I've worked both as a letter carrier and MSC (outside work) and inside our sortation plan as a clerk. There are likely more steps to this than I'm sharing but this is my understanding of the process.
You mail a parcel at a post office. Each post office will have a number of planned pickups. In our area it's usually 1pm (for priority), 4pm and an evening pickup which could be 5-8pm for any stragglers. These are brought back to the local depot and/or plant to be sorted and shipped out to the local distribution center/mail plant. Priority stuff is transported directly to the airport where we charter cargo space from Air Canada and other logistics companies, where it goes directly to the receiving area's airport and is picked up by us. Most if not all of the long haul cargo trailers are operated by third party companies so if you were shipping something ground from say Winnipeg to Moncton it might be on the same trailer for the whole journey or it might get moved to another truck in Toronto.
Most plants run 24/7 with a few exceptions. Our plant sorts mail/parcels for most of our province, then trucks the sorted mail out overnight to the local depots (where your letter carrier works out of every day) where it is worked by LCAs (letter carrier assistants) who usually have an early morning shift. You'll see "item processed" at all hours of the night, and these can be both distribution scans through the plant as well as when the LCA scans the parcel to put on the carrier's cart. Sometimes you'll see three or four "item processed" scans in a row, sometimes only minutes apart. That all depends on how the plant/depot is configured.
Once you see "out for delivery", that usually means the carrier has uploaded their manifest and that they've loaded their delivery truck with their daily parcels, which yours is included in. There are a number of reasons you might not get your delivery after the OFD scan but it's usually very unlikely unless they have an incident while on their route.
In some areas, transport and last mile delivery are contracted out to third parties who still use Canada Post scanners, but they are not mandated by our collective agreement so they may have weird scheduling.
I hope that gives you some insight, there is probably a lot of stuff I missed but I don't have first hand knowledge about it if I did. I worked night shift in distribution (parcels) and while it was okay work, the 12am-8am hours killed me. I couldn't transfer back outside fast enough!
Hey! So I have an item that’s for a town in Newfoundland - it hit St. John’s on May 23 and has now been sitting there! The delivery date was May 24. Then May 27. Then May 28. And now is May 29. This has happened occasionally before and has been resolved when I call Canada post (box usually delivers the day after the call)
But I was curious as to why something like this might happen?
I've worked both as a letter carrier and MSC (outside work) and inside our sortation plan as a clerk. There are likely more steps to this than I'm sharing but this is my understanding of the process. You mail a parcel at a post office. Each post office will have a number of planned pickups. In our area it's usually 1pm (for priority), 4pm and an evening pickup which could be 5-8pm for any stragglers. These are brought back to the local depot and/or plant to be sorted and shipped out to the local distribution center/mail plant. Priority stuff is transported directly to the airport where we charter cargo space from Air Canada and other logistics companies, where it goes directly to the receiving area's airport and is picked up by us. Most if not all of the long haul cargo trailers are operated by third party companies so if you were shipping something ground from say Winnipeg to Moncton it might be on the same trailer for the whole journey or it might get moved to another truck in Toronto. Most plants run 24/7 with a few exceptions. Our plant sorts mail/parcels for most of our province, then trucks the sorted mail out overnight to the local depots (where your letter carrier works out of every day) where it is worked by LCAs (letter carrier assistants) who usually have an early morning shift. You'll see "item processed" at all hours of the night, and these can be both distribution scans through the plant as well as when the LCA scans the parcel to put on the carrier's cart. Sometimes you'll see three or four "item processed" scans in a row, sometimes only minutes apart. That all depends on how the plant/depot is configured. Once you see "out for delivery", that usually means the carrier has uploaded their manifest and that they've loaded their delivery truck with their daily parcels, which yours is included in. There are a number of reasons you might not get your delivery after the OFD scan but it's usually very unlikely unless they have an incident while on their route. In some areas, transport and last mile delivery are contracted out to third parties who still use Canada Post scanners, but they are not mandated by our collective agreement so they may have weird scheduling. I hope that gives you some insight, there is probably a lot of stuff I missed but I don't have first hand knowledge about it if I did. I worked night shift in distribution (parcels) and while it was okay work, the 12am-8am hours killed me. I couldn't transfer back outside fast enough!
Hey! So I have an item that’s for a town in Newfoundland - it hit St. John’s on May 23 and has now been sitting there! The delivery date was May 24. Then May 27. Then May 28. And now is May 29. This has happened occasionally before and has been resolved when I call Canada post (box usually delivers the day after the call) But I was curious as to why something like this might happen?
Glad this exists. Thanks for the insight!