7 ms·

Shippos USPS Time in Transit Data

123 points by bmahmood 6y ago

floatingatoll 6y ago
I'd like to see this data grouped by the population density of the origin zip code.
WrathOfJay 6y ago
Thank you for putting this together. Independent data sources are vital, since we know this administration does everything they can to hide reality.
- Fezzik 6y ago
  I wonder if business mail is being handled differently than civilian mail - I mail letters to my Mother 1-2 times a week and standard delivery times have gone from (always) 2-3 days between Medford, OR and Mount Vernon, WA to 8-12 days for the last 4 letters I sent that she has received. And the most recent 2 appear to be on the same trajectory. It is sort of wild, though just an anecdote. I have been sending her letters for decades from various parts of the Western states and this has never happened before.
  - sroussey 6y ago
    First class letters are slow. Packages not so much (better revenue).
    - takeda 6y ago
      There were reports of live animal dying because of delays or prescription being missed. I do see much less mail in mailbox than I had before. I also had informed delivery set up and now I'm told I'm not eligible (when it worked a month or two before). Frustrating, because this is time when the informed delivery would actually let me know if I'm actually missing some mail.
  - kevingadd 6y ago
    Various sources indicate that some post offices are specifically prioritizing the delivery of Amazon parcels (and presumably highest-cost business mail in general) over other mail, so it would make sense if civilian letters and postcards are eating the vast majority of the delay. https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/usps-tracking-in-transit-late-mail-delivery-philadelphia-packages-postal-service-20200802.html https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/usps-tracking-in-...
- Shivetya 6y ago
  The real fact is you are being played in an election year game by the Postal Union whose declared who they are backing unequivocally. Go chat up a CCA, I have two I know and one lives in my neighborhood but it close to quitting now. They are basically the equivalent of those food delivery service drivers but without the freedom to choose when they work. As in, they get shat upon by a small but not insignificant number of regular carriers who know how to game the system let alone see CCAs are beneath them in every way. You want the truth about how this service has been running for years, well before recent issues, just google CCA horror stories. This whole debacle is an engineered slow down by the union using the typical quiet encouragement that never has official backing but crawls along emails and word of mouth. The worst Post Office examples you see in the press have always been this bad. There is no consistent management across the system. One place is well run and the next can be nightmare fuel. tl;dr this is all an election year con job designed to make you come to one conclusion relying on the disposition of many to automatically assume any negative story concerning the current administration is true; while the current administration sucks on many levels much of what is claimed isn't always exactly true. ps: HN is being bombarded by thinly veiled election year propaganda and sadly eats it up. the number of stories deserving to be flagged reaches ridiculous levels at these times.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    I'm sympathetic to the idea that mainstream media is a giant propaganda machine, and that the parties they focus blame on aren't necessarily the ones pulling the strings. But how does your theory explain the sorting machines being scrapped, and more specifically DeJoy's order to not reconnect machines without his direct approval? Surely if he were an above board postmaster merely trying to reign in the union, caring about low level equipment decomissioning would be less of a priority?
9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
TL;DR: DeJoy's changes appear to have made USPS slightly slower (0.1-0.5 days) in some places, but much less than the delta caused by a holiday like July 4th (see note buried at the very end).
- shakezula 6y ago
  But they _are_ having a decidedly negative effect on efficiency, and they’re still destroying machines when they said they were going to pause all changes. We shouldn’t just wait for it to get worse.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  This is only data for a specific subset of USPS shipments, it doesn't tell us anything about, for a few examples of important categories: * Prescription refills * Mail to/from overseas soldiers * Bills and bill payments * Regular letters Those other categories could be much worse, or could be better than Shippos' data here. Most of the reporting out there claims that other categories (like prescriptions) are severely degraded.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  Is my summary inaccurate? The article is very careful not to extend any political slant to its data and findings, please extend me the same courtesy. (I'm not even American.)
  - greendude29 6y ago
    It is inaccurate. You say "slightly slower". The metrics behind the delays are much longer and your numbers only seem to include time in transit. Second reason your summary is inaccurate: DeJoy's changes are rolled out in small pockets of the country thus far. The article seems to be indiscriminate from where those changes took place. The averages here are hence better than from those places where the changes have done the most damage.
- ZoomStop 6y ago
  The data does show getting a parcel from California to most points in the east will have up to a 40% chance of delay. It seems their internal routes are getting backed up and causing a ripple effect.
athst 6y ago
This feels like a missed opportunity. There's a lot of data Shippo could share about USPS and that would help add more context to what's happening in the news. But it's difficult to understand anything concrete from this. It would be more helpful to see how this fits into long term trends and other context on how abnormal it is.
- tomohawk 6y ago
  Perhaps we should let Newman, our favorite fictional postman, represent? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Fr-g-B0vs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Fr-g-B0vs Mail service dysfunction has been going on a long time, and has been a joke for a long time.
TMWNN 6y ago
This analysis only covers USPS package delivery, which is different from flats. Ballots are flats. Magazines are flats. Letters are flats. Anything non-bendable isn't. This is what has been happening to USPS, folks: 1. Because of COVID19, flats volume has collapsed, while package volume has skyrocketed. Flats sorting machines can do absolutely nothing for packages for reasons that are left up to the reader, so USPS has been shutting them down and moving them out of processing facilities in favor of package sorting. 2. Because USPS is losing lots of money overall (higher package volume doesn't make up for the collapse in flats volume)[1], it has been cutting back on overtime, just like any other employer would. 3. People hear about 1 and 2, hear about/experience packages being delivered more slowly, and think that this surely means that "the Trump administration is trying to sabotage the post office to suppress voting!!!!". They do this without thinking about it at all: 3a. As stated, flats volume has collapsed, so there is still a lot of excess capacity. 3b. Even if every single voter were to vote by mail only, this would mean at most two additional flat pieces per voter (one ballot to the voter, and one ballot sent back). Think about how much mail (not packages, mail) you already receive daily on average. Do you really think two additional pieces would collapse the system? Of course not, any more than the USPS collapses every January when the IRS and every single employer, bank, and other financial institution sends out tax-related documents. (The USPS hires seasonal help in December for packages, not for Christmas cards.) 3c. If this really were a sinister Trump administration voter-suppression scheme, it's a pretty weak one that can be defeated by dropping ballots off in person, and/or voting in person. 4. An actual serious issue is states and counties that aren't like Oregon (which has been 100% vote by mail for two decades) trying to convert to vote by mail without preparation. Think of how much mail your home receives for the previous tenant (and the one before that, and the one before that). Think of this all having to be done by early October, to give voters about a month to receive and return ballots. This is what the administration has been pointing out, something rarely heard amidst the nonsense about mail-vote suppression. [1] Congress mandating the USPS to prepay pensions is a good thing. The postal service is an industry that is, by definition, in secular decline (barring unusual events like COVID19) because of the Internet. Congress recognized this in 2006 and thus required USPS to prepare over 10 years to get its pensions ready, because there's no reason to believe that future revenue (and future employee-count growth) is going to sustain pensions for retirees otherwise.
suchire 6y ago
It’s too bad some of these numbers are reported as averages. It would be nice to see something more percentile based, like p75 or p90, which are more effective ways of measuring quality of service
iamEAP 6y ago
Cool to have some “observability” on this, but it’s not the most relevant metric. I’ve heard of (and experienced myself), much, much longer delays on envelope/letter mail, but have heard of fewer delays with packages. Perhaps this is a proxy for measuring personnel/process changes, but totally misses the sorting machine dismantling going on throughout the nation.
- dsamarin 6y ago
  Fortunately the sorting machine dismantling has been stopped for the relevant future.
ohadpr 6y ago
I think this marketing site would perform better if it had a pretty version of the most interesting graph above the fold.
dawnerd 6y ago
One key metric missing (unless I’m blind) is time to acceptance scan. I do a lot of shipping and don’t have time to have the packages scanned in every day so I use the drop box. Last few months it’s taken the post office an extra day or two to even scan them in. So while the packages must only be on average 5-10% late they’re also being delayed a day or more just sitting waiting to be accepted. It hurt my eBay rating too before I could catch it happening. I’ve resorted to using the scans form just to make sure they’re the ones taking blame, not me.
- greendude29 6y ago
  Not being as familiar with shipping, how would one find the metrics for this? Is there some kind of an initial "scan" upon drop-in to the box and then a second scan when they pick it up? If not, then I imagine the metrics would only be discoverable from USPS themselves, which of course, they are going to muzzle.
  - moftz 6y ago
    When you drop off a package at the post office, you can either wait in line for an agent at the counter to scan your package (only during business hours) and give you a receipt or you can place them in a drop box (open 24/7). The drop box usually has a last pickup time on the label (3pm, 5pm, etc) for when someone actually collects the contents and then scan in the packages to get them into the sorting/tracking system. The problem is that sometimes these bins of packages might sit for a while until someone scans them for the first time. There is a bin behind the wall for the drop box and if it gets full, they pull up a new bin for the drop box so there could be multiple bins of packages that need to be scanned. You would need to search the tracking number and see when the first scan occurs. Shippo is only looking at shipping label creation date which could be offset quite some time from when the package gets scanned. Large businesses might have enough employees to where they can pack, label, and ship out an order that day but small businesses might have someone hand delivering packages to the post office every other day.
  - dawnerd 6y ago
    You'd have to compare the label creation date with the scan date. Example one of the ones I got dinged on: Jun 30, 2020 7:29pm Tracking number provided Jul 3, 2020 6:45am Accepted at USPS Origin Facility BEAVERTON, OR 97078 It was dropped off Jul 1 in the early morning. Ended up sitting there for two days before they got around to scanning. Admittedly it has gotten better the last couple weeks but it can still take them a day. The easiest way around this though is using a scans form which is just a printout where they can scan once and it marks all of the packages as accepted at once. It still takes time to prepare the form, print and find someone at the dock or drop window to scan it - they don't seem to particularly like doing it.
chrisBob 6y ago
One thing this doesn't account for is fraudulent delivery reports. In my area a large percentage of my USPS deliveries are reported as delivered around 6pm on the scheduled delivery day, but I can't find the package anywhere. Then it suddenly turns up the next day. People on NextDoor also report seeing this regularly.
- cooljacob204 6y ago
  USPS said they delivered my package on Sunday, but it magically showed up Wednesday.
  - Scipio_Afri 6y ago
    Personally I experience this way more with Fedex - literally its nearly every time. I haven't had this happen except for a couple of times with USPS over the last 2-3 years (been in the same apartment for about that long).
    - chrisBob 6y ago
      I had that happen with UPS at my last address: One of my relatives put the wrong address on a box, and then UPS decided to deliver the next 5 boxes to that same wrong address. At least it was consistent and I knew where to look.
    - mindslight 6y ago
      I have the same experience, with one or two USPS fake deliveries. None from UPS that I can recall (but fewer packages overall than USPS). Meanwhile Fedex Ground has seemingly adopted a policy of doing whatever it takes to mark a package as delivered, including just leaving them down by the road where they can be easily stolen. It's all down to your individual carriers and local depot management though. My local Fedex Ground depot doesn't seem to care at all, so my only recourse is to avoid having things I care about shipped Fedex. Which by itself is another reason the USPS needs to be kept operating - so at least we have three options instead of the characteristic duopoly of modern antitrust enforcement.
  - 6y ago
justinzollars 6y ago
Most election mail will be sent zone 0 (Local) or 1.
herf 6y ago
I think shippers like Amazon pay relatively high rates to USPS, so they are higher on the priority list. It's the heavily-discounted "slow" shipping like medicine that is having trouble right now.
tzm 6y ago
Does USPS publish transit metrics directly? If not, they should.
ericcj 6y ago
Does anybody have this data about letters? We need a canary letter mailing service for analytics.

123 points by bmahmood 6y ago

I'd like to see this data grouped by the population density of the origin zip code.

Thank you for putting this together. Independent data sources are vital, since we know this administration does everything they can to hide reality.

Fezzik 6y ago
I wonder if business mail is being handled differently than civilian mail - I mail letters to my Mother 1-2 times a week and standard delivery times have gone from (always) 2-3 days between Medford, OR and Mount Vernon, WA to 8-12 days for the last 4 letters I sent that she has received. And the most recent 2 appear to be on the same trajectory. It is sort of wild, though just an anecdote. I have been sending her letters for decades from various parts of the Western states and this has never happened before.
- sroussey 6y ago
  First class letters are slow. Packages not so much (better revenue).
  - takeda 6y ago
    There were reports of live animal dying because of delays or prescription being missed. I do see much less mail in mailbox than I had before. I also had informed delivery set up and now I'm told I'm not eligible (when it worked a month or two before). Frustrating, because this is time when the informed delivery would actually let me know if I'm actually missing some mail.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  Various sources indicate that some post offices are specifically prioritizing the delivery of Amazon parcels (and presumably highest-cost business mail in general) over other mail, so it would make sense if civilian letters and postcards are eating the vast majority of the delay. https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/usps-tracking-in-transit-late-mail-delivery-philadelphia-packages-postal-service-20200802.html https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/usps-tracking-in-...
Shivetya 6y ago
The real fact is you are being played in an election year game by the Postal Union whose declared who they are backing unequivocally. Go chat up a CCA, I have two I know and one lives in my neighborhood but it close to quitting now. They are basically the equivalent of those food delivery service drivers but without the freedom to choose when they work. As in, they get shat upon by a small but not insignificant number of regular carriers who know how to game the system let alone see CCAs are beneath them in every way. You want the truth about how this service has been running for years, well before recent issues, just google CCA horror stories. This whole debacle is an engineered slow down by the union using the typical quiet encouragement that never has official backing but crawls along emails and word of mouth. The worst Post Office examples you see in the press have always been this bad. There is no consistent management across the system. One place is well run and the next can be nightmare fuel. tl;dr this is all an election year con job designed to make you come to one conclusion relying on the disposition of many to automatically assume any negative story concerning the current administration is true; while the current administration sucks on many levels much of what is claimed isn't always exactly true. ps: HN is being bombarded by thinly veiled election year propaganda and sadly eats it up. the number of stories deserving to be flagged reaches ridiculous levels at these times.
- mindslight 6y ago
  I'm sympathetic to the idea that mainstream media is a giant propaganda machine, and that the parties they focus blame on aren't necessarily the ones pulling the strings. But how does your theory explain the sorting machines being scrapped, and more specifically DeJoy's order to not reconnect machines without his direct approval? Surely if he were an above board postmaster merely trying to reign in the union, caring about low level equipment decomissioning would be less of a priority?

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago

TL;DR: DeJoy's changes appear to have made USPS slightly slower (0.1-0.5 days) in some places, but much less than the delta caused by a holiday like July 4th (see note buried at the very end).

shakezula 6y ago
But they _are_ having a decidedly negative effect on efficiency, and they’re still destroying machines when they said they were going to pause all changes. We shouldn’t just wait for it to get worse.
kevingadd 6y ago
This is only data for a specific subset of USPS shipments, it doesn't tell us anything about, for a few examples of important categories: * Prescription refills * Mail to/from overseas soldiers * Bills and bill payments * Regular letters Those other categories could be much worse, or could be better than Shippos' data here. Most of the reporting out there claims that other categories (like prescriptions) are severely degraded.
9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
Is my summary inaccurate? The article is very careful not to extend any political slant to its data and findings, please extend me the same courtesy. (I'm not even American.)
- greendude29 6y ago
  It is inaccurate. You say "slightly slower". The metrics behind the delays are much longer and your numbers only seem to include time in transit. Second reason your summary is inaccurate: DeJoy's changes are rolled out in small pockets of the country thus far. The article seems to be indiscriminate from where those changes took place. The averages here are hence better than from those places where the changes have done the most damage.
ZoomStop 6y ago
The data does show getting a parcel from California to most points in the east will have up to a 40% chance of delay. It seems their internal routes are getting backed up and causing a ripple effect.

athst 6y ago

This feels like a missed opportunity. There's a lot of data Shippo could share about USPS and that would help add more context to what's happening in the news. But it's difficult to understand anything concrete from this. It would be more helpful to see how this fits into long term trends and other context on how abnormal it is.

tomohawk 6y ago
Perhaps we should let Newman, our favorite fictional postman, represent? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Fr-g-B0vs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22Fr-g-B0vs Mail service dysfunction has been going on a long time, and has been a joke for a long time.

TMWNN 6y ago

This analysis only covers USPS package delivery, which is different from flats. Ballots are flats. Magazines are flats. Letters are flats. Anything non-bendable isn't. This is what has been happening to USPS, folks: 1. Because of COVID19, flats volume has collapsed, while package volume has skyrocketed. Flats sorting machines can do absolutely nothing for packages for reasons that are left up to the reader, so USPS has been shutting them down and moving them out of processing facilities in favor of package sorting. 2. Because USPS is losing lots of money overall (higher package volume doesn't make up for the collapse in flats volume)[1], it has been cutting back on overtime, just like any other employer would. 3. People hear about 1 and 2, hear about/experience packages being delivered more slowly, and think that this surely means that "the Trump administration is trying to sabotage the post office to suppress voting!!!!". They do this without thinking about it at all: 3a. As stated, flats volume has collapsed, so there is still a lot of excess capacity. 3b. Even if every single voter were to vote by mail only, this would mean at most two additional flat pieces per voter (one ballot to the voter, and one ballot sent back). Think about how much mail (not packages, mail) you already receive daily on average. Do you really think two additional pieces would collapse the system? Of course not, any more than the USPS collapses every January when the IRS and every single employer, bank, and other financial institution sends out tax-related documents. (The USPS hires seasonal help in December for packages, not for Christmas cards.) 3c. If this really were a sinister Trump administration voter-suppression scheme, it's a pretty weak one that can be defeated by dropping ballots off in person, and/or voting in person. 4. An actual serious issue is states and counties that aren't like Oregon (which has been 100% vote by mail for two decades) trying to convert to vote by mail without preparation. Think of how much mail your home receives for the previous tenant (and the one before that, and the one before that). Think of this all having to be done by early October, to give voters about a month to receive and return ballots. This is what the administration has been pointing out, something rarely heard amidst the nonsense about mail-vote suppression. [1] Congress mandating the USPS to prepay pensions is a good thing. The postal service is an industry that is, by definition, in secular decline (barring unusual events like COVID19) because of the Internet. Congress recognized this in 2006 and thus required USPS to prepare over 10 years to get its pensions ready, because there's no reason to believe that future revenue (and future employee-count growth) is going to sustain pensions for retirees otherwise.

suchire 6y ago

It’s too bad some of these numbers are reported as averages. It would be nice to see something more percentile based, like p75 or p90, which are more effective ways of measuring quality of service

iamEAP 6y ago

Cool to have some “observability” on this, but it’s not the most relevant metric. I’ve heard of (and experienced myself), much, much longer delays on envelope/letter mail, but have heard of fewer delays with packages. Perhaps this is a proxy for measuring personnel/process changes, but totally misses the sorting machine dismantling going on throughout the nation.

dsamarin 6y ago
Fortunately the sorting machine dismantling has been stopped for the relevant future.

ohadpr 6y ago

I think this marketing site would perform better if it had a pretty version of the most interesting graph above the fold.

dawnerd 6y ago

One key metric missing (unless I’m blind) is time to acceptance scan. I do a lot of shipping and don’t have time to have the packages scanned in every day so I use the drop box. Last few months it’s taken the post office an extra day or two to even scan them in. So while the packages must only be on average 5-10% late they’re also being delayed a day or more just sitting waiting to be accepted. It hurt my eBay rating too before I could catch it happening. I’ve resorted to using the scans form just to make sure they’re the ones taking blame, not me.

greendude29 6y ago
Not being as familiar with shipping, how would one find the metrics for this? Is there some kind of an initial "scan" upon drop-in to the box and then a second scan when they pick it up? If not, then I imagine the metrics would only be discoverable from USPS themselves, which of course, they are going to muzzle.
- moftz 6y ago
  When you drop off a package at the post office, you can either wait in line for an agent at the counter to scan your package (only during business hours) and give you a receipt or you can place them in a drop box (open 24/7). The drop box usually has a last pickup time on the label (3pm, 5pm, etc) for when someone actually collects the contents and then scan in the packages to get them into the sorting/tracking system. The problem is that sometimes these bins of packages might sit for a while until someone scans them for the first time. There is a bin behind the wall for the drop box and if it gets full, they pull up a new bin for the drop box so there could be multiple bins of packages that need to be scanned. You would need to search the tracking number and see when the first scan occurs. Shippo is only looking at shipping label creation date which could be offset quite some time from when the package gets scanned. Large businesses might have enough employees to where they can pack, label, and ship out an order that day but small businesses might have someone hand delivering packages to the post office every other day.
- dawnerd 6y ago
  You'd have to compare the label creation date with the scan date. Example one of the ones I got dinged on: Jun 30, 2020 7:29pm Tracking number provided Jul 3, 2020 6:45am Accepted at USPS Origin Facility BEAVERTON, OR 97078 It was dropped off Jul 1 in the early morning. Ended up sitting there for two days before they got around to scanning. Admittedly it has gotten better the last couple weeks but it can still take them a day. The easiest way around this though is using a scans form which is just a printout where they can scan once and it marks all of the packages as accepted at once. It still takes time to prepare the form, print and find someone at the dock or drop window to scan it - they don't seem to particularly like doing it.

chrisBob 6y ago

One thing this doesn't account for is fraudulent delivery reports. In my area a large percentage of my USPS deliveries are reported as delivered around 6pm on the scheduled delivery day, but I can't find the package anywhere. Then it suddenly turns up the next day. People on NextDoor also report seeing this regularly.

cooljacob204 6y ago
USPS said they delivered my package on Sunday, but it magically showed up Wednesday.
- Scipio_Afri 6y ago
  Personally I experience this way more with Fedex - literally its nearly every time. I haven't had this happen except for a couple of times with USPS over the last 2-3 years (been in the same apartment for about that long).
  - chrisBob 6y ago
    I had that happen with UPS at my last address: One of my relatives put the wrong address on a box, and then UPS decided to deliver the next 5 boxes to that same wrong address. At least it was consistent and I knew where to look.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    I have the same experience, with one or two USPS fake deliveries. None from UPS that I can recall (but fewer packages overall than USPS). Meanwhile Fedex Ground has seemingly adopted a policy of doing whatever it takes to mark a package as delivered, including just leaving them down by the road where they can be easily stolen. It's all down to your individual carriers and local depot management though. My local Fedex Ground depot doesn't seem to care at all, so my only recourse is to avoid having things I care about shipped Fedex. Which by itself is another reason the USPS needs to be kept operating - so at least we have three options instead of the characteristic duopoly of modern antitrust enforcement.
- 6y ago

justinzollars 6y ago

Most election mail will be sent zone 0 (Local) or 1.

herf 6y ago

I think shippers like Amazon pay relatively high rates to USPS, so they are higher on the priority list. It's the heavily-discounted "slow" shipping like medicine that is having trouble right now.

tzm 6y ago

Does USPS publish transit metrics directly? If not, they should.

ericcj 6y ago

Does anybody have this data about letters? We need a canary letter mailing service for analytics.