IT MUST BE SUMMER. LOW MAIL VOLUME, LOW DRAMA PERFORMANCE.
Not a lot to say about performance this week. First-Class letters improved a bit over last week but remained mediocre. First-Class flats returned to form with just over 50% delivered on time. That was based on a good size sample this week, so it is probably more meaningful than the fluky 96% that came up last week.
Marketing Mail performance remained solid for both letters and flats. Intra-SCF delivery times have continued to falter a bit, but no facilities stood out. Just sort of a general small letdown.
In the good news/bad news category, Atlanta performance continued to improve. A First-Class letter mailed to an address in Atlanta took on average, 4.56 days to deliver, and 79.5% were on time. This is a dramatic improvement from a few weeks ago and pulls Atlanta back into the pack with other SCFs. The bad news is we can’t just blame it all on Atlanta dragging down the averages anymore. This is a more widespread slowdown.
All in all, June was undistinguished in terms of performance – it was about average for the year to date, which is a low bar. It remains considerably worse than this time in 2023. Last year we started to see service begin to deteriorate in late July, presumably as mail volume began to grow. We’re starting from a worse spot this year, so one is reasonable to be concerned about late summer into fall. But July? Should be right as rain…we hope.
