THIS WEEK WAS EVEN BETTER THAN THE ONE BEFORE. WE’RE CAUTIOUSLY SMILING.
Those who are following along at home will remember that last week was a pretty good week for USPS service. This week is even better, with First-Class letters on time nearly 90% of the time. Even First-Class flats got in on the fun, with more than 85% on time! Marketing Mail didn’t do as well as last week, but the numbers were solid. Still there are some areas for concern. More on that in a moment.
Looking at last year’s results, June and July were very good, too – much better than anything we’ve seen this year. So, we kind of expect better performance in the summer because…well, there’s very little mail in the system.
Atlanta remained the service problem area, but the numbers were somewhat better, with Atlanta letters being delivered in about 8.5 days on average. North Metro, near Atlanta, was averaging 6.5 days for First-Class letters – bad, but better than it has been.
The area worrying us now is Ohio. Cleveland and Dayton were near the top of the “bad” list for First-Class, delivering in 6.86 and 6.68 days, respectively. More worrisome was Marketing Mail in Ohio. Marketing Mail entered in Cleveland to be delivered within the same SCF (we call it Intra-SCF) was taking more than 10 days to deliver! That may indicate a serious problem in the facility. This appears to be a one-week anomaly so far, but we’ll be keeping an eye on it.
