Actually, my own experience is that, these days, UPS beats the pants off of FedEx.

My own experience with FedEx in the past 4 years has been abysmal. It's literally something like 60% failure rate (meaning, overnight packages that take 2-3 days for delivery). I was shocked to hear a report somewhere that FedEx's on-time delivery rate was only 80 or 85% systemwide, which is about what the postal service rate is for express mail.

UPS, on the other hand, I cannot remember when I've had a delivery failure for air services. Ground sometimes takes an extra day from the advertised time but honestly, I've found UPS to be much more reliable -- and much more interested in having my business -- than FedEx.

Postal service... well, I agree. Priority has been pretty reliable for us, but parcel post is abysmal.