Today is the last day of 2020 and I figured this would be the perfect time to reveal to you how things went so, so wrong with USPS transit this year; a nightmare all USA citizens have watched unfold, yet most cannot understand “why is the parcel not here YET?!”. So here you go; here’s a complete play-by-play:

The disaster began with COVID-19 lockdowns starting in March 2020. When states began limiting, or even ending, in-store shopping it pushed virtually the entire United States (with the exception of a few states) to online ordering. I will admit, this was a blessing in disguise for most online sellers. Here at Big Brand Wholesale.com we watched as orders flooded in; so many orders we didn’t have the manpower to keep up with them so we started coming into work earlier, staying late and working 7-days-a-week. Little did we know back then that this craziness would continue for a long time.

Although our Michigan Governor promised full lockdown would only be 14 days, it quickly turned into “only 30 days” then “only until May 1st”, “Before the end of June”.... Come November 2020 we are still in lockdown with rules that consistently changed; our restaurants, hotels, tattoo shops, nail salons, etc began closing their doors forever due to being unable to continue to afford rent, insurance, utilities and other expenses while being forced to remain closed.  But this also meant an increase in online purchases:  Need your nails done?  Order a kit online and learn how.  Need to go tanning?  Order self tanner online.  Dying for a haircut?  Better buy some scissors from Amazon and find a YouTube tutorial.  ... the parcel quantity began to add-up.

On top of that, in October through November, mail-in voting ballot applications began being sent out in mass.  Here in Wayne County, Michigan, my husband and I both received a ballot application in our mailbox almost every single day (some days we would receive 2 or more each), so I cannot even begin to imagine how many applications were sent... not to mention the millions upon millions of mail-in ballots returned via USPS mail.  However, USPS was somehow sill managing to keep up with the mail; we saw some parcels take 5-days instead of 2, but very few buyers complained about the couple-day-delay.  

THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS:  Then came the last week of November… Pre-Thanksgiving Day sales, then Thanksgiving Day sales followed immediately by Black Friday, Shop Small Saturday and the mother of all online days…. CYBER MONDAY. This is when all of the mail carriers began experiencing parcel overload. To add to the chaos, employees of the carriers were contracting COVID and had to be quarantined for 14 days. In fact, any employee who was in proximity of the infected staff member also had to be quarantined for two weeks, just to ensure that they did not also contract it. This means that USPS is operating with a smaller staff than needed to process parcels, while simultaneously having semi trucks loaded with parcels in literal gridlock outside of their Sorting Facilities; this is something we have never seen before (and hope to never see again):

Between fears of catching Covid and uncertainty if stores are even open for business, in December everyone turned to online Christmas Present Shopping; after all, everyone has been told for 9 months to “stay home, stay safe”.

Meanwhile, at post offices across the nation, the “wall to wall” parcels continued to pile up, to the point that almost all USPS hubs across the United States could no longer move parcels. Transit on millions (yes, MILLIONS) of parcels came to a screeching halt. Online shoppers became angry…. Not at the carriers, but instead at the businesses they purchased the items through. This began to greatly impact the eCommerce community. If you filed a USPS “Missing Mail Search” it would be closed because the parcel isn’t “missing”; USPS knows exactly where it is, they just can’t physically get to it because it is buried under mountains of parcels.

From etsy to eBay to Amazon to .com’s; nobody could guarantee “delivery by Christmas!” and many businesses were taking such a large financial hit from livid buyers demanding refunds that they stopped selling, in hopes that we all wake up from this Transit Nightmare soon.

December 25th came and went without Christmas presents being delivered. Parcels shipped in November are still stuck in transit:

More refunds given out to calm the angry masses. For the first time in 16 years, our company also stopped listing new items for a few days because, like almost all other sellers, we have also been greatly impacted by this craziness.

JANUARY 1st, 2020: It has now been 6 days since Christmas and USPS is starting to process some of the truckloads of parcels that have been sitting since the first week of December. We assume within the next week they will be able to access the parcels that have been buried since November. 

JANUARY 2nd, 2020:  USPS has now been able to access most of our parcels shipped on Cyber Monday.  This is the first day they have a scan since December 4th, when they "got stuck in transit" in Detroit USPS Sorting.