MAIL USUALLY DELIVERS FASTER THIS TIME OF YEAR – NOT THIS YEAR
Another week of poor performance across the country. You should ignore the First-Class flats number…there weren’t enough pieces to be statistically valid – it was just a handful of jobs (though the service was truly terrible for those jobs – just not sure that represents the whole system.) Even without that anomaly, service deteriorated in almost every class and size. Only Marketing Mail letters are holding their own.
We used to be horrified by less than 80% of First–Class letters being delivered on time – now that’s better than the YTD numbers. 4.05 days in transit for FC letters may be the slowest we have ever seen. And remember those are Postal days, so we don’t count Sunday’s and holidays.
One trend we do not like is the on-time % for Marketing Mail flats. That has been getting significantly worse in the last three weeks. And we have a big robust sample for Marketing Mail flats, so what you see here almost certainly reflects the entire country. Days in transit for Marketing Mail flats are up 43% from the YTD average, from 2.56 days to 3.67 days.
The Atlanta area showed no improvement at all: A First-Class letter to Atlanta is still taking 11.33 days on average to deliver. North Metro GA in not much better, nor is Columbus, GA.
Somehow, Cleveland OH, and Akron, OH made their way onto the 10 slowest SCF areas list. I guess we’ll need to keep an eye on Ohio.
Everything is going in the wrong direction for service with USPS for this time of year, and just when you think it can’t get any worse…
So much for our improving trend. This kind of highlights why you should track your mail – service is very uneven. In a lot of places, it’s pretty much same as it ever was, but where it’s bad…. look out. USPS recently announced that they will be launching eight (8) new S&DCs around the nation on June 1:
- Boston, MA; Kilmer, NJ;
- Ft Lauderdale, FL; Phoenix Rio Salado, AZ;
- Kalamazoo, MI; Springfield, MA;
- Lakeland, FL; Stockton Airport, CA;
Gird your loins!