news Ask Torontoist: How Fast Slow Does the Mail Go?

Ask Torontoist features questions posed by you, and answered by our elite team of specially trained investigative experts (also known as our staff). Send your questions to [email protected].



Reader Nik Broukhanski asks:





Torontoist answers:

Three letters reached their destinations within two days.

One letter reached its destination in three days.

Two letters took fourteen and eighteen days to reach their respective destinations.

Two letters have not materialized as of publication: one of these was going to the Island, the other was being sent up the block.

In conclusion, there’s a 50% chance of a letter zipping across the city in three days or less, but there’s also a 50% chance that it will take two to three weeks or, possibly, not arrive at all.

Canada Post’s Eugene Knapik broke the intra-Toronto mailing process down for us. Any letter sent in the GTA is brought to a facility on Eastern Avenue and sorted there. For the most part, this is done mechanically using a “multi-line optical character reader” that scans the letters’ addresses and sends them into different bins, but anything awkwardly shaped and too thick for the machine is sifted by hand. Normally, Knapik says, a letter sent on the afternoon of any given day should be delivered to the facility that day, sorted overnight, and arrive at a local depot in time for the next morning’s delivery. When we asked him about what could slow a piece of mail’s pace to, say, fourteen or eighteen days, he says that an incorrect address or incorrect postage are common culprits. He admits that the letter could have been mis-sorted. Canada Post, Knapik says, hits its targets for delivery time with 96% accuracy.