SERVICE PERFORMANCE STAYS LARGELY STABLE WITH LAST WEEK - MARKETING MAIL A CONCERN
New Postal regulations, associated with the July 13 rate increase, impacted service performance visibly in our last report, and performance looks largely the same this week. For months we had been seeing an improving trend across all classes. The week that began on July 14 seemed to mark an inflection point. Service during the summer, due to lower volume, tends to stay good, so last week’s precipitous drop was unusual. Marketing Mail letters are specifically a concern.
Marketing Mail letters have always shown high on-time percentages largely for two reasons:
- The on-time standards for Marketing Mail are very generous.
- Mailers tend to truck them close to their destination, so they don’t typically have far to travel. They evade notoriously poor Postal transportation and origin processing.
So, to see a sudden five percent drop in on-time performance is hard to ignore. The driving factor behind lowered on-time performance seems to be the elimination of the DNDC discount, which means that many mailers are effectively choosing slower service if there is no incentive to truck.
On-time percentages have become less important as USPS has continued to ease standards, so we try to focus more on the days in transit. Even Marketing Mail letters that are dropped at the destination SCF are seeing somewhat slower delivery. This past week, average Intra-SCF performance went up to 2.48 days, markedly worse than the YTD average of 2.30 days. Does the difference of .18 days matter? Well, remember that these are averages, so a lot of mail pieces need to be slowed to drag down that average.
Marketing Mail letters are a huge component of all mail, so when they slow down, or require more handling, it can affect the other classes by using resources. Still, outside of Marketing Mail letters, service is generally meeting YTD standards.
