ONE OF THE WORST WEEKS SINCE WE STARTED MEASURING
There’s no nice way to say it. USPS delivery performance was terrible last week. Taken as a whole, it is probably the worst week for service performance we’ve seen since we started reporting on it in June 2021.
Only 61.6% of First-Class letters were delivered on time, with an average of 4.61 days in transit. First-Class flats, with a relatively small sample, were about the same.
More concerning was the performance of Marketing Mail. Marketing Mail letters were on time 93.4% of the time, with an average delivery time of 3.04 days. That may not sound so bad, but this is one category that is almost always pegged at over 95%. Marketing Mail flats were the worst we’ve seen this year, with only 81.5% delivered on time. 8.3% were more than 5 days late. In catalog season, that is a service failure that hurts. This is mail that is largely trucked to a point near the delivery facility by the mailer. The poor performance of this mail indicates problems at delivery facilities – the last mile – traditionally handled so well by USPS.
Geographically, slow performance was widespread. There were no disaster areas that dragged down the mean.
I hope you mailed early.
