Haines residents are used to slow package delivery times, but perhaps not this slow. 

At Foundroot, which sells farming and gardening supplies, owner Nick Schlosstein said shipping for the business has grown noticeably less reliable in recent months, particularly with priority mail. 

One envelope of seeds shipped Jan. 26 to Schlosstein in Haines via priority mail still had not arrived a month later. 

And it wasn’t just the shipping time, either. Schlosstein’s tracking of the package revealed it being scanned in and out of the United States Postal Service’s Seattle distribution center for days on end — “maybe nine times,” Schlosstein said. 

It was a similar story with at least one other local business that relies heavily on the USPS. Tyler Scovill, at The Parts Place, said ordering parts through the postal service in recent months has come with long delays. Through package tracking, Scovill also reported seeing his packages “bouncing all around Washington.” Like Schlosstein, Scovill said his issues had been particularly apparent with priority mail. 

Those complaints were echoed in community Facebook groups around the region, as well.

Data from the USPS Inspector General’s office does lend some credence to locals’ claims of an issue. According to that data, package deliveries to Alaska in 2026 have lagged behind performance standards — delivery time goals set for each zip code. 

Alaska’s figure of 11.3% below standards is the worst mark in the country. For package deliveries to Haines from the Lower 48, the USPS standard ranges from three days for priority shipping, to 18 days for ground transport from the Northeast.

It does seem to be more complicated than just a chronic Alaska problem, too. No package data exists before the start of this year, but for first class mail delivery Alaska is currently the top performing state in the country. 

There’s no official answer for whether there actually is a problem, and what the cause of such a problem might be. A spokesperson for USPS operations in Washington State directed questions to a different spokesperson for USPS Alaska operations. That spokesperson, James Boxrud, did not respond to a request for comment this week. 

The USPS Seattle Distribution Center, where Schlosstein saw his package held in purgatory, is part of a major ongoing USPS overhaul. And the specific type of overhaul has caused slowdowns, according to federal oversight. 

In 2021, the postal service announced a sweeping overhaul to operations, dubbed the “Delivering for America Plan,” aimed largely to cut costs for the struggling agency. 

A major component of the plan is to consolidate facilities into a number of large, regional hubs called Regional Processing and Distribution Centers (RPDC). 

According to a recent inspector general audit, as of mid-2025, the USPS had opened 22% of these planned hubs, but the rollout has been “plagued by unexpected gridlock, especially during high volume seasons.”

Seattle is planned as one of these regional hubs. The USPS doesn’t have a comprehensive list of RPDCs that are officially active, but USPS spokesperson Janella Herron confirmed this week that the Seattle facility is not yet acting as an RPDC. 

It is, however, already confirmed to be functioning as a regional transfer hub — a different classification created by the Delivering for America plan. 

The inspector general’s September 2025 report on the transport hub rollout reported significant underperformance of national standards at the new regional transfer hubs. 

Many of the exact statistics, including performance statistics for the Seattle facility, were redacted in the report.