The US Postal Service just announced that their service is going to get slower and costlier. I wonder just how much slower it can get. I’ve been noticing that many parcels I both ship and receive have been taking much longer. And this isn’t a recent occurrence. This has been ramping up for the last few years. Below is an example:

This picture shows the shipping progress of my quarterly Quip toothbrush subscription from last October. The package originated in Hebron, KY which is a Cincinnati, OH suburb. Hebron is roughly 4.5 hours by car from Nashville. Now I realize the shipping progress isn’t as simple as throwing the package in a car, but this is ludicrous. At first glance, it looks like the shipping system is already broken. This image only shows the first 17 days of a process that took nearly a month to complete.

If the process gets any slower, what’s the point?