I had a hunch based on the last several months of sending and receiving packages via USPS: the mail is getting slower by the month. First class / Ground Advantage, Priority . . . USPS is slower than in years past. And some digging around in recent headlines seems to confirm my suspicion. Yes, the USPS is slower than usual right now. Unfortunately, the trend is likely here to stay.

Is USPS Actually Slow?

Anecdotally, my Priority packages, which USPS advertises as “2-3 business days,” have been more like 3-5 business days for the last many months, dating back to 2024 sometime. The fine print makes clear that the 2-3 days is not a guarantee, of course. But the recent Priority price hike coupled with the service decline is a double whammy.

In a vintage group I run, most members reported that USPS is indeed slower than usual. Out of 50 members who responded, 30 noted a very recent slowdown, with most mentioning the last 2 months as being particularly slow. Several members reported 30-day ship times for some Ground Advantage packages. Tracking adventures are also seemingly on the rise.

Unsurprisingly, actual hard data supports these observations. The Office of the Inspector General tracks and reports USPS delivery times, and the first quarter returns aren’t great.

“In FY2025 Quarter 1, national Single-Piece First-Class Mail® Two-Day performance was 81.9 percent on time, which is a 5.3 point decrease over the same period last year. National Three-To-Five Day performance was 64.2 percent on time, which is a 5.9 point decrease over the same period last year.” The target rate is 87%.

The numbers are not trending in the right direction, and have been declining for about 4 years.

The Indianapolis Hub

Because of my location in Illinois, a lot of my mail routes through Indianapolis. That hub in particular seems to really slow things down lately. Apparently, if you are an Indiana resident, this slowdown is common knowledge. The USPS Regional Processing & Distribution Center in Indianapolis is fairly new and features restructured operations and is supposed to be a model. Maybe these are temporary growing pains.

But this facility has been experiencing some transition and operational challenges. These have resulted in significant service delays, according to multiple news reports.  Back in February, an Indiana station reported that “the Indy distribution hub has struggled with delays over the past several weeks to the point where Indiana’s entire Congressional Delegation has gotten involved.”

“It’s affecting most of our constituents and we need a solution,” Rep. Jefferson Shreve (R-Indiana) said.

“In a bipartisan move, all lawmakers representing Indiana in D.C. signed Shreve’s letter sent to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy earlier this month. In it, lawmakers demanded DeJoy look into delays plaguing the hub in Indianapolis,” the article continues. But unfortunately, the issues plaguing Indy are not unique and may be coming soon to a USPS hub near you.

Reasons for USPS Delays

During the winter months, weather was the usual explanation given by USPS for slower-than-usual deliveries, including to and from the Indy hub. Indiana Congressman Jefferson Shreve said he received a different answer from USPS. “It’s not weather-related. It is related to the transition from a smaller, older facility to this much larger facility,” he says.

Of course, in the U.S., weather and natural disasters are often a legitimate contributing factor to mail delivery times. The USPS keeps customers informed about service alerts here. However, the current alerts are minimal, and so there is no weather-based reason for the current slowdown.

It seems that the Indy hub is just a case in point for issues that will likely persist longer term. According to this article, “The Postal Service is in the midst of the most significant makeover of its operational structure in decades as it continues to implement Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year Delivering for America plan that it says will make the agency more efficient and eliminate its annual deficits.”

The plan includes “consolidating mail sorting away from individual post offices in favor of centralized centers and moving processing operations away from hundreds of cities and towns in favor of 60 mega-centers throughout the country. As part of a new initiative, USPS is also rolling out an ‘optimized collection plan’ that will require mail to sit overnight at post offices instead of being collected each evening for transportation to a processing center.” Obviously, holding mail an extra day instead of moving it along to the hub same day will have a dramatic slowing effect.

These changes aren’t really about better service for customers. The goal is streamlining towards profitability. This means in the long term, things will likely get worse (and also more expensive) rather than better.