Average Transit Times - Various Postal Delivery Methods

I was looking over some of our aggregate delivery statistics for the last 30 days and wanted to give you a glimpse of what delivery time averages look like taken over a couple thousand shipments.

Here are the time in transit averages for RACS packages to all destinations:

This sample represents about 1,760 postal shipments made over the past 30 days from our warehouse in Winchester, VA. Not bad really considering all the recent weather events we've had. The anomalous 'maximum' packages, which are less than 1%, are probably stuff that got stuck during one of the big snow storms in January. Those parcels can be delayed by other things too, like when a customer gives us an incomplete address, so it's not always the post office's fault.

The 'International' tab reflects Airmail and Air Parcel Post shipments. 6-9 days is pretty good, but not quite as good as the Post Office would have you believe. This is why we recommend FedEx International, which is 1-3 days and is fully trackable.

'Priority Mail', billed as a 2-3 day service by the post office, is not actually quite that good, with 'First Class' mail actually having a slightly better time in transit ratio. This is why we use first class mail for all postal shipments under 16 ounces. When the post office is concerned, you don't always get what you pay for.

'Package Services' covers the mail classes we frequently use for economy and super saver shipments. As you can see our super saver shipping option, free over $50, is an awfully good value proposition as far as time in transit is concerned. Often the difference between 'free' super saver and $12 or $14 for Priority Mail ends up being only 1 or 2 days in transit. Of course, that's all the difference if you are ordering on Wednesday and want the stuff for the weekend, isn't it? :-)