Summary: A majority of the Government Printing Office's (GPO) printing and binding services are performed by commercial firms. Transportation costs for the outside procurements are often not shown separately, but indications are that they are sizable. GAO reviewed the traffic management practices in GPO.
GAO found that GPO could have realized large savings in transportation costs by taking advantage of special Government transportation rates. Also, GPO sometimes relied on incorrect or outdated rate tenders in routing its traffic. One of the primary reasons that GPO had not been obtaining the lowest transportation rates was that it was not aware of the transportation costs being paid by its contractors. It used free-on-board (FOB) destination delivery terms, when a better procurement method would have been to require that bids be submitted on both FOB destination and FOB origin (GPO would arrange the transportation) bases. Almost all of the Government bills of lading issued by GPO were for small shipments. Through experience, Government agencies have found that it was less costly to use commercial forms for small shipments. Another problem with the Government bills of lading concerned those in the hands of contractors. GPO handed out 18,000 blank accountable forms to contractors in fiscal year 1978. Several thousand of these were unaccounted for as of December 1979. GAO felt that GPO should give greater consideration to transportation factors when making procurement decisions.
