Quarterly Performance for Single-Piece First-Class Mail®
Service Variance
Mailpieces Delivered Between 04/01/2024 and 06/30/2024

Overview

Beginning FY2019 Q1, service performance for Single-Piece First-Class Mail® is measured through the USPS® internal measurement system. The system combines scanning of mailpieces by postal personnel at randomly selected collection and delivery points with in-process machine scans for all eligible mail to estimate total transit time for the mail. The total transit is comprised of three legs: collection to initial automated processing, known as First Mile; initial processing to final automated processing, known as Processing Duration; and final processing to delivery, known as Last Mile. The estimated transit-time is compared against Single-Piece First-Class Mail® service standards to determine the percent of mail delivered on time.

Scores prior to FY2019 Q1 were calculated via the External First-Class Mail® Measurement System (EXFC). EXFC was an external sampling system that measured the time it took from deposit of mail into a collection box or lobby chute until its delivery to a home or business.

Single-Piece First-Class Mail® parcels were classified as a competitive product effective for pieces mailed on or after September 3, 2017; therefore, Single-Piece First-Class Mail® parcel results are no longer included in Single-Piece First-Class Mail® reporting.

Single-Piece First-Class Mail® Letters/Postcards includes business reply mail beginning May 21, 2022.

Limitations

Single piece mail that is first observed in incoming processing operations rather than the expected outgoing processing operations is referred to as First Processing Operation Type 2 mail, or FPO2. The volume of FPO2 mail as a proportion of total single-piece volume observed in processing duration in Internal SPM is significantly higher than the proportion observed for pieces sampled in collection or associated from the retail channel, particularly for flats. This is likely due to the inclusion of commercial mail that is sorted to destination and begins processing in incoming sort operations but is not able to be identified as commercial mail. Because FPO2 mail generally experiences longer durations in First Mile than mail first observed in outgoing operations, the higher proportion of FPO2 mail led to scores which were not accurate. FPO2 volume proportions in single-piece processing duration have been weighted for reporting such that they are aligned with the volume proportions observed for pieces in the collection sampling process and retail pieces to improve the measurement accuracy.

Performance Highlights

In FY2024 Quarter 3, national Single-Piece First-Class Mail® Two-Day performance was 85.6 percent on time, which is a 6.2 point decrease over the same period last year. National Three-To-Five Day performance was 72.5 percent on time, which is an 13.7 point decrease over the same period last year.

Nationally, at least 95.7 percent of mail across all service standards was delivered within the service standard plus three days in FY2024 Quarter 3.

In FY2024 Quarter 3, at the district level, there were 6 districts that scored at or above the performance target of 93.0 for Two-Day. California 1 had the highest Two-Day performance at 94.8 percent on time. Hawaii had the highest Three-To-Five Day performance at 85.6 percent on time.