Use This Map to Find Out When Your Sent Mail Is Due to Arrive
When you ship something through the United States Postal Service (USPS), it can be difficult to know when it will reach its final destination. And if a letter seems to take longer than usual to get from one part of the country to another, it’s not your imagination: it’s part of the USPS’ money-saving strategy.
Although there is no guaranteed delivery time for regular first class mail, the USPS interactive map lets you know how long it will take for a letter to arrive at its destination. Here’s what you need to know.
Why USPS mail delivery has become slower
Starting October 1, 2021, in an effort to save money, the USPS has become more reliant on its own fleet of ground vehicles and less on air transport to deliver letters, NPR reports . And as of May 1, 2022, USPS began to take the same (i.e., slower) approach to premier packages, which are mostly small and light.
So, yes, mail has gotten slower, and yes, it’s annoying. And while complaining about it won’t speed him up, we can use the USPS tools to adapt to his new pace.
How to use the USPS Service Standards Map
We first learned about the USPS Service Standards Map from the Recomendo newsletter ; more specifically, advice from Claudia Dawson .
“I needed to figure out how long it would take for a stamped letter to reach the other side of the country, and an initial Google search buried this very useful color-coded ‘delivery days’ map of the US ,” she wrote. “You can filter by source zip code or destination, as well as mail class.”
While the map is updated quarterly – most recently on April 1st and the next on October 1st – and takes into account changes in the processing, transportation and delivery network, it does not provide real-time information about delays caused by bad weather or things getting lost along the way. (Contrary to popular belief, “Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor darkness of night shall stop these couriers from quickly completing their assigned routes” is not, and never has been, a USPS motto .)