DNM packs are almost always USPS Priority Mail flat rates, making it easy to profile. Is it time vendors began offering more options?

yeah ground advantage is actually a lot safer for larger orders. The customer is just so use to priority but times are changing indeed switching things up is always a good move. You will have crybaby customers who spend next to no money whine about shipping ground but the big buyers never care.

In the article you linked, they did use USPS Priorty. Not a flat rate-box. They created the label via Easypost.

there is a North Central, High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area “HIDTA" task force lately that seem to be local and fed cooperation operating with higher resources in the northen midwest.

Buyers should have the option to choose ground advantage or priority shipping. (And express too, for the vendors who offer it.)

Forcing every order to use the same shipping is a problem whether it's ground or priority. Let people choose to save money or have faster shipping.

As gerbil said, so many of them are sent, it blends in.

And, so many customers have lied about orders, priority gives tracking so that solves that issue.

This is safety for the vendor.

The customers safety is using common sense and not catching boxes at the same spot repeatedly. Either order more, or from less vendors.

Average people might not be but thousands and thousands of people are. People engage in all sorts of businesses and hobbies by mail. These types of packages are extraordinarily common.

Omaha, Akron & Indianapolis seem to be crawling with feds right now

Not so sure about that.

More days in transit = more scans, passing through more hubs, and more chances for the pack to be flagged for inspection

You're overlooking something here.

1) warrants are a dog sniff away, and dogs alert quite frequently to packages that contain stuff dogs aren't even trained to smell. Like fake ID's. Or xanax

2) if they're going through the trouble of getting the search warrant, something about the package already made them suspicious, and there were anomalies when they X-rayed it.

Yes. especially if you know your pack is traveling a long distance to you, all that passing through different hubs and time spent in the system adds to risk. I think ideally if you are getting coast to coast get Express if the vendor offers it. And if it's close Ground Advantage is great.

Priority gets caught up in the middle with some insane and stupid and sketchy looking routing. At least with ground you know they route it directly through trucks and there is less internal confusion with their routing systems.

With cross country the Express takes away the doubt too, it will be air-routed guaranteed and pass through way fewer hands and less time in the system.

Just looked at the image in the news article you posted. it has the full tracking number... and of course it has the hot crypto mailer ID.