Note right at the beginning: I am not a postal worker. I have never been a postal worker. I have great admiration for the work they do. I have tracked many, many,…many letters and packages to and from nearly every state in the continental US. This is what I’ve learned. I’m sure a professional postal employee can give better insight.

Let follow the letter trail:

(FYI: no piece of mail ever goes directly from you to the person you are sending it to.)

X mailbox—local X PO—county X PO—X State/Regional Distribution Center—Y State/Regional Distribution Center—Y County PO—local Y PO—Y mailbox

Someone puts a letter or small pkg in their mail box. It sits there any where from a few hours up to 48 hours before the mailman picks it up. From there it continues with that mailman until he finishes his route, usually sometime after 3 or 4 pm. The letter arrives at the local post office in the late afternoon. It spends some time waiting to be sorted into local vs non-local. For most small towns this is probably still done by hand but if it’s a mid-sized city it will be by machine sorting. The letter may even have to be moved to the city’s main post office (big cities like Boston and New York have several post offices.

The local mail stays in that post office to be distributed the next day, but if it’s going 4 hours away it’s either in state but a different county or out-of-state. I live in New England. 4 hours is definitely out of state.

Next it is loaded onto a night truck headed for the regional collection center. For in state mail that may be a county seat. For out of state bound mail that is probably your state’s central processing location. There it is resorted to it’s state or county of destination. Here is where things may slow down. If it’s a regular first-class letter, it will sit there until the morning and placed on a truck bound for your state. A priority-class letter will leave that night on a truck either bound for your state or to the airport. 4 hours isn’t really far enough for them to warrant air travel even for a priority letter.

Distribution center

Once it’s on that truck, it travels the 4 hours to your county’s distribution post office. There it is mechanically sorted by town. Depending on the time it arrives, it will likely go out the next available truck headed to your town.

Once in your post office it is sorted by the postal carrier’s route. Each mailman has a set route and loads his truck in the morning and maybe once in the afternoon as well, I supposes it depends on the length of his/her route. A letter that arrives at 5pm the night before may get sorted for it’s route but it’s going to sit there until the morning.

Small town local PO

If it’s a priority letter it may come on a dedicated vehicle and arrive at a different time than your other usual mail. If not it will arrive at your usual mail time. My postman arrives between 2–3pm.

Let’s break this down a bit: Regular speed vs Priority speed for a hypothetical letter of about 1 ounce and a delivery distance of 4hrs: Middletown, CT to Philadelphia, PA:

Regular:

Monday you put a letter put in mailbox at 12:00 pm. Letter carrier picks it up at 2pm. Letter arrives at Middletown PO (happens to be county seat) at 4pm. Sorted and on truck for Wallingford, CT (CT distribution center) at 5pm. Arrives Wallingford, CT at 5:30pm. Sorted and placed on morning truck bound for Springfield, MA (regional distribution center.) Truck leaves at 5am. Truck arrives at 6 am. Sorted and placed on truck for Eastern PA. Leaves Springfield at 10am. Arrives at 2pm (miraculously no traffic delays) in Newton Square, PA (PA distribution center.) Sorted and loaded on truck headed for Philly. Leaves Newton Square at 4pm. Arrives at main Philly PO at 5pm. Sorted and loaded on truck for local neighborhood PO. Arrives neighborhood PO at 5:30pm. Sorted for route carrier by 6am. Letter now waits for morning letter carrier. Leaves PO at 9am on usual route. Arrives at your mailbox at 1pm. The letter has taken a total of 97 hours (4 days) to travel what you drive in 4 hours. Cost $.55

Priority:

Monday 12 noon make/pay for your own label at home. Drive to local post office drop off priority letter with workers inside. 12:30pm. Letter is sorted as priority out of state. Loaded on small truck bound for Springfield, MA at 2pm. Arrives at Springfield, MA at 3:00pm. Priority sorted for eastern PA and loaded on truck. Truck leaves at 4pm. Arrives Newton Square, PA 8pm (again miraculous lack of traffic.) Sorted for Philly PO. Arrives Philly at 10 pm. Loaded on morning priority truck bound for your neighborhood. (bypassing local neighborhood PO) Out for delivery at 9am. Arrives you mailbox 11am Tuesday. This time the letter has taken just 23 hours to go that distance. cost $7.35

Cost of driving it there yourself: $35 in gas and tolls.

There are many reasons but mostly it’s the system. First off, UPS and FedEx have their own planes; USPS does not and depends on commercial air service to move their mail and packages across the country on a space available basis. Second, there is a tremendous turnover in personnel in USPS facilities. About the time they learn their job, they can’t take the pressure and quit. Thirdly, management stinks. Their are managers, supervisors, and upper echelon workers who are just putting in time until they retire and have little if any true management skills and would not be a manager in any private business, I can assure you.

Just my take on it but I spent 28 years with USPS before I retired and I never worked in a more dysfunctional place than the USPS system.

There are two parts to this answer that apply to different types of mail.

Letters - First class letters do not generally face delays for customs enforcement. There are a few exceptions, for mail coming from high risk countries, in which all mail is scrutinized, though not opened. (Believe it or not, customs officers will feel and sniff each piece from certain countries!) But, those are a low volume of international mail. The reason letters can take a fair bit more time than domestic is that you have to add in transport and processing time within both the country of origin and receipt. Now, if you are living in New York and sending a letter to Paris, that will generally be quite swift, because both places have international exchange offices. (I recall in Toronto, seeing letters posted in Paris on a Monday, going out for delivery on Wednesday, as Toronto has an international exchange office.) But, if you live in, say, St. Louis, your letter may have to transit to New York or Washington or Boston first, before its sorted to France. Likewise on the receiving end. Lets say your letter is destined to Toulouse, as there is no direct dispatch to Toulouse from the U.S.A., it will be processed in Paris first.

Packages - Over and above the delays mentioned above, you have to factor in the lag for customs review. From my experience in Canada, there was frequently a two day backlog, sometimes even more. Customs is not controlled by the postal service.

Possibly as soon as the following day, or possibly up to a week.

Depends on a number of factors. Where you mail it — in a streetside postal box, or a box adjacent to the Post Office, or inside the Post Office. When you mail it — early in the day, midway, or late in the day after the last collection. How you mail it — addressed for machine processing with a bar code address, all the way down to something scribbled on a dark brown envelope.

To some extent, it also depends on the size and shape of your mail. Standard business-sized envelopes, containing a couple of pages only, are quickly processed and delivered. Big bulky envelopes or boxes or mailing tubes take special handling, and may not get immediate attention.

It also depends on how busy the system is. There are times when the volume of junk mail is so large that it virtually overwhelms the system, causing a delay in getting the first-class mil handled immediately.

There are special factors also, such as the remoteness of the addressee, or the experience of the delivery person. And possibly, the weather. And road delays, which may hold up the trucks that move mail around locally.

Yes, of course you are anxious to receive the mail that someone has sent you. You are also anxious for your letter or check to arrive somewhere else. Unhappily, you can’t control it and you can’t predict it. You can’t even find out where it is in the system, nor whether it is being held up somewhere.

You just have to be patient, and don't fuss. The mail will arrive, whether it is coming to you or going to someone else. If it has not arrived yet, it will come within a day or a few days. Mail delivery is one of the most reliable services that exists in this nation — virtually everything that is sent, billions of pieces, arrives where it is intended to go, within just a few days. Really quite remarkable, even though the overall Postal Service is going bankrupt.

Well, Andrew, from someone who just retired from the post office after 30 years of service, I am sorry to tell you that there are no longer set restrictions on first class mail. As part of the overhaul from the post office, almost going bankrupt, the delivery standards were lifted. This allowed the post office to lighten up on their overtime and hire cheaper labor. It should only take 3 days for a piece of mail to get across the United States, and in most cases I do believe it still happens. However, from what I have heard my friends who are still employed there, sometimes mail can go unwork for up to a week. I have seen mail in a three-state area take up to 7 days. One thing that will really help your chances, is if your address and zip + 4 is written very clearly so that the letter machine takes it and sorts it through the first run. If, because of messy writing, a bulgy letter, or incorrect postage, etc, your letter could end up in the manual case. This is the last place that you want your letter to end up, as it is thrown by hand whenever they can find spare people to send over to the manual cases. Good luck, and I think on average your letter would get there within 3 business days, but there are no guarantees unless you pay the high price for Express Mail.

When you send a letter, it goes to a central processing center nearest to your post office. There a machine 'reads' the address and sorts the mail by state, foreign or local. Local mail gets sent to the post office nearest to the addressee. Foreign goes to another processing center on the coasts. Mail to another state gets sent to a central processing center in that state then on to the post office of the addressee.
Edit: When the machine at the central processing center first reads the address on the letter, it puts the bar code at the bottom which then makes it easier for the subsequent machines to sort your letter to the right place following the order I put above.

I work at a mail forwarding facility. And it's our experience that first class mail generally takes the following amount of time:

• 1 business day to the same county or neighboring counties you mailed the letter from.
• 2-3 business days to the same region. My definition of a region is either the state itself itself if it is smaller than half the size of California. For example, it normally takes 2-3 days to mail something from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
• 3-5 business days across the country.

Delivery times do differ and may increase depending on many factors. Here's a short list:

• If you live in a populated city, such as capitals or large cities like New York City, then you'll likely get your mail faster than if you live in a rural or small town.
• Occasionally, misdelivery or misrouting occurs, which will cause mail to be redirected. Redirecting may increase delivery time up to 3 weeks.
• Weather conditions may adversely affect delivery schedule. This is especially true if you live in places that snows.

To be safe, I would usually say that it takes 3-5 business days to have mail delivered IF nothing happens to the mail piece during transit.

It's committed for 2 day delivery.

Depending on the destination zip code, might be next day though.

Here's how it works:

We have these long automation machines that process mail. (dbcs) thereare between 180-240 bins where the mail comes out of. First ‘pass' its magically sorted in prep for ‘pass 2'. During pass 2, the mailed is sorted into ‘delivery walk sequence'. So, the letter carriers receive the mail in the order that they walk the route.

mail is coming in and sorted by zip code at the same time pass 1 is being run on other machines. Folks run around grabbing today's mail and try to inject the new mail during pass 1.

Buffalo NY is #1 in the nation for achieving this, but all PO's try and get as much as possible out for next day delivery.

It's not a requirement. However, we all try and exceed requirements and customer expectations for service everyday.

There are several steps in processing mail, and each stage takes about a day.

Day 1: Mail your letter. That night, it should be at the regional processing plant.

Day 2: Your letter could be out for delivery with a carrier if the destination was an office served by the same processing plant, but this is unlikely when it's '4 hours away’.

Day 2/3: It's being sorted at the second processing plant after arriving from the first sometime on day 1/2.

Day 3/4: It should have arrived at the local office and routed to a P.O. box or to the appropriate carrier's route for delivery.

Mail does occasionally get missorted or misdelivered, this adds one or more days to the final delivery time. Processing plants do occasionally encounter issues which delay sorting of mail. Trucks hauling mail between plants are sometimes involved in accidents or weather delays. Bad things occasionally occur to letter carriers resulting in a delay in mail delivery.

Most likely, yes. Depending on when it’s picked up, the carrier may have it in the vehicle all day. When she/he dumps the mail, it will be in the afternoon or early evening by 5 or 6pm. Your mail may sit overnight, before being processed the next day.

I was one of the first female mail carriers in the early 60’s, so I know a little bit about mail services, even though things have changed a lot since then.

Some reasons not to leave mail for the carrier:

• mailboxes are targets for identity thieves who look for “red” flags
• the carrier may misplace the envelope; it happens
• the bill may not get paid on time, and you’ll owe more $$$

A short, but true story: My landlord always waited until he got a 3 day notice from PGE, then he’d write a check, and put the envelope in his mailbox. His box was hidden from the street on the side of his garage door, so it was fairly safe, but he didn’t get mail everyday.

When his power was shut off, he became enraged, because he “paid” the bill by putting the envelope in his mailbox! True story….

I recommend that if the mail has a time priority, it’s best to actually take it inside, rather than leave it in the box outside the post office. Consider the worst possible scenario, like a gust of wind just at the time it’s being emptied, and your envelope can’t be caught. The sooner your mail is in the PO, the faster it will get processed.

This is another true story from my mail carrier days. In the middle of the work day, I had a serious accident with mail still needing to be delivered, and also outgoing mail I’d taken from mailboxes. All that mail was delayed while I was pried from my vehicle, and taken to the hospital, with shattered bones in my arm, and a compound fracture in my leg.

Just a few things to consider….

How long does it take to get mail from Pennsylvania to Missouri? Seems like a lot of people ask this type of question. Here is my standard reply because I don’t think people are fully aware of the process.

The answer is pretty much the same for going across town or across country. Although there are always exceptions to every rule, the basic life of a letter within the Postal Service is 2-3 days (or more specifically 48 - 72 hours). This is broken down into 3 phases called Collection, Sorting and Processing, and Delivery.

The collection phase starts every day with mail being placed in mailboxes or any of the mail entry points. The mail is collected and brought to local branches by all the carriers and mail handlers. It is combined and transferred to the nearest Sectional Center Facility (aka Mail Processing Center) for your surrounding area, and that takes about 12 hours for all of it to be gathered.

At the MPC the sorting and processing occurs. The processing includes the cancelling of the stamps and postage and the separation of packages and flats. All the mail that is going to be redistributed to the surrounding local facilities is called incoming. All the mail that is going to another Sectional Center is considered outgoing. Depending on the distance, the letter will either be loaded on a truck, or be sorted and bagged to fly out of the local airport. The distance between SCF’s is usually irrelevant as it all happens overnight on either commercial airlines or a truck contracted to haul mail. Pretty much, every flight that travels between the urban areas has several bags of mail in their cargo hold. Of course, going from Pennsylvania to Missouri, may involve some switches and layovers, but this process rarely takes more than 12 hours.

The last phase gets the letter to the destination SCF where the next day of sorting and processing has already begun for that day. The mail from the airport can skip the processing part (because it already went through that,) and is combined with the incoming mail for that SCF and is sorted to all the local branches surrounding that Center. By late afternoon to evening it has already been transported to the surrounding branches and is sorted overnight by local clerks to the individual carriers who pick it up in the morning. Depending where you are on their route (beginning or end) this could take another 6-12 hours.

The USPS provides more information on their website and delivery times can be found here: Shipping & Mailing | USPS

Generally when you mail a letter from/to the same 3 digit zip code, if mailed before 5:00 p.m., 80–90 % chance you will get the letter the following day. When receiving mail from another 3 digit zip code, geography plays an important role. Generally the last pick up of mail is 5:00p.m. Although you may have dropped your letter sooner, the dispatch time to the zip that you are mailing to (from a collection facility) may not be until 8:00p.m. That is giving all of the smaller ( originating facilities) time to get their mail to the main collection station so your mail is already 1 day in transit. Then depending on the destination of your mail, 2–3 days may have elapsed (processing and transportation) before it arrives at the destinating facility, to the station, to the carrier, to your home.

If a letter was mailed on Tuesday from my mailbox, how long will it take to be delivered in Charlotte, SC? Seems like a lot of people ask this type of question. Here is my standard reply because I don’t think people are fully aware of the process.

The answer is pretty much the same for going across town or across country. Although there are always exceptions to every rule, the basic life of a letter within the Postal Service is 2-3 days (or more specifically 48 - 72 hours). This is broken down into 3 phases called Collection, Sorting and Processing, and Delivery.

The collection phase starts every day with mail being placed in mailboxes or any of the mail entry points. The mail is collected and brought to local branches by all the carriers and mail handlers. It is combined and transferred to the nearest Sectional Center Facility (aka Mail Processing Center) for your surrounding area, and that takes about 12 hours for all of it to be gathered.

At the MPC the sorting and processing occurs. The processing includes the cancelling of the stamps and postage and the separation of packages and flats. All the mail that is going to be redistributed to the surrounding areas (ZIP codes serviced by this facility) is called incoming. All the mail that is going to another Sectional Center (ZIP codes serviced by another Facility) is considered outgoing.

Depending on the distance, the letter will either be loaded on a truck, or be sorted and bagged to fly out of the local airport. The distance between SCF’s is usually irrelevant as it all happens overnight on either commercial airlines or a truck contracted to haul mail. Pretty much, every flight that travels between the urban metropolitan areas has several bags of mail in their cargo hold. Of course, going from your local MPC to Charlotte, may involve some switches and layovers, but this process rarely takes more than 12 hours.

The last phase gets the letter to the destination SCF where the next day of sorting and processing has already begun for that day. The mail from the airport can skip the processing part (because it already went through that,) and is combined with the incoming mail for that SCF and is sorted to all the local branches surrounding that Center. By late afternoon to evening it has already been transported to the surrounding branches and is sorted overnight by local clerks to the individual carriers who pick it up in the morning. Depending where you are on their route (beginning or end) this could take another 6-12 hours.

The USPS provides more information on their website and delivery times can be found here: Shipping & Mailing | USPS

Three days is the standard, depending on the time if days it was mailed. I'm not sure how you know when the refund was mailed, but depending on who told you, they may be totally ignorant of their internal processes. I am doubting they have that much control of the system to know when it was actually mailed. Once it's printed, I'm not aware of any internal tracking ability for mailers that are in use. There may be some, but it would be expensive to implement, and there would be no value added for the IRS to track such information. I'd assume at least a 7 day window from the time the return is approved for refund till the time the check is printed and actually on the USPS truck headed to the processing facility. You may not be interested in this next bit of information, but some might be.

A tool is available to see the service standards from any zip code at the following link:

United States Postal Service

There are quite a number of reasons that this happens. You may be close to an airport with airlines that make better connections than other places. Most mail moves by truck so traffic and highway conditions and weather or construction impact surface travel. Private contractors are engaged to transport mail from place to place, and they have different rules for their workers than the Postal Service has for its people. Generally speaking, mail within a state shouldn’t take more than two days, even in California, Texas, or Montana, while mail to destinations over about 300 miles is delivered in three days after mailing. We are spoiled here in the U.S. our mail travels very fast compared to most other countries, and like no other country our size.

It could reach another state that same day if you use one of those 24/7 post offices (I have only seen them at airports).

Mail moves every single day. Even Sunday, even holidays. Every postal branch has employees working every single day to accept incoming pallets or do deliveries (most likely Amazon, but some overnights also).

Therefore if you go to one of those post offices and mail something early in the day, it could theoretically be in another state by the end of Sunday. It may not be the state you intend your mail to ultimately get to, but it still could physically be in another state while en route.

Good question AND don’t know.

About 30 years ago (and I have lived in the same place for 48 years) I sent a progress payment check to my dentist’s office in partial payment for surgery he had performed. Three weeks later the envelope was returned to me, labeled “no such address” or some such nonsense. The dentist’s office is two miles from my home. I drove the un-opened envelope containing the check to the dentist’s office and hand delivered it to the lady behind the desk. Humans deliver the mail. Humans make errors. I am glad I was able to drive the check to the dentist’s office.

IN ADDITION, now when I send a check in payment for a service or a product, I make a photocopy of the check and the billing statement before sending it out. A medical office recently sent me monthly bill after monthly bill for a medical service it had provided to me, and I ended up writing a replacement check to the organization and included a photocopy of the check and billing I had originally mailed months before. The replacement check did clear the bank. I am thinking that the original check was lost in the mails. This happens. It is irritating but it happens.

A few things you need to clarify.

1. Are you asking about the Post Office, UPS, FedEx or some other company etc…assuming you mean USPS…
2. Are you talking a standard stamp or paying for special delivery?
3. What is it you mean by New York…NYC or upstate NY…Big difference if you are mailing from Syracuse NY then Manhattan NY
4. What do you mean by “mail” a letter, dropping it in a mail box where it might sit for a full day or two depending on when the pickups are…or dropping it in a mail slot at an actual post office.
5. Where in New Jersey is also a factor…

There are just too many factors to answer your question definitively.

I have mailed letters to friends in NJ and had them receive them the next day with a standard stamp. and other letters took 2–3 days…with no rhyme or reason.

USPS Delivery Times by Zip Code

When trying to determine mail delivery times by address, using the zip code calculator is the best way to calculate direct mail delivery time. It is very easy to use these tools. You need three pieces of information: the origin zip code, the destination zip code, and the type of service you are using to send the mail/package.

After entering this information, the calculator will do the rest. Using a zip code calculator is the best way to ensure that your snail mail arrives on time.

Two to five days. Likely 4 days.

Depends on point of origin and destination. When I worked at a tiny post office in central Colorado, we had PO Box delivery only. If a local resident came in and wanted to mail a letter or card to someone in town, the addressee would have their mail in their box usually within the hour or at least by COB that day. Within CONUS, letters used to take no longer than about 5 business days. Then again, if someone were to mail a letter to American Samoa, the transit time could be as long as two weeks. To third world countries, even longer. To PRC, Iran, Cuba, Russia (to name the ones I can recall) your mail may not ever make it to the addressee, especially if there even appears to be something valuable inside; your mail just might get “lost.”

There are mainly 2 reasons affect the package shipping from China. The first one is stock, the second one is the shipping service.

If you place order on Alibaba or Aliexpress or other Chinese platform, you will need to ask if they have stock or when they can send the products you orders, as it usually affects the delivery time especially in such bad economy, more and more suppliers have no much stock inventory.

Another concern is the shipping service, for example, you place order on Aliexpress for free delivery, the delivery time cannot be good for sure as the supplier havent charge for faster delivery.

How to shipping from China to eu within in 7 to 15 days or even faster delivery time?

If you need ship fast from China, then you can inquire the Chinese shipping agent or freight forwarder for faster shipping delivery service. Usually standard delivery time from China to EU USA are 7 to 15 days, if you need even faster delivery then you may choose dhl or fedex ups to ship from China.

The USPS provides different delivery options across the United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. Merchants can choose economical options like First-Class Package Service for reliable, timely delivery or more expensive services like Priority Mail Express for overnight delivery.

The USPS has more than 30,000 retail locations within the U.S., making package sending and drop-offs easier. The table below outlines the most popular domestic USPS delivery hours per service.