If you are a resident of western or central Oregon who still has some online holiday shopping to do, you may want to get it taken care of soon.
Data published by Auto DS, a company that handles shipping logistics and warehousing for small businesses, found that Eugene-Springfield and Bend-Redmond were in a tie for the slowest delivery times for U.S. Postal Service Ground Advantage packages in the continental U.S.
Also in the tie were Salem, Medford, McMinnville and three cities in Snohomish County, Washington.
The group all averaged 4.82 days for a package to be delivered. That time was nearly two days longer than the fastest delivery locations, held by Columbus, Ohio and three surrounding cities.
While some Pacific Northwest times were among the slowest, they were less than half of the time it takes to send a package to the locations that the study mentioned in Alaska (nearly 11 days) and Hawaii (just over 12 days).
Shipping times can be affected by a variety of factors, according to Auto DS’ Mario Martinez.
“One could be mountainous geography, another could be that there’s fewer routes and also these cities could be farther from the central processing hub,” he said.
USPS’ website shows that Oregon has processing facilities in Bend, Springfield, Medford, Pendleton and two in Portland. The company has held multiple events in recent months aimed at attracting carriers on rural routes.
Auto DS looked at the average delivery time for basic US Postal Service ground-shipped packages to the ten most populous ZIP codes in each state.
“We’re in the busiest shipping and shopping times of the year,” said Martinez. “With Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the holidays, it can get very cluttered, very backed up. So if shoppers want to make sure they receive their products or their gifts on-time for Christmas, they need to get their orders in now."
Martinez said those who want their packages by Dec. 24 should probably order anything they want by Friday.
While the study measured USPS shipping, Martinez said shipping times could be similar for other parcel carriers since similar conditions may apply to those companies and since logistics companies will sometimes hand off a package to another company to complete a shipment.
