Postal Letter

Why does USPS tracking say I won't see tracking updates for 4 days?

I ordered something from Amazon & its coming from usps. It was sent from Phoenix,AZ & I live in Chicago, Ill. So as soon as it shipped from Phoenix the tracking told me i wont see any updates for the 4 next days, why?

Public Comments

1. cuz it takes a while to ship over non business days (weekends) sorry not takes a while but they don't ship over weekends
2. Call a local branch of the United States Postal Service and ask them. They will give you the best answer.
3. The USPS tracking system is the worst in the world Use this one for USPS instead: https://tracking.mailexpress.biz How a another company can know more about a package than the shipper is a mystery to me but they do.
4. I have never seen a notice like that when using Track & Confirm. Usually it says something to the effect that any updates would be available later in the evening. Amazon must have shown that disclaimer. It is likely because Amazon uses Delivery Confirmation which is not tracking. As far as being the "worst" tracking, I guess it is. There is a reason for that. With USPS, ONLY Express mail has true end to end tracking. Delivery Confirmation, which is something that most people use, was not designed to provide "tracking", only "Confirmation" that an item was "Delivered.. USPS has constantly been adding equipment to provide some enhanced tracking capability to the network and it is still coming along. However, you may have heard that there is a bit of a money crunch at USPS these days so some projects that have not already been funded are being delayed. Too many people expect Delivery Confirmation to act on the same level as UPS or FedEx tracking. That will never happen. That is due to the sheer volume of packages that USPS handles in relation to what UPS or FedEx handle in a day. Last holiday season UPS stated that they expected to deliver over 20 million items on the busiest delivery day. FedEx, around 12 Million. That is certainly a lot to be delivered in only one day. On the other hand, USPS delivered over 700 Million items on that day. Granted, that includes letter mail and other types of mail besides just packages, but USPS also delivered millions of UPS Mail Innovations and FedEx SmartPost packages that same day. Areas that UPS and FedEx do not wish to deliver to. Each Carrier made around 400 stops, on average, that day. How many stops do you think that a UPS or FedEx driver has to make in a day? 100? 150? It is a simple logistical thing and the data collected from scans throughout the day are uploaded from approximately 50,000 locations starting at around 9, local time. Anyway, it is a simple volume thing. I am sure that this answer will get a few thumbs down responses, but at least you have a little better understanding of the difference of the inner workings of the package carriers.