’t simply cut its way to financial stability and has made parcel revenue growth a key priority.
Last month, the USPS named Pete Routsolias as chief logistics officer, a role he filled on an acting basis since December. He joined the organization in 2020 after holding senior transportation leadership positions at Ashley Distribution Services, Univar Solutions and XPO Logistics.
In 2022, Connolly helped found Vesta Freight, a truck brokerage based in Nashville, Tennessee, and served as its chairman. Prior to that he spent nearly three years as CEO of non-profit organization Good360, where is credited with significantly expanding its reverse logistics capabilities. He was co-chairman of the board between 2011 and 2019.
From January 2017 to July 2019, Connolly served as vice president of network planning at UPS, where he was responsible for the design and performance of the North American transportation network. His duties included the sourcing of more than $1 billion in annual surface transportation spending and optimizing UPS private fleet and partnerships, developing e-commerce delivery strategies, and providing zone-skipping solutions for UPS’s 80 largest customers.
He also managed the UPS integration of truck brokerage Coyote Logistics in the middle of last decade. (UPS has since sold off Coyote.) Connolly spent more than 12 years as vice president and general manager of UPS Supply Chain Services in the Americas region, helping to integrate the acquisition of Menlo Forwarding and otherwise directing the company’s freight forwarding business.
Earlier in his career at UPS, Connolly held several leadership positions, including senior director, managing domestic small package operations.
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Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.
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