 March 1, 2006 Mail delivery has progressively slowed down over the past few months. The slowdowns started to occur back in October 2005 with the mail volume increasing across the mailstream. More mailers moved their schedules to the second half of the year, where response rate tends to be higher. The delivery continued to weaken up until the week after Thanksgiving, where the post office had caught up albeit briefly. However, more mailers were dropping closer to Christmas than ever. That, coupled with holiday cards, barraged the system whereby a lot of mail ended up hitting the week of Christmas instead of the prior week. The average delay time was nearly 6 days on average. At the turn of the year, the biggest obstacle was a huge increase in financial statements that were sent by mail. This volume growth has been attributed to more individuals investing online and increased paperwork associated with investments. The delays here were 3-5 days. The worst problems with delivery were centered around the postal rate increase. Every major mailer adjusted their in-home schedule as to get their highest volume mailings in before the postage rates went up. This created logjams from 7-17 days at the SCF level. The worst hit areas were San Francisco, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Detroit and Memphis and SCF's within those BMC units. Delivery did not improve thereafter, as there was constant winter weather in the Midwest and some in the Northeast. The delays have dropped to 3-7 days from the very high averages in January. The volume ahead in the post office should be much lighter. The rate increase has caused a few large mailers to cut back and some other mailers to retire from the mailstream and concentrate on the internet as their main source of advertising. Postal delivery in March and April should improve by 1-2 days, then the effect of the rate increase and more labor/equipment will surface. The post office should have improved delivery timings in May and June. |