Why has the price of sending a package gone up?

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Carol Castillo from Petaluma, California, asks:

Why does it cost so much to send a package now? I had a small padded envelope that weighed 1.3 ounces and the cheapest price at both UPS and the Post Office was $14! It was going less than 30 miles away.

The price of mailing a package has gone up in recent years as carriers deal with inflationary pressures.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Postal Service said it would raise shipping prices by 8% due to rising transportation costs, an increase that will be in effect from April of this year to Jan. 17, 2027. This will apply to its fast-shipping options, which include Priority Mail and Priority Mail Express; its cheaper USPS Ground Advantage option; and Parcel Select, which is for "high-volume shippers."

In 2020, a padded flat-rate envelope via priority mail through the U.S. Postal Service cost $8.40. Now it costs $14.

The price of other mail has also increased since 2020 — a 1-ounce letter using a Forever Stamp has risen from 55 cents to 82 cents, while domestic postcards have increased from 35 cents to 65 cents.

In late 2025, both FedEx and the United Parcel Service announced they were raising their package shipping rates by 5.9%. Both companies raise their prices around this amount on an annual basis.

The Postal Service's rates have gone up more often than they used to. Historically, they'd increase every few years, then after the Great Recession, rates started going up on an annual basis. Under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who served as head from 2020 to 2025, rate hikes started increasing on a semi-annual basis, said Christopher Shaw, a postal service historian and policy analyst.

And inflation, in general, has meant higher mailing costs. "Prices are going up for everything," Shaw said. "The agency's expenses are going up alongside everything else because their inputs are going up on contracting for mail transportation and fuel costs and all that."

Since January 2020, consumer prices have risen nearly 30%.

The Post Office, under DeJoy's tenure, also started tacking on holiday surcharges during some years, a practice first used by private shipping companies, like UPS and FedEx, Shaw said.

But while some might encounter similar prices on certain packages, like Carol, they offer competitive prices. The Post Office has worked hard to keep its mailing services affordable, said James O'Rourke, a teaching professor emeritus of management and organization at the University of Notre Dame.

"The Post Office serves all Americans, every piece, every address, every day," O'Rourke said.

Over the years, the Post Office's financial situation has deteriorated, Shaw said. There's been a shift to electronic delivery, a trend that accelerated under the Great Recession. Companies like banks, looking to trim their costs, pushed consumers to get their statements delivered online instead of through physical mail, Shaw said.

“And because it provides lots of economically inefficient services to the American people, it's just very hard for [the Post Office] to actually not run a deficit,” Shaw said.

Nearly a quarter of the Post Office’s operating expenses used to be funded through Congressional appropriations. Now it funds its operations through the sale of its own products and services, although it still gets some money from Congress.

Private companies like UPS and FedEx are grappling with the same inflationary issues, leading to higher prices, Shaw said.

"They were sort of the first movers — the innovators, if you will — in some of these additional fees, like around the Christmas shipping season," Shaw said. "So they will move quicker to try to take financial action when costs are going up."