Free · No signup · Updated August 2026

What does your tracking status mean?

Paste the wording your carrier used and get the plain-English version: what it actually means, how long it normally lasts, what to do, and when it genuinely warrants worrying.

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What does your tracking say?paste the carrier's exact wording

Common statuses

Why tracking language is so confusing

There is no standard for tracking vocabulary. Every carrier invented its own, and the same physical event — a parcel entering a sorting hub — appears as “arrived at facility”, “processed through facility”, “arrival scan” or “received at delivery depot” depending on who is carrying it. A parcel that crosses three networks on its way to you produces three vocabularies in one timeline.

Worse, some of the most-seen messages are not events at all. “In transit to next facility” is frequently generated automatically when nothing has been scanned for a day, which means the message people find most alarming is precisely the one that carries the least information.

The dictionary below maps the wordings we see most often onto the canonical events they describe. It is the public version of the normalisation our tracker runs to render one clean timeline across 3,000+ carriers.

In transit vs out for delivery

The most-searched distinction in parcel tracking, and the one that causes the most wasted afternoons waiting by a door:

In transit means the parcel is moving through the network. It says nothing about which day it will arrive. A parcel can be in transit at a depot ten minutes from your house and still be two days away, because it has not been sorted onto a delivery route yet.
Out for delivery means it is physically on a vehicle, on a route, scheduled for today. This is the only status that constitutes a same-day expectation — and even then, a route that runs out of hours will push it to the next working day without anything having gone wrong.

If out for delivery ends without a delivery

It usually goes out again the next working day, automatically. The exceptions are worth checking for: a delivery attempt scan means someone came and could not complete it, and an exception means something needs your input. Both are covered in the dictionary below.

Every status, explained

Each entry covers what the status means, how long it normally lasts, what to do about it, and the point at which it stops being routine.

Label created / Info received

Normal

The sender has bought a label and told the carrier a parcel is coming, but the carrier has not physically scanned it yet. Nothing is moving. The parcel may be sitting on a packing bench, in a mailroom, or in a sack that has not been opened at the first depot.

Normal duration: Usually clears within 1–2 business days of the label being bought.
What to do: If it has not moved in 3–5 business days, chase the seller — not the carrier. The carrier has nothing to look up, because nothing has been scanned.
When to worry: Sellers sometimes buy a label the day an order is placed and ship days later. A stuck 'label created' is far more often a slow warehouse than a lost parcel.

Carrier wordings: shipping label created · label created, not yet in system · info received · information received · pre-shipment · shipment information sent to fedex · order processed: ready for ups · electronic shipping info received · manifest · awaiting item

Picked up / Accepted

Normal

The first physical scan. The carrier now has the parcel and it has entered the network. This is the point at which tracking becomes meaningful.

Normal duration: The first movement scan usually follows within 24 hours.
What to do: Nothing to do. From here, expect a scan every 1–2 days on domestic lanes.
When to worry: No follow-up scan for 4+ business days on a domestic lane is worth a query.

Carrier wordings: picked up · accepted · shipment picked up · acceptance · usps in possession of item · collected from customer · origin scan · posting/collection

In transit

Normal

The parcel is moving through the carrier's network toward its destination. It does not mean the parcel is on a van — most of the time it is on a trailer, on a plane, or sitting in a sortation hub between sorts.

Normal duration: Days on a domestic lane; one to three weeks on an economy international one.
What to do: Nothing. Check again in 48 hours rather than refreshing.
When to worry: 'In transit' with no new scan for 7+ days domestically, or 14+ days internationally, is worth a carrier query.

Carrier wordings: in transit · on the way · shipment in transit · item is in transit · moving through network · in transit, arriving on time

In transit to next facility

Normal

Usually a placeholder rather than an event. Several carriers display this automatically when a parcel has not been scanned for around 24 hours, to reassure you that it has not vanished. It commonly appears on long ground routes where there is genuinely nothing to scan between two hubs.

Normal duration: Can repeat for 2–4 days on cross-country ground routes.
What to do: Wait. Repetition of this message is the single most-reported and least-alarming tracking pattern there is.
When to worry: If it repeats for more than a week with no facility scan, open a trace.

Carrier wordings: in transit to next facility · in transit, arriving late · in transit to destination · departed shipping partner facility · your package is moving within the network

Arrived at facility

Normal

The parcel has been scanned into a sorting centre. Each hub scan is a checkpoint, not a delay — a healthy shipment collects several of them.

Normal duration: Hours, occasionally overnight if it arrives after the last sort.
What to do: Nothing. Watch for the matching departure scan.
When to worry: More than 3 days at one facility without a departure scan suggests a misroute.

Carrier wordings: arrived at facility · arrived at sort facility · arrived at usps regional facility · arrived at hub · processed through facility · received at delivery depot · arrival scan

Departed facility

Normal

The parcel has left a sorting centre on the next leg. Pair it with the previous arrival scan to see how long the hub held it.

Normal duration: Followed by the next arrival scan within 1–3 days.
What to do: Nothing.
When to worry: A departure from a facility far from your address can mean a misroute — but hub networks often route away from you before they route toward you.

Carrier wordings: departed facility · departed usps regional facility · left origin · departure scan · forwarded · processed through regional facility

Customs clearance / Held by customs

Watch it

The parcel has reached the destination country and is with border authorities. Clearance is mostly documentary and automated, but a percentage of parcels is queued for a physical check or held pending a charge.

Normal duration: Hours to 2 days by express courier; 2–10 days by post.
What to do: Check for a duty or tax request — an unpaid charge is the most common reason a parcel stops here. Then check the description on the customs declaration is specific enough to classify.
When to worry: Beyond 14 days with no message, contact the carrier. Postal operators may hold a parcel up to around 30 days before returning it.

Carrier wordings: customs clearance · import clearance · held by customs · held at customs · awaiting customs inspection · clearance delay · customs status updated · presented to import customs · release from import customs · retention

Out for delivery

Normal

The parcel is on a local delivery vehicle and is scheduled to be delivered today. This is the only status that is a promise about today.

Normal duration: Delivered the same day, typically by early evening.
What to do: Make sure someone can receive it if a signature is required, or set a safe-place instruction if the carrier allows it.
When to worry: 'Out for delivery' that ends the day without a delivery scan usually means the route ran out of time — it normally goes out again the next working day.

Carrier wordings: out for delivery · on vehicle for delivery · with delivery courier · loaded onto delivery vehicle · out for delivery today · with driver

Delivery attempted

Watch it

The driver reached the address but could not complete the delivery — nobody in, no safe place, a gate or buzzer problem, or a required signature.

Normal duration: Most carriers retry on the next working day, usually up to three times.
What to do: Use the carrier's card or tracking page to rebook, redirect to a pickup point, or authorise a safe place. Doing this the same day usually saves a whole retry cycle.
When to worry: After the final attempt the parcel goes back to the sender, and return shipping is often deducted from your refund. Act before the last attempt.

Carrier wordings: delivery attempted · attempted delivery · no access to delivery location · customer not available · notice left · we missed you · unable to deliver

Available for pickup

Watch it

The parcel is waiting for you at a post office, depot, locker or access point rather than being delivered to the door.

Normal duration: Held for 5–18 days depending on carrier and country.
What to do: Collect it, taking the ID or collection code the carrier asks for. Check the holding deadline on the tracking page — it is shorter than people expect.
When to worry: Uncollected parcels are returned to sender, and the return is not free.

Carrier wordings: available for pickup · held at location · ready for collection · at local post office · awaiting collection · held at depot · delivered to parcel locker

Exception / Delivery exception

Needs action

A catch-all for anything that broke the normal flow: a bad address, damage, a weather event, a missing document, or a refused delivery. The status itself tells you nothing — the note attached to it does.

Normal duration: Depends entirely on the cause; address issues resolve in 1–3 days once corrected.
What to do: Read the exception detail on the carrier's own tracking page and act on it. Most exceptions need something from you or the sender, and nothing happens until they get it.
When to worry: An exception left untouched for a week usually ends in a return to sender.

Carrier wordings: exception · delivery exception · shipment exception · action required · problem with delivery · alert · unsuccessful delivery attempt

Address issue

Needs action

The carrier cannot match the address on the label to a deliverable location — a missing unit number, a wrong postcode, or a business that has moved.

Normal duration: Resolves within 1–3 business days once corrected.
What to do: Correct it through the carrier's tracking page if it offers that, otherwise ask the sender to file the correction. Carriers often charge the sender an address-correction fee.
When to worry: Uncorrected, the parcel returns to sender within roughly a week.

Carrier wordings: incorrect address · address issue · insufficient address · bad address · address correction required · unable to locate address · recipient moved

Shipment on hold

Watch it

The carrier has deliberately paused the shipment — commonly for an unpaid duty or tax, a customs document, a recipient request, or an operational suspension in the destination area.

Normal duration: Clears as soon as the blocking item is supplied — often the same day.
What to do: Find out what is being waited on. If it is a payment, pay it via the carrier's official site. If it is a document, get it from the sender.
When to worry: A hold with no explanation for more than 5 days deserves a phone call.

Carrier wordings: on hold · shipment on hold · held for payment · awaiting payment · hold at location requested · temporarily held

Delayed

Watch it

The carrier has flagged that the parcel will miss its expected date. Weather, peak-season volume, mechanical problems and industrial action are the usual causes, and none of them are things the carrier can pull a specific parcel out of.

Normal duration: Adds 1–3 days; peak-season and weather events can add a week.
What to do: Nothing useful. Guaranteed and express services may entitle the shipper — not the recipient — to a refund of the shipping charge.
When to worry: Only if it persists well past the event that caused it.

Carrier wordings: delayed · delay · weather delay · in transit, arriving late · emergency situation or severe weather delay · network congestion · operational delay

Delivered

Complete

The carrier has scanned the parcel as delivered, and the scan usually records where and to whom. Most carriers attach a GPS point, a photo, or a signature.

Normal duration: Final status.
What to do: If it is there, nothing. If it is not, see the next entry — do not wait, most carriers have a short claims window.
When to worry: None, unless the parcel is not where the scan says it is.

Carrier wordings: delivered · delivered to recipient · left with individual · delivered, front door/porch · delivered to safe place · handed to resident · signed for by

Delivered but not received

Needs action

Not an official status, but one of the most-searched situations there is. A parcel scanned as delivered that nobody has is usually one of four things: delivered next door, left in an unexpected safe place, scanned early by a driver who delivers later that evening, or taken.

Normal duration: A surprising share turn up within 24 hours of the scan.
What to do: Check every entrance, any safe place you have ever nominated, and immediate neighbours. Look at the delivery photo or GPS point on the carrier's page. Then file a claim with the carrier and tell the seller — under most consumer rules the seller carries the risk until you actually receive the goods.
When to worry: Act inside the carrier's claim window, which can be as short as a few days for some services.

Carrier wordings: delivered but not received · marked delivered not received · missing after delivery · delivered but no package · package stolen

Return to sender

Needs action

The parcel is going back. Failed delivery attempts, an uncollected parcel, a refused delivery, an unpaid customs charge or a prohibited item are the usual causes.

Normal duration: The return leg takes as long as the outbound one, often longer.
What to do: Contact the seller now rather than when it arrives back — arrange a reshipment or a refund, and ask who is paying for the return.
When to worry: Return shipping and any customs charges are frequently deducted from a refund.

Carrier wordings: return to sender · returning to shipper · refused by recipient · undeliverable as addressed · being returned · rts

Expired / No updates

Watch it

Either the carrier has purged the record — most keep tracking data for 90 to 120 days — or the number has never been scanned into that carrier's system at all.

Normal duration: Permanent once a record is purged.
What to do: Check you are querying the right carrier: a number that returns nothing is very often being asked of the wrong network. Our detector will tell you which carriers use that format.
When to worry: For a recent shipment, 'not found' more often means wrong carrier than lost parcel.

Carrier wordings: expired · tracking expired · no updates available · no information available · not found · tracking number not recognised

When 'stuck' is normal, and when it isn't

Scans are not a heartbeat. A carrier scans a parcel when it changes hands or changes facility, so long legs genuinely produce long silences. Rough guidance on when silence stops being routine:

Domestic ground, 3–4 days of silence: still normal on a cross-country route. Check again rather than calling.
Domestic, 7+ days: worth opening a trace. Ask the seller to open one in parallel — two tickets on one number get answered faster than one.
International, up to 14 days: common, particularly on postal economy services where the origin operator has stopped scanning and the destination one has not started.
Anything sitting at customs: different problem entirely. Check for an unpaid charge first — it is the most common cause and the most frequently missed message. Our customs delay helper walks through it.
“Not found” on a recent shipment: more often the wrong carrier than a lost parcel. The tracking number detector will tell you who else uses that format.

How we source and maintain this data

The dictionary is seeded from the status normalisation our own tracker already performs — the mapping that lets a shipment crossing three carriers render as one timeline — and cross-checked against each major carrier's published glossary. The duration and “when-to-worry” guidance is directional: carriers publish almost nothing about how long a status normally persists, so those figures come from observed behaviour across the shipments we track and are labelled as guidance rather than commitments.

Where a status has a genuinely ambiguous meaning — “exception” being the worst offender — we say so rather than inventing a specific explanation, and point you at the carrier's own note, which is the only place the actual reason lives.

Review cadence: Status wordings are reviewed twice yearly, and whenever a carrier changes its vocabulary in a way our normaliser has to learn. Last reviewed August 2026. This tool is built and maintained by the ParcelTracking team, who run multi-carrier tracking across 3,000+ carriers.

Primary sources

Tracking status FAQ

Your package has left the origin and is moving through the carrier's network toward its destination. It does not mean the parcel is on a delivery van — most of the time it is on a trailer between hubs, on an aircraft, or waiting in a sortation centre for the next sort. In transit is the normal, healthy state for most of a parcel's life, and it can last days on a domestic lane or weeks on an economy international one.

'Out for delivery' means the parcel has been loaded onto a local delivery vehicle and is scheduled to arrive today — it is the only status that is a promise about the current day. 'In transit' means it is still moving through the network and no delivery attempt is scheduled yet. A parcel can be in transit five miles from your house and still not arrive for two days, because it has to be sorted onto a route first.

Because it is usually a placeholder rather than an event. Several carriers display that message automatically when a parcel has gone roughly 24 hours without a scan, specifically to reassure you that it has not vanished. On long ground routes there is genuinely nothing to scan between two hubs, so the same line repeats for two to four days. It is the single most-reported and least-alarming pattern in tracking.

Probably not, but it depends on the lane. A week of silence on a domestic parcel is worth a query. On an international one — especially a postal economy service crossing customs — a week without scans is common, because the origin operator has stopped scanning and the destination operator has not started. Check whether a customs charge is waiting for you first; an unpaid charge is the most common cause of a genuinely stalled parcel.

It means a driver scanned it as delivered, usually with a GPS point, a photo or a signature attached. In practice, a parcel scanned as delivered but missing is most often at a neighbour's, in an unexpected safe place, scanned early on a route that finishes later that evening, or taken. Check the delivery photo on the carrier's page, check every entrance and every safe place you have ever nominated, then file with both the carrier and the seller. Claim windows can be short.

It is a catch-all for anything that broke the normal flow — a bad address, damage, weather, a missing customs document, a refused delivery. The status word itself tells you nothing; the note attached to it on the carrier's own tracking page tells you everything. Most exceptions need something from you or the sender, and nothing happens until they get it.

Because there is no cross-carrier standard for status vocabulary. The same physical event — a parcel entering a sorting hub — is variously 'arrived at facility', 'processed through facility', 'arrival scan' and 'received at delivery depot'. That is exactly the normalisation our tracker performs: whatever wording your carrier uses, the timeline shows the same canonical event, so a shipment crossing three carriers still reads as one story.

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