SIGNIFICANT PERFORMANCE DROPS, PARTICULARLY IN LETTERS
The first week of postal regulatory changes did not appear to go well. We had been seeing an encouraging performance trend for the last couple of months that came to an abrupt halt last week. First-class letters went from an on-time percentage of 86.2% in the prior week to 75.4% this past week. This is still better than the YTD average, but disappointing after a months-long improving trend.
More concerning was Marketing Mail letters. There we saw their worst performance since January, with only 93.4% on time. Days-in-transit were slower for all categories except First-Class flats, which always seem to march to their own drummer.
The elimination of the DNDC destination probably means that we are seeing more origin-entered mail, so a lot of the slower performance may be the result of changes in mailer behavior.
For the first time since we began doing this, the Postal Service has also changed its service standards, reflecting 5-digit to 5-digit standards and adding a “Day Zero” in their calculations – in other words, lowering standards significantly. It will be interesting to see how their on-time percentages align with ours.
