I think part of the problem here is that you guys are trying to apply logic to these situations.
Big Mistake!
Let me give a USPS example from here. Were I to mail a simple card or letter to my next door neighbor, it goes to the local PO and gets put on a truck the next day to head down south about 300 miles to a distribution center in a town near LA, Santa Clarita to be exact. It may get sorted and loaded on a truck back out the next day ... or not, and may linger there for a few days (or longer if a weekend is involved) before getting on a route truck that may or may not have my town as a direct destination. Thus it may get off for a few more days in places like Bakersfield, Turlock or Fresno, all on the west side of the Sierra, and way out of the way from, and in no way along a direct line to, my town. Sooner or later, it does find its way onto a truck that is actually headed up the east side of the Sierra, and eventually makes it back to my town, sometime in the afternoon too late for that days deliveries. So early the next morning it is route sorted by the local delivery contractors, and perhaps delivered to the correct address, not always the case, before too late that same afternoon. By the time it was delivered next door, it may well have traveled over 1,000 miles, but certainly at the very minimum it had traveled over 600, while being loaded and unloaded on and off of several trucks, with innumerable sortings in between.
I have had standard mail take as much as ten days to be delivered here in town.
Once had a nice calendar mailed to my by family from about 250 miles away, as the crow flies, mailed before New Years, but it wasn't delivered until almost half way through the year, with prominent tire tracks across the face of it. As embarrassing as that should have been, I'm surprised any carrier had the gumption to actually make the final delivery ... but they probably didn't even notice!