The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or simply the Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States, its insular areas and associated states. It is one of a few government agencies explicitly authorized by the Constitution of the United States. As of 2023, the USPS has 525,469 career employees and 114,623 non-career employees.
The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal systems have generally been established as a government monopoly, with a fee on the article prepaid. Proof of payment is usually in the form of an adhesive postage stamp, but a postage meter is also used for bulk mailing.
Package delivery or parcel delivery is the delivery of shipping containers, parcels, or high-value mail as single shipments. The service is provided by most postal systems, express mail, private courier companies, and less-than-truckload shipping carriers. Package delivery is different in each country, and how packages are delivered is closely connected with the cost for delivering to that country as well as population. In 2019, China, The United States, and Japan were the leaders in package delivery while Latvia, Macau, and Iceland were the bottom three. The population of the bottom three barely totals 2 million while the population of the top three tops totals more than 2 billion. Package delivery is an every day occurrence in the US while many other countries do not have this luxury.
Sticker art is a form of street art in which an image or message is publicly displayed using stickers. These stickers may promote a political agenda, comment on a policy or issue, or comprise a subcategory of graffiti.
An airmail etiquette, often shortened to just etiquette, is a label used to indicate that a letter is to be sent by airmail.
Registered mail is a postal service in many countries which allows the sender proof of mailing via a receipt and, upon request, electronic verification that an article was delivered or that a delivery attempt was made. Depending on the country, additional services may also be available, such as:
Franking comprises all devices, markings, or combinations thereof ("franks") applied to mails of any class which qualifies them to be postally serviced. Types of franks include uncanceled and precanceled postage stamps, impressions applied via postage meter, official use "Penalty" franks, Business Reply Mail (BRM), and other permit Imprints (Indicia), manuscript and facsimile "franking privilege" signatures, "soldier's mail" markings, and any other forms authorized by the 192 postal administrations that are members of the Universal Postal Union.
A post office box is a uniquely addressable lockable box located on the premises of a post office.
The system for mail delivery in the United States has developed with the nation. Rates were based on the distance between sender and receiver in the nation's early years. In the middle of the 19th century, rates stabilized at one price regardless of distance. Rates were relatively unchanged until 1968 when the price was increased every few years by a small amount. Comparing the increases with a price index, the cost of a first-class stamp has been steady. The seal of the Post Office Department showed a man on a running horse, even as railroads and, later, motorized trucks and airplanes moved mail. In 1971, the Post Office became the United States Postal Service, with rates set by the Postal Regulatory Commission, with some oversight by Congress. Air mail became standard in 1975. In the 21st century, prices were segmented to match the sorting machinery used; non-standard letters required slightly higher postage.
Post offices and other mail service providers typically offer a mail forwarding service, commonly known as hybrid mail or virtual post office box services, to redirect mail addressed to one location to another address – usually for a given period. In the case of the United States Postal Service's First Class Mail, it is generally for a period of one year. British Royal Mail provides a service called Mail Redirection, enabling redirection for up to two years. Customers of such a service usually, but not exclusively, use mail forwarding when they change an address.
Parcel post is a postal service for mail that is too heavy for normal letter post. It is usually slower than letter post. The development of the parcel post is closely connected with the development of the railway network which enabled parcels to be carried in bulk, to a regular schedule, and at economical prices. Today, many parcels also travel by road and international shipments may travel by sea or airmail.
Click-N-Ship is a service offered by the United States Postal Service that allows customers to create pre-paid Priority Mail shipping labels on ordinary printer paper. The labels include delivery confirmation numbers to track date and time of delivery or attempted delivery. Other than the cost of postage, there is no fee to create labels for Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, Global Priority Mail, or Global Express Mail if the sender uses USPS Flat Rate envelopes or boxes.
ORM-D was a marking for mail or shipping in the United States. Packages bearing this mark contained hazardous material in a limited quantity that present a limited hazard during transportation, due to its form, quantity, and packaging. ORM-D was phased out by the US Department of Transportation on January 1, 2021.
Dimensional weight, also known as volumetric weight, is a pricing technique for commercial freight transport, which uses an estimated weight that is calculated from the length, width and height of a package.
Surface mail, also known as sea mail, is mail that is transported by land and sea, rather than by air, as in airmail. Surface mail is significantly less expensive but slower than airmail, and thus is preferred for large or heavy, non-urgent items and is primarily used for sending packages, not letters.
El Celso is a post-graffiti artist working on and off the streets of the United States. He was born in Newark, New Jersey and is currently active in the New York and Los Angeles areas.
Tracking numbers are numbers assigned to packages when they are shipped. Tracking numbers are useful for knowing the location of time sensitive deliveries. It is a unique ID number or code assigned to a package or parcel. The tracking number is typically printed on the shipping label as a bar code that can be scanned by anyone with a bar code reader or smartphone.
A network distribution center (NDC) was a highly mechanized mail processing plant of the United States Postal Service that distributed standard mail and package services in piece and bulk form. The NDC network was dismantled in 2022-2023 by the USPS as part of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Delivering for America network rationalization plan, which saw mail classes formerly handled by the NDC network merged into mailstreams in processing and distribution centers. Each former NDC, all of which were located in buildings owned by USPS, are implementing or in the process of creating individual plans for repurposing the buildings. Many are being restacked into RPDCs, which will form the backbone of the new USPS network, whereas others are being used to insource previously outsourced transportation functions such as surface transfer centers (STCs), or terminal handing services (THS), which handled airmail, in addition to continuing to support processing and distribution centers with the handing of priority and ground advantage parcels.
The United States Postal Service (USPS) provides Priority Mail Express for domestic U.S. delivery, and offers two types of international Express Mail services, although only one of them is part of the EMS standard. One is called Priority Mail Express International and the other service is called Global Express Guaranteed (GXG). The latter has no relation to "EMS" International service as provided by the EMS Cooperative.
The history of women on US stamps begins in 1893, when Queen Isabella became the first woman on a US stamp. Queen Isabella helped support Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage, and 1893 marked the end of a year-long celebration of the 400th anniversary of that voyage. The first US stamp honoring an American woman honored Martha Washington, and it was issued in 1902. In 1907, Pocahontas became the first Native American woman to be honored on a US stamp. In 1978, Harriet Tubman became the first African-American woman to be honored on a US stamp. In 2001, Frida Kahlo became the first Hispanic woman to be honored on a US stamp, though she was Mexican not American.
