USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope Vs Overnight Services
Do you use FedEx or UPS for overnight or a 2 day shipping services? You should know that there are four advantages to using The Post Office for your priority shipping needs.
Priority Mail Flat Rate envelopes can be a great alternative to overnight services.
USPS has Saturday delivery. That gives the post office 52 extra days of delivery every single year. That is nearly two months. You can deliver on Saturday with another company but it will cost you extra. The USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate envelope reaches 90% of the US within 2 days. If you need to overnight your documents on a Friday they will not be delivered until Monday. The flat rate envelope will in all likelihood arrive the same day as the overnight shipment would arrive.
The post office has the most wide spread fleet of vehicles of any shipping company in the US. No other company delivers to literally every address every day. Every small parcel company has lost or damaged packages. USPS Priority Mail Service levels are equal to or better than any of the competition. Stolen packages happen much more infrequently because it is a federal crime to steal mail. There are federal inspectors monitoring each and every sorting facility to insure the safety of your packages. The United States Postal Service is actually to most recognized name for delivery reliability even though some people complain about it.
Frequently people choose not to use the post office because they don't offer tracking services. That is no longer true. The post office has tracking capabilities for both priority and express mail. They have invested millions of dollars in to hand held scanners and other tracking equipment. In some ways their tracking capabilities surpass what FedEx and UPS use. FedEx and UPS track according to where a shipment should be.
For example if you send a small box from LA to NY you will get updates every so often with where your package should be based on where the truck is scheduled to be. But what if you package was not put on that truck? You will not know exactly where it is. The post office has fewer scans and slower updates but they are of your actual package at its actual location. USPS tracking can be more accurate and a little slower.
The above are great reasons to use USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate envelopes. But probably the number one reason is the price. With USPS Discounts you can ship your documents and have them arrive in two days for $4.76 to anywhere in the country. The same shipment may cost you as much as $17-$20 for a true overnight delivery. A $10-$15 saving per document could literally save your company hundreds or even thousands of dollars every quarter of every fiscal year.
Priority Mail is not a guaranteed service. USPS express mail will offer a service guarantee but you will pay extra for that guarantee. FedEx and UPS will give you a guarantee of delivery and offer delivery times in the morning afternoon or late afternoon. Priority Mail is delivered when the daily letter carrier arrives at the location. A good percentage of guaranteed delivers that do not make it by the specified delivery time are never claimed. They play the percentages that if it is not there on time that a claim will not be filed anyway. Obviously overnight services will be faster than priority mail.
Priority Mail verses other express service is not a true apples to apples comparison. But the question you need to ask is if you can accept your document arriving one day later for 30% of the price you were paying before. For materials that need to arrive the next day without question the answer is probably no. But if it needs to get there soon but it is not vitally important to send it overnight then by all means the USPS Priority Flat Rate envelope is an option that merits consideration.
Posted on August 22, 2018
