Holiday Shipping Alert: These are Michigan’s Fastest Cities for Parcel Delivery Ahead of Christmas

Photo by RDNE Stock project

Article courtesy of AutoDS 

• The Ohio cities Hilliard, Lancaster, Delaware, and Columbus share the top spot for cities with the fastest delivery times across the United States.
• Michigan cities Ypsilanti, Taylor, Macomb, Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Canton, and Westland all rank among the top 10 cities with the fastest delivery times across the United States. 
• Hawaiians are stuck waiting the longest for packages, with Hawaii cities averaging 12.23 days for package deliveries.

New research shows just how uneven delivery times are across America – with customers in some states waiting more than four times longer for their packages than others. And with Christmas just around the corner, those delays couldn’t come at a worse time.

Experts at e-commerce dropshipping platform AutoDS looked into USPS Ground Advantage statistics to identify the ares with the shortest and longest wait times for packages.

Michigan findings:

As retailers brace for Black Friday, Michigan stands out for all the right reasons: eight cities rank among the fastest in the U.S. for parcel delivery, giving local shoppers one of the best chances of receiving orders on time.

Ypsilanti, Taylor, Macomb, Dearborn, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Canton, and Westland rank joint seventh with residents receiving their orders in 3.06 days.

On average, parcels below 1 lb are delivered in 2.99 days, and parcels over 1 lb and up to 70 lbs are delivered in 3.13 days.

In contrast, Michigan’s Grand Blanc ranks 41st and East Lansing ranks 43rd, with an average wait of 4.05 and 4.06 days, respectively.

Top three cities for the fastest mail delivery

Four Ohio cities share the top spot, with postal workers delivering packages to homes in just 2.93 days on average in Hilliard, Lancaster, Delaware, and Columbus.

For parcels below 1 lb, the average delivery time drops slightly to 2.86 days, while for those up to 70 lbs, the average time is 3 days.

Ohio’s Mason and Kentucky’s Florence tie for second place, with parcels arriving in 2.96 days on average in the two cities. For parcels below 1 lb, the average delivery time is 2.89 days, while for larger parcels it increases to 3.03 days.

Another Ohio city, Medina, ranks joint third, with two Pennsylvania cities, Greensburg and Washington. On average, residents receive orders in 2.99 days. The delivery time drops to 2.92 days for parcels below 1 lb and increases to 3.06 days for those up to 70 lbs.

Slowest mail delivery cities

Hawaii suffers from the nation’s slowest mail service, with an average delivery time of 12.23 days found in ten cities in the state: Ewa Beach, Waipahu, Kaneohe, Honolulu, Mililani, Waianae, Kailua, Kapolei, Hilo, and Aiea.

This means residents face a wait four times longer for delivery than those in Ohio’s speediest cities.

Alaska ranks just slightly better than Hawaii. Parcels take the second longest to arrive for residents in Juneau and Sitka, with an average wait of 10.92 days.

The third-slowest wait time of 10.91 days is shared across eight Alaska cities: Wasilla, Palmer, Soldotna, Seward, Anchorage, Eagle River, Chugiak, and Fairbanks. For residents in these cities, a package shipped on Monday won’t arrive until the following Thursday under typical conditions.

Slowest mail delivery cities (Continental US)

Of the contiguous United States, Washington and Oregon have the poorest delivery performance.

Three Washington cities (Everett, Lake Stevens, and Marysville) and seven Oregon cities (Eugene, Salem, Bend, Medford, Redmond, Springfield, and McMinnville) share the slowest delivery wait time of 4.82 days.

While significantly slower than Ohio’s record-setting cities, residents in Washington and Oregon still receive mail nearly three times faster than their counterparts in Hawaii and Alaska.

“As we head into the busiest shopping period of the year, from Black Friday right through to Christmas week, delivery performance really matters,” says Lior Pozin, founder and CEO of AutoDS. “In top-ranking cities like those in Ohio, customers have a much better chance of getting their gifts on time, even when parcel volumes surge.

“If you’re buying gift for loved ones in slower-performing regions, it’s worth ordering a little earlier. A small change in timing can mean the difference between a gift arriving before Christmas or after the holidays.”

Sources:

• USPS delivery maps
• Census data

Methodology:

The campaign retrieved USPS delivery maps and Census data, overlaid delivery regions on state boundaries, calculated each ZIP code’s population-weighted average delivery days for two Ground Advantage tiers, and ranked the top 10 most populous ZIP codes per state by speed.

The study identified each city’s most populous ZIP codes using Census data and then selected the top 10 per state.

Delivery-time data was then retrieved from the USPS service-standard maps for two Ground Advantage tiers:

• Below 1 lb
• Over 1 lb and up to 70 lbs.

Each ZIP code’s delivery regions were overlaid onto state boundaries. For states split across multiple delivery regions, the study apportioned by the share of that state’s population based on how much the region overlapped the state.

The study then computed a population-weighted average delivery time for each ZIP code to every destination state. The ZIP codes within each state were then ranked by their average delivery time.

Top U.S. cities for fastest mail delivery