diff --git a/tools/travis/production-helper b/tools/travis/production-helper
index c691531f70..4e3986c4f4 100755
--- a/tools/travis/production-helper
+++ b/tools/travis/production-helper
@@ -9,14 +9,9 @@ ln -s /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key /etc/ssl/private/zulip.key
 tar -xf zulip-server-travis.tar.gz
 mv zulip-server-travis /root/zulip
 
+# Do an apt upgrade to start with an up-to-date machine
 export APT_OPTIONS="-o Dpkg::Options::=--force-confdef -o Dpkg::Options::=--force-confold"
-
-# Make sure we've done an apt upgrade and then stop postgres to
-# workaround problems with Travis CI having multiple postgres versions
-# installed on the system and 9.1 starting up and conflicting with
-# running 9.3 later.
 apt-get upgrade -y $APT_OPTIONS
-service postgresql stop
 # Install Zulip
 /root/zulip/scripts/setup/install
 
diff --git a/tools/travis/setup-production b/tools/travis/setup-production
index e63f499c50..29e5aaf703 100755
--- a/tools/travis/setup-production
+++ b/tools/travis/setup-production
@@ -2,6 +2,11 @@
 set -e
 set -x
 
+# Uninstall the unnecessary extra versions of postgres that Travis CI
+# installs since if we don't do this, doing apt upgrades can fail due
+# to conflicts over which version of postgres should be running.
+sudo apt-get remove postgresql-9.1 postgresql-9.2 postgresql-9.4 -y
+
 pip install pbs
 python provision.py --travis
 source /srv/zulip-venv/bin/activate