News

The United States Postal Service reported new delivery performance metrics for the seventh week of the first quarter for fiscal year 2024. The average time for the Postal Service to deliver a mail piece or package across the nation was 2.6 days.

FY24 first quarter service performance scores covering October 1 through November 17, included:

• First-Class Mail: 87.7 percent of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 3.3 percentage points from the fiscal fourth quarter.
• Marketing Mail: 94.3 percent of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, consistent with performance from the fiscal fourth quarter.
• Periodicals: 84.5 percent of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 1.5 percentage points from the fiscal fourth quarter. (Editor’s note – Periodicals include newspapers. This report shows that 15.5% of the newspapers are not delivered within 2.6 days. You are more likely to get marketing mail before your newspaper. Please consider this before calling the newspaper office to complain).

Performance during this timeframe was negatively affected during the insourcing of several Surface Transfer Centers that were previously managed by third parties. There were temporary operational disruptions during these transitions that have been resolved. Additionally, performance was negatively affected as a facility in Saint Louis, MO, was shut down for two weeks for decontamination of a hazardous mercury leak from an illegally shipped package, which required significant rerouting of product and service disruptions throughout the Midwest. 

One of the goals of Delivering for America, the Postal Service’s 10-year plan for achieving financial sustainability and service excellence, is to meet or exceed 95 percent on-time service performance for all mail and shipping products once all elements of the plan are implemented. Service performance is defined by the Postal Service as the time it takes to deliver a mail piece or package from its acceptance into our system through its delivery, as measured against published service standards.

With the implementation of the Delivering for America plan, the Postal Service continues its focus on improving service reliability for the American public and business customers by modernizing the outmoded and aging postal network across the nation.