BALTIMORE — Snail mail is about to get a little slower. The United States Postal Service is slowing down the delivery of small packages.
The Postal Service announced it's making some changes to its First-Class delivery standards in an effort it claims will improve service.
Several Baltimore area post offices already have been plagued with delivery delays throughout the pandemic.
Most people would think the word improvement means faster but the Post Office is slowing down delivery on small First-Class packages to have more time to work on long distance ground deliveries.
The U.S. Postal Service is changing its First-Class delivery standards, but the service is not getting faster.
Instead, the Postal Service is giving itself some extra time to deliver the mail.
As of May 1st, the Post Office will add one to two days onto the delivery time of nearly a third of its First-Class small packages.
Those are packages which weigh less than a pound and often contain much needed prescription drugs.
Officials with the Postal Service believe the additional days for small First-Class packages will balance out the delivery of long distance First-Class mail, essentially allowing themselves to have more time to deliver small packages shipped long distance while speeding up the time to deliver packages shipped short distances.
Besides First-Class mail changes, the Postal Service also plans to speed up its Priority Mail service by a day.
It will drop an additional day for Priority Mail that was added back in 2020.
The slightly faster service will only be for mail delivered over its ground network.
By moving the goal posts, these changes will allow the Post Office to deliver people's mail and still consider it on time.
Officials also believe it could save the post office more than $42 million a year.
