Is snail mail really this slow now?

I sent a Moparts member with whom I've dealt for decades a check using the good ol' USPS last week for some parts. The distance between us is about 500 miles and the letter still hasn't arrived 5 business days after putting it into the system. I don't ever recalling mail taking that long for such a short distance (unless it never arrived at all). Is the USPS really this slow these days? Thx

Yes it is Brad! I have sent USPS money orders about the same distance and it has taken up to a week! Crazy isn't it?

All instances are different. I've had stuff here in Jersey take two weeks to get to California. The same payment has taken three days. I once mailed a small package on a Wednesday afternoon from Saint Anthony Idaho to Marlton NJ. It was there Friday morning. Whereas I've mailed letter envelopes in the opposite direction take 7 days. Strange, no rhyme or reason.

Using the USPS is a crap shoot. I've had packages that sat in hubs for up to two weeks without movement. But I'll continue to use them. If I have a problem I can talk face to face with a real live person. Try that with FedEx.

A while back, they notified people with shipping accounts that they were making some changes and delivery times would slow down.
So far, that's been true about half the time, less so for Priority.
Package-size fees also increased.
Getting less for your money is the new black, you know...

In all honesty I personally have not have any issues for quite some time now. USPS has been good to me.

It has become painfully slooow.

I've had mail got lost for 2 months then just show up. Happens quite often. We have a rental property about 10 miles away....have had rent checks take well over a week(s) to get to us. They will be post marked correct then just get lost in the system.

It is going to get worse. Right now, if you were to mail your neighbor a letter, the letter goes through the closest major city, that has a machine that scans it for illegal chemicals, powder, etc. Your letter is then sent back to your local Post Office before it is sorted out to send to your neighbor. Right now there is one or two of those machines in each state. Moving forward, the Government wants to isolate those machines down to 3 for the entire country.

The USPS processes 420 million pieces of mail daily. Generationally 1st class mail does not seem like a growth area with younger generations. Where do people see 10 years from now bill paying will be? Snail mail or on line? All parcel mailing is quickly going up in price. It is a systemic change that is happening worldwide. I think you just have to get on the train.

Small towns will likely feel the change most. People will not go to the Post Office daily, then stop at the market, gas station(if they even remain), stop daily at the diner.. By 2045 it will be a totally different world.

It's hit or miss.

I've had pkgs traveling 100 miles take a week. And some going 2500 miles be there is 3 days

Yep, hit or miss for sure.

We sent a package from IL to my sister in NJ and she got it in 2 days. Sent the same item to her brother that lives on the southern end of IL (we are in the top left corner) at the same time, 5 days and he still hasn't gotten it. Send letters out of here, anywhere from the next day through the next two weeks delivery time.

Also depends on where you send the letter/ package from, send it from home, you probably added 2 day minimum, your postman has to take it back to the office where it will sit until the next morning. Then it probably won't leave there until the end of that day, or even the 3rd morning. Then it enters the process.

It's hit or miss around here too.

You are one of the few lucky people. I live in a small rural farming town, few thousand people. About a year 1/2 ago, I had to renew my dog's yearly license. Instead of just taking the license renewal to the local court administration building, I was lazy, and just mailed in the $15 payment through USPS. My payment was NEVER received by the city! U.S. mail lost it! And NOBODY at the post office would do anything about it!
To this day, it is lost to the ages... lucky it was only $15.00.(I did put a stop on the check) And then I had to go over to the building and pay in person, the money...like I should have done in the first place! Silly me for thinking I should have trusted the U.S. mail, to do their job.
Moral of the story... DON'T trust USPS with even a small thing like this.

I've had mail from five miles across town take four days. If something comes to Fresno from out of town it will take two days as it goes to our main post office and then to our area post office.

When i get a package mailed by them i get a tracking #. Are they available for envelopes? It usually takes them a day to three days to get it moving after they receive the package. At least that's what the tracking is telling me. After that it starts moving and you track it to the destination.

This seems to be the same here for us and our local USPS. I drove to the local post office to mail a letter to a town 20 miles southwest of here and had it postmarked before noon and was hoping it would arrive the next day. Nope took three days to go 20 miles. The next time I drove east or the opposite direction to a slightly larger town (but not all that much larger) and dropped it off in the drive up box outside the USPS facility with a pick up of an hour after I put it in the box of 5:00 pm. It was there the next day?????? I had a part shipped to me via USPS and tracking showed that it arrived at our hometown USPS at 6:00 am and I kept checking to when it was going to show as "out for delivery" that morning and it never did??? Called and asked what was going on and asked if I could just come in and pick it up but was told NO, and it was in the sorting area for going out the next day and couldn't do remove it and it had to be delivered to the address. Cost me another day and a half to have it delivered at 2 pm the next day. Seems it's the chain of all of these small inefficient USPS facilities that screw up the speed at which something moves through the system. What gets me is when you see in tracking something that was only a few Zip codes away end up on hold in a town or city hundreds of miles away and way past where you are and most likely the semi truck carry your mail or package drove past on the highway or interstate roadway only a few miles away.

Like Jack Nicholson said as the Joker...."This place needs an enema!"

bought a 10.00 item off the bay, supposedly placed in my mailbox 4 weeks ago. maybe someone else's but not mine. We know all the neighbors so i wouldn't be a bit surprised if it showed up at some point. My wife sent a PKG to Seattle, showed up 8 weeks later

The USPS is killin' me, Smalls!

USPS recently made some major changes...
Originally a lot of the mail went by air but now has been shifted to surface and revised hubs which can add delays...
This is part of a scheme to save $$, last year the USPS lost >$6 billon...

Just my $0.02....

In my lil rural area there is three post offices and three postmasters and three delivery drivers for under 1000 people total and all three places just got all the modern upgrades any post office would.

So there huge debt and inefficiency is not a shocker.

Id not mind the 3 mile drive to the next lil town to there post office if it was saving tax payer money.

Careful with that thought, if the USPS gets wind of it we'll all be driving to the local PO waiting in long lines to get our mail and the uhh boys in a certain area of the east coast will have more money to throw away. Additionally, we'll likely have some previously overcompensated people looking for work This is not meant to be a political statement just a bit of humor

Letter reached its destination today, 10 days after it was postmarked. Better late than lost...

I recently sent a return receipt certified mail letter to a Texas PO box for a business that I knew was closed over five years ago. I was required to contact them and prove that any correspondence was impossible as noted by the destination PO, which was all I really needed indicated by the undeliverable letter.
It should have IMO been immediately obvious it was undeliverable upon first delivery attempt. I had already gone thru this same exact procedure 4? years earlier. I could do nothing until I received the undeliverable mail back.

I tracked the certified mail daily. It showed the letter in an effective daily loop of being out for delivery. My local mailing PO could do nothing. I attempted to initiate a lost item investigation. 4 weeks after I mailed it originally, or 25 days after it arrived at destination, I got my undeliverable letter back.

Two weeks later the PO emailed they were still looking for my letter.

Certified is not as secure as one would think it appears.

I sent a check to my doctor's billing office around June 25. As of yesterday (August 11), it hasn't been cashed. I got a reminder call about the balance two weeks ago. Sent another check this week.
The office is about 25 miles away.

My sister sends me a check every month for a thing related to our mother's estate. She lives three miles away. The July one never showed up. Three. Miles. Away. August one showed up in less than a week.

Several times a week, I have to tell clients that their redemption checks are going to take two or three weeks to arrive, even though they're sent out the next day.

Sometimes I think about how, back in the '70s, first-class mail was supposed to get anywhere in the lower 48 in one or two business days...

We ship 30,000 packages a year. In my "order has shippedf" confirmation email I put "if you use USPS you basically assume all the risk cause they have ISSUES".

I think the only way to fix the system is to eliminate the humans. And make the postal system like one gigagntic PO Box system where you pay for a PO box and have to go pick up your mail YOURSELF. That would eliminate porch theft and wrong deliveries. People just do not want to work and if they show up they don't want to do a good job. Just look around at your co workers. If YOU had to pay them a salary out of YOUR pocket, WOULD YOU! I bet I have only worked with 5 people I would hire. most of them get paid VERY WELL (beyond what I could afford) or are in business themselves (go figure).

PS My old mail guy that picked up and delivered at my business said "the USPS hires people that no one else will". Ouch.

You just stated the reason for me having a P.O. box. If it's anything of value, it goes to the PO box. Many of the things I buy are NOS rarities that aren't easily replaced. Theft and lost items are not an option I can afford.

This is probably a big reason why things are slower now.



https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2023/0808-pmg-remarks-during-aug-8-bog-meeting.htm

So the postal service, like everyone else out there, is finding ways to cut costs.
Do you think UPS Amazon or FEDEX would be better delivering a letter?
How many would pay 2x or 3x the 1st class cost if they took over?
Seems some think a letter should "move" as fast as an email these days.

Just a heads up, the USPS is not funded by any tax money, it's self funded only.


As for the mail itself, it can be very slow & varies. Many years ago I sold some car parts for over $500 & got a money order from the buyer that was sent certified mail requiring a signature. I thought that was a fantastic idea & now do that myself if I purchase an expensive item outside of a credit card or paypal. It's rare but at least I know it has a much better chance of arriving. Same goes for when I ship something. I always pay a few extra bucks on sending it certified with a signature.

sample quote

Eventually, by putting mail riders out on the roads at night, Ben Franklin managed to cut the delivery time for a letter from Philadelphia to New York and receive a reply to just 24 hours.

end quote

from

https://factsandhistory.com/how-ben-franklin-established-the-us-post-office/

Probably the only 2 major cities then where anybody knew how to write.

A friend sent me 4 tires on Friday of last week and I received them Monday.

Very much hit and miss.

Handwritten addresses are the hardest for the USPS readers to scan and sort.. sometimes the envelope gets shunted for a human to interpret or hand sort.. That can slow the speed of delivery..



I mail First Class correspondence every week and haven't noticed problems. Maybe 4-5 days to the west coast.

.. I sent four letters Airmail to Norway on June 17th, and they arrived the first week of August. 6 weeks! The postal service over there only delivers mail three days per week.

That seems ridiculous.
- Art

Someone sent me a package with USPS a month ago. Still hsan't shown up yet and dropped off their tracking. Great service. I have to find someone to try calling to see what's up.