WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Postal Service reported service delivery performance scores showing First-Class Mail and Periodicals continuing to climb through the first five weeks of the fiscal first quarter. With fiscal year 2021 fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 first quarter-to-date service performance scores above 92 percent, the Postal Service enters the holiday shipping season in the best service performance condition ever measured for Marketing Mail.

First quarter-to-date service performance scores covering the period Oct. 1 through Nov. 5 included:

• First-Class Mail: 91.2 percent of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of 3.2 percentage points from the fourth quarter.
• Marketing Mail: 92.3 percent of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a slight decrease of .3 percentage points from the fourth quarter.
• Periodicals: 82.9 percent of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of .8 percentage points from the fourth quarter.

One of the goals of Delivering for America, the Postal Service’s 10-year plan for achieving financial sustainability and service excellence, is to meet or exceed 95 percent on-time service performance for all mail and shipping products once all elements of the plan are implemented. Service performance is defined by the Postal Service as the time it takes to deliver mailpiece or package from its acceptance into our system through its delivery, as measured against published service standards.

The Postal Service’s preparations for the anticipated higher delivery demands of the 2021 holiday peak season continue. Ongoing efforts have included a national drive to hire delivery and plant personnel that is expected to result in an additional 40,000 seasonal hires by year-end; the leasing of 7.5 million square feet of additional space across more than 40 annexes with multiyear leases to address space constraints due to parcel growth; the leasing of an additional 4 million square feet of annex space dedicated to peak season operations; and the installation of new processing equipment to accommodate higher volumes reflecting customers’ delivery needs.

Since April, the Postal Service has installed 97 of 112 new package sorting machines, reflecting the Delivering for America plan’s $40 billion of planned investment over ten years. Additionally, more than 50 package systems capable of sorting large packages are expected to be deployed prior to December. The new machinery gives the Postal Service the capacity to process an additional 4.5 million packages each day.

This past week, new machines were installed in: New York City, North Texas, Kansas City (MO), Detroit, and a second machine added in Harrisburg (PA). Recent installations have occurred in: Mid-Florida, Fort Worth (TX), Indianapolis (IN), Boston (MA), NW Arkansas, Austin (TX), Cleveland (OH) and Des Moines (IA), Lancaster (PA), Oklahoma City (OK), San Antonio (TX), Minneapolis (MN), and Grand Rapids (MI).

The Postal Service generally receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

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