USPS say that they are ready for the busy period ahead after they reported new service delivery performance scores showing improvements for First-Class Mail and Periodicals, and steady performance for Marketing Mail for the first six weeks of the fiscal first quarter.
“We are ready to deliver for the American people this holiday season. We have been planning, investing, and hiring every day for the past twelve months to improve our network and our service for the busiest time of the year. I’m proud of our entire Postal Team and their tremendous dedication and preparation – we are ready to go.”
– Postmaster General Louis DeJoy
First quarter-to-date service performance scores covering the period Oct. 1 through Nov. 12 included:
- First-Class Mail: 91.1 percent of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of 2.6 percentage points from the fourth quarter.
- Marketing Mail: 92.4 percent of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, consistent with performance from the fourth quarter.
- Periodicals: 83.2 percent of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of .5 percentage points from the fourth quarter.
The Postal Service anticipates that between 850 million and 950 million packages will be delivered for the holidays. The total number of letters, cards and packages processed and delivered between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day is estimated to be more than 12 billion.
Since April, the Postal Service has installed 102 of 112 new package sorting machines, reflecting part of the $40 billion of planned investments under the 10-year Delivering for America plan. The installation of the remaining 10 machines is scheduled to be completed by the end of November. Additionally, more than 50 package systems capable of sorting large packages are expected to be deployed prior to December. Altogether, the new investments give the Postal Service the capacity to process an additional 4.5 million packages each day.
