Blame it on a rainy day? Terrible First-Class service
Depending on how your count, last week the US Postal Service suffered either their third-worst or worst First-Class service performance in the last year. And don’t even get me started on First-Class flats – no matter how you measure flats had their worst week in a year. Unfortunately, we were not surprised – our tracking customers were complaining all week about service. There were thousands of flights cancelled, so I guess a lot of First-Class Mail still travels by airplane…or at least tries to. Marketing Mail was not as bad, but nothing to write home about – as if you could actually get a letter to home.
First-Class letters were delivered on time 84.33% using current standards (59.5% against last year’s standards, far and away the worst since we began measuring). First-Class flats were just awful, delivered on time just 65.16% of the time – and that’s by the cushy October standards. 23.8% were delivered more than 5 days late. By the prior standards they were delivered on time only 38.7% of the time. OK, weather – we’ll accept that for last week. Supposed to be kinda nice this week.
Marketing Mail Letters did a little better, ending a five-week decline with 94.36% of letters delivered on time. Marketing Mail Flats were delivered on time 93.92% of the time, also an improvement. Maybe they don’t have the same weather in Marketing Mail Town.
Average Intra-SCF delivery time was 2.32 days for Marketing Mail letters, 2.36 days for Marketing Mail flats. Pretty good local handling.
Slowest SCFs for Intra-SCF letters, delivery week of 2/7: (10,000 pieces minimum)
- Anchorage, AK: 13.44 days
- Honolulu, HI: 12.57 days
- Tupelo, MS: 8.41 days
The fastest:
- Pasadena, CA: 1.55 days
- Van Nuys, CA: 1.63 days
- Brainerd, MN: 1.83 days
A letter from California to Maryland, on average, took:
· First-Class: 4.47 days
· Marketing Mail: 9.30 days
We’re a little concerned about the resilience of the Postal Service to weather (sorry) network irregularities. We’ll just keep watching. You keep tracking.
Map of the Week
The two maps above are delivery performance for First-Class flats. Yellow is on-time, other colors are late. This is versus current standards. The map on the left includes all data since June 1, 2021. The map on the right is for just the last two weeks.