A much better week as early month issues resolved!    

After a troubling report last week, Postal performance snapped back up to the good place we had been hoping for.  In most categories, on-time deliveries were much improved.  We also began to see a significant difference in how the service performs against new, slower standards vs. the old.  At some point it becomes unfair to judge performance against one standard, when the Postal Service is working towards a different one.  You may see changes here to compensate for that in the near future.  But not today.

First-Class Letters were on time 79.30% of the time based on previous delivery service standards, better than last week, but still pretty meh.  But most of the late mail was only one day late.  Against the new standards, First-Class letters were on time 95.08% of the time – pretty darn good. As this is the target towards which USPS is working, we must call this a win.  First-Class flats kind of got back to regular bad, on time just 82.59% of the time against 2021 standards, and 89.84% of the time, vs current standards.  Please note that change in semantics – we didn’t call them “the new” standards, they have been promoted to “current.”

Marketing Mail Letters were on time 94.50% of the time, about the same as last week.  Marketing Mail Flats were delivered on time 93.74% of the time.  It seems that we may have hit point of stability for Marketing Mail.

Average Intra-SCF delivery time was 2.28 days for Marketing Mail letters, 2.19 days for Marketing Mail flats. 

Slowest SCFs for Intra-SCF letters, delivery week of 1/17: (10,000 pieces minimum)

• Denver, CO:                  5.69 days
• Portland, ME:                4.52 days
• Sioux Falls, SD:             4.05 days

The fastest:

• Van Nuys, CA:               1.25 days
• Springfield, IL:               1.27 days
• Baton Rouge, LA:          1.40 days

A letter from California to Maryland, on average, took:

·        First-Class:           4.15 days
·        Marketing Mail:   10.66 days

OK, you can back away from that ledge now – it looks like last week was the anomaly.  Until, of course, next week sends it all spinning again.  Let’s hope for stability.

Map of the Week

Map on the left shows on-time performance for a First-Class letter mailed from Anaheim, CA.  The other map is the same thing from Baltimore, MD.  This is for letters received in the last two weeks.  And, these are weighted averages, so this does not imply that every letter sent from Anaheim was on time.