A stubborn mediocrity persists
We just can’t get any consistency in Postal performance – we thought we had the pattern figured out: Worse but not terrible during the holidays, and strong comeback in January. But the balance of January has not lived up to the promise of those first couple of weeks. Flats in both First-Class Mail and Marketing Mail were among the worst we’ve seen in the last year.
First-Class letters did OK with 94.07% on time using current standards (76% against last year’s standards.) There has definitely been a slowdown of First-Class letters, as was envisioned in changing the standards – most of the late mail under 2021 standards was one day late. First-Class flats had a terrible week, with just 82.78% delivered on time against current standards. (70% against prior standards.)
Marketing Mail Letters were on time 92.38% of the time, about the same as last week. Marketing Mail Flats were delivered on time 87.19% of the time. There is a lot of bad weather about, so we’ll see how they continue to perform.
Average Intra-SCF delivery time was 2.63 days for Marketing Mail letters, 2.79 days for Marketing Mail flats.
Slowest SCFs for Intra-SCF letters, delivery week of 1/24: (10,000 pieces minimum)
- Memphis, TN: 5.75 days
- Inglewood, CA: 5.09 days
- Raleigh, NC: 4.96 days
The fastest:
- San Jose, CA: 1.46 days
- Van Nuys, CA: 1.49 days
- Amarillo, TX: 1.56 days
A letter from California to Maryland, on average, took:
· First-Class: 2.76 days
· Marketing Mail: 7.07 days
It is just tough to find a pattern here. Bad weather and a persistent COVID-19 strain may account for some of it, but it is hard to match performance to such challenges. We’ll just keep watching…. stay tuned!
Map of the Week
All mail performance is local. First-Class Flats out of North Texas. Upper Northwest looks ugly, but not from other entry points around the country. We’ll share what it looks like next week. You should probably be tracking your own mail.
