I ordered a product from a company in Allentown. I live around Philly. As the crow flies, less than 70 miles separate the two.

I check my tracking info. USPS routes the shipment from Allentown to a distribution center in...Pittsburgh, which is on the literal opposite side of the state from either Philly or Allentown, a charitable 300 miles away.

What possible reason is there for mail to travel to the opposite end of the state to get sorted and sent right back? Why make a round trip of 600 miles, roughly, instead of a direct trip of 70?

Surely there's some reason beyond simple incompetence.

USPS and incompetence go together. But hub and spoke is the system that most use. Everything moves to a hub and then back out. point to point routing is actually very hard.

You mean like this? Out for delivery, then it's off to Vegas, I hope the package had a good time.

April 24, 2020
In Transit to Next Facility
Your package is moving within the USPS network and is on track to be delivered to its final destination. It is currently in transit to the next facility.
April 21, 2020, 2:28 am
Departed USPS Regional Facility
LAS VEGAS NV DISTRIBUTION CENTER
April 19, 2020, 6:39 pm
Arrived at USPS Regional Facility
LAS VEGAS NV DISTRIBUTION CENTER
April 18, 2020, 1:10 pm
Arrived at USPS Facility
BROOMFIELD, CO 80020
April 18, 2020, 8:36 am
Out for Delivery
BROOMFIELD, CO 80021

A lot of the larger mail processing plants are either shut down completely, or processing minimal mail due to lack of employees, either quarantined, or dead.

Mail is being rerouted to other plants that are still able to function.

There is this thing going around called “Covid-19”.

I've had the USPS bring stuff from down south to Wallingford CT (about 15 miles from here) and then send it to Springfield MA (about 50 miles north), only to then send it back through Wallingford to get here to Waterbury. And that was last year before any of the current nonsense.

Mail is sent to various processing facilities. Depending on the type of mail (letters, flats, packages), they get sent to the processing plants to be sorted.

My wife and I went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon. We flew from Pittsburgh to New York, New York to Puerto Rico, then Puerto Rico to St. Lucia. It would have been much easier and faster for us to fly from Pittsburgh to St. Lucia, nonstop. But that isn’t the way it works. Just like package delivery. It is not a “non-stop direct delivery”.

all the mail that is collected here in Tucson gets packaged up and shipped all the way to Phoenix, where it gets sorted and shipped back for distribution.

No sorting by zip code here at all...

no wonder they can't make any money - they're spending it all on gas

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
all the mail that is collected here in Tucson gets packaged up and shipped all the way to Phoenix, where it gets sorted and shipped back for distribution.

No sorting by zip code here at all...

no wonder they can't make any money - they're spending it all on gas

The trucks go anyway, they're not wasting gas. If you did it the old way, you'd just be paying a clerk to sort the stuff in house.

And when they get together with UPS, it's an unholy combination of suck.

I have a package coming from Indianapolis, about 4 1/2 hours drive.

Shipped on the 20th. Made it to Columbus, OH the next day. La Vergne, TN - about 20 minutes from me - on the 22nd.

It's still in La Vergne. I could have walked there to pick it up and made it back by now.

It cannot be explained in a rational way.

It's the government, efficiency and common sense do not apply.

You can now purchase for an EXTRA fee personalized tracking. Who in the hell would want that???

It is just made up shit anyway. Someone in the know told me that UPS and FedEx have cutting edge technology. USPS tracking is in the Stone Age.

Well first, there's this fake Ouiji board and then, there's a bunch of VPs and Directors who think Phoenix is a real college and finally, there's this thing called goobermint employment.

Mix them all together and voila, USPS.

Two miles forward, one mile back, two miles forward, one mile back. They took five days to deliver a package 60 miles after it had traveled 1000 miles in two days.

Mail went faster in the 1940s, than it does now.

Admittedly, SC has real issues. It takes a week for a letter to go from Charleston to Myrtle Beach, and 2-3 days for a local letter.

Printing the address on the letter, and looking up the zip+4, and using that, seems to help.

Hopefully, they just had to trade speed for cost. What they do is still remarkable.

I do a lot of Ebay and Gunbroker selling and it's still a mystery to me. They usually come through but there are times when they do things that just make you go hmmmm.

I have noticed definitely where ever a delay or loss occurs, there is a high chance that a crappy hand written address label is involved. So moral of the story guys....write legibly...or better yet print your labels.

I've never had an issue but I live 2 miles from a distribution center.

I’ve mailed things long before the Chinese Flu that would sit in the Atlanta distribution center for days or even weeks before they would send them out. Now I just pay the extra money and use UPS.

Usually USPS seems to be pretty decent but when something goes sideways is becomes a WOT power slide off a cliff.

Like my three week long saga of a three day priority box between here and Albuquerque.