As one whose business is tied very closely to the United States Postal Service, PCI Group wants to keep you abreast of changing conditions with USPS mail delivery. As we prepare this communication, USPS continues to experience service delays.  The causes can be attributed to three major factors, all related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

  1. Employee Availability.  The pandemic has impacted the USPS workforce and has caused lack of availability of employees
  2. Transportation.  Cancellation of commercial flights has forced more mail to go ground transportation
  3. Large Parcel Volume Increases. (UPS and Fed-Ex have also been impacted by employee availability, causing delays and consumers to send more mail via USPS).

The table below show statistics dating back to the week ending October 31, 2020 as published in the January 18th Mailers Hub Newsletter:
Week Beginning Percent First-Class On-Time
31 Oct 84.61%
7 Nov 85.40%
14 Nov 87.72%
21 Nov 84.69%
28 Nov 78.86%
5 Dec 75.29%
12 Dec 70.60%
19 Dec 61.97%
26 Dec 63.87%
The average from November 7th through January 1st was 76.05% as compared to their best performance from last year when they delivered 93.88% on time the week of February 15th.
This data is for all First-Class Mail combined. It doesn’t break it down by presort and single piece.

Another comparison from the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) Website shows the on-time performance for October to December 2019 as follows:
  2 Days 3 to 5 Days
Single Piece 91.9 78.2
Presort 92.8 89.9
As always, we will continue to monitor this situation closely and provide you updates as appropriate. If you notice delays in mailing, please be assured that PCI is continuing to process your mail on time and inject it into the mail stream as we have promised you via our SLA commitments.