AN EYE-OPENING 2021 VS 2022!
The slide rules and abaci have been flying in the analytics department this week! Since we started using our new format at the beginning of July, it seemed a great time to compare 2021 and 2022.
We’ll start with the usual, looking at last week’s performance. It was pretty bad, to be candid, with lower on-time percentages and more days to delivery in almost every category. On-time percentages for First-Class letters was less than 90%, at 89.3%. The last few weeks have been disappointing. Let’s hope for an upturn as August continues and the fall mailing season ensues. For what it’s worth, volume has been running low in our measures – typical of the summer doldrums.
But here’s the interesting stuff: July 2022 vs July 2021. It is not a straightforward comparison. Changing the grading scale skews things.
First-Class letters were delivered on-time 91.7% of the time in 2022 vs 89.5% in 2021 – a substantial improvement – but judged on two different scales. HOWEVER, days in transit were much worse: In July 2021, a First-Class letter was delivered, on average, in 2.55 days. In 2022 it was 3.06 days – 20% slower.
Interestingly, First-Class flats were delivered faster in 2022 vs 2021 – 2.87 days vs 3.39 last year. We saw similar improvement in Marketing Mail flats. As we’ve noted in earlier reports, the Postal Service is doing something right with flat mail.
(By the way, if last year’s mail had been judged by the same on-time standard as 2022, on-time percentages for First-Class letters and flats would have been 97.5% and 91.6% respectively.)
