Post Office Facts

The United States Postal Serviceis a quasi government agency. It handles over 200 billion (over 200,000,000,000) pieces of mail each year. That's 44% of the world's mail. All this mail is handled by 700,000 postal workers in 37,000 post offices throughout the US. Postal workers do an amazing job. Rarely is a letter or package misdirected, lost or damaged. Not only that, some 400 employees a year are recognized as heros, many of whom risked their lived to help others.

24 Hour Operation

The Processing and Distributing Facilities are busiest from Midnight to 6:00 a.m., and slowest during the work day.

The Post Office Machines will keep track of every piece of First Class Mail for a period of 30 days with the florescent bar code printed on the back.

Package or Envelope?

One of the first machines mail encounters upon entry into the Postal Distribution Facility separates the packages from the envelopes.

Packages are handled by a conveyor belt system and simply routed to the appropriate post office where the postal carriers will have to sort them by hand.

Envelopes, on the other hand, are sorted by machine for the postal carrier. The envelopes are organized for the postal carrier's route. See how on our page about sorting.

Getting the Address Right

The post office uses powerful computers to read the address. But if these machines are not able to read the address, an image of the envelope is sent to central location in Utah where a human reads it and types the address. As soon as enough of the address is typed, the computer goes to the next envelope.

Postal Machines

As you can imagine, there are many different machines and technologies used in processing the mail. You may already be aware of some of the technologies used, but we're here to tell you about some more that you may not know.

The Overall Scheme

The goal in mail processing is to take the random mail and sort it as quickly as possible. The problem is huge because of a number of factors.

There are 7.5 million final destination addresses where the mail can go.

Packages and envelopes come in all shapes and sizes.

On average, the Post Office processes nearly 700 million pieces of mail a night.

The Path the Mail Takes

Most basic mail is sorted in six steps as shown in this table.

PostNET Code

11 Digit Bar Code on the Front of the Envelope

Every delivery point, every house, apartment, business, etc., in the entire United States has its own unique 11 digit code. The first 9 digits are the 9 digit zip code. The last two are unique to the delivery point.

These 11 digits are converted to a bar code which is either printed on the envelope as part of the address before it is mailed or is generated by a machine at a processing center and printed on the envelope there.

Glossy surfaces like postcards create a problem because the ink smears. To solve this problem, a thin strip is first stuck onto the postcard, then the bar code is printed on the strip. Hint - don't write your note on a postcard too close to the bottom of the card. It will be covered up by this strip.

Click for a website which shows you how to compute your PostNET code.

The Planet Code (PlanetCode)

In this day of electronic wizardry, the post office shares important information with businesses around the world to support commerce. This can include:

Informing businesses that mail has been delivered and alerting them to when mail is coming to them.

Applying a Planet Code - PLANETCODE

The Planet Code is a barcode for large customers to use. It can track both incoming and outgoing mail. The use of the Planet Code allows customers to use the CONFIRM service. With this service,the USPS can confirm that a customer has received a piece of mail, allowing direct mail marketers to analyze how their compaigns are going. They can also apply the Planet Code to a return envelope. These can be tracked and the company notified that mail is on the way, allowing, for example, a catalog company to plan how many employees to have working in order to fill orders.

What you can do to help your mail go faster

The use of business sized envelopes can help speed up the mail. These envelopes are the most common. The sorting machines handle them most efficiently.

Write clearly or print the address on envelopes.

Use a clean envelope.

The address is read from the bottom right to upper left. Placing the return address near the center can result in returned mail if the machine doesn't catch the destination address.

Don't include both a post office box and street address. Decide which one you want and include it only.

Why do you have to pay extra for a square First Class envelope?

The postal soring machines can read an address right side up or upside down, but they cannot read it sideways. The machines are able to position a rectangular envelope correctly, but with a square envelope, they can't tell which way it goes. It requires additional handling to be read correctly, hence, the extra charge.

The benefits of Registered Mail

Registered Mail gives you a paper trail of each postal employee who handles that piece of mail. Even in the postal facility itself, an already secure location, the mail is stored in a locked area. The post office guarantee's the delivery of these packages.

Volume Is Decreasing

Overall mail volumes have been decreasing. This is probably due to more and more people transferring funds electronically to pay their bills rather than writing checks and mailing them.

Community Response

In Everett Washington, the Post Office is experimenting with the delivery of emergency medical kits which may be the best way to quickly respond to a widespread emergency.

ZIP Code Story

The ZIP code was introduced to the United States in July of 1963. This was new and exciting. Everyone waited with anticipation to find out what THEIR ZIP Code would be.

A mother in California opened the mail to discover their code was 91011. She wanted to come up with a way to remember it. When her kids came home that day, she showed them the new code and a proudly explained her memory scheme. She said, "All you have to do is think - 'Nine, one?? Oooh! One, one.' "

Her kids said, "Mom! That's nine, ten, eleven."

Post Office Trivia Quiz Find out how much you really know about the post office and mail delivery.	How Does the Post Office Sort the Mail? Find out how the USPS sorts the mail, delivers it to the right post office and puts it in order for delivery.
Simplified Explanation of How Mail is Sorted A simple example of how the USPS post office sorts mail