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The Private Express Statutes (PES) are a group of United States federal civil and criminal laws placing various restrictions on the carriage and delivery of letters by all organizations other than the United States Postal Service.
The United States Congress originally passed the PES in 1792, under powers granted it in the United States Constitution to "establish Post Offices and Post Roads." The PES granted the government the power for the carriage and delivery of letter mail. Today the USPS is empowered to suspend the PES, if it believes such a private postal service would be in the interests of the general public.
The PES consists of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1693 – 1696 and 39 U.S.C. §§ 601 – 606, implemented under 39 Code of Federal Regulations Parts 310 and 320. These restrict the carriage and delivery of letter mail by private organizations, except as described in the next section. The PES only cover "letters" and not other mailable items such as parcels or periodicals.
In 1979 the Postal Service authorized the delivery of extremely urgent letters outside the USPS; this has given rise to delivery services such as Federal Express and UPS's express mail services. Records of pick up and delivery must be maintained for Postal Service inspection if the time sensitive exception is being used.
It is possible to set up a private mail delivery service known as "lawful private carriage" if the USPS postage is paid in addition to any private postage fee that is collected. Records must be maintained that such postage has been paid, and it must be affixed to the letter cover by U.S. stamps, meter imprints or through another method approved by the USPS; the postage must be canceled by the sender in ink; the date of mailing must be affixed in ink to the cover (either by sender or carrier); and the letter cannot be removed without defacing the cover from the envelope or other container in which the letter is sent. An agreement must be entered into with the Postal Service to conduct volume private carriage through the Pricing and Classification Service Center. [1]
One does not need to establish a private mail delivery service for the occasional commercial transport of a letter outside the mails so long as the rate which would have been due to the USPS is affixed in stamps, the stamps are cancelled in ink, and the date of receipt by the carrier or the transport of the letter, are noted thereon. All these privately carried letters can bear a private cancellation if the cancellation is done in ink; private cancellations are different from private overprints on postage stamps.
There are limited exceptions for special messenger services which deliver less than twenty-five letters for an individual or company per occasion. In such case no postage need be paid or affixed to the letters; pick up and delivery can be from private residences and commercial businesses.
The delivery of letters without compensation and without the affixation or payment of any postage is allowed under 39 CFR 310.3(c) by third parties, and under 39 CFR 310.3(b) for one's own letters which includes regular employees only delivering company mail. Thus, it is not a violation of the PES if one delivers a letter of one's friend even without affixation of postage or if a company has one of its regular employees deliver mail that originates from the company to its customers. Compensation is considered to include barter and goodwill. Thus an individual or business who receives a benefit for the delivery of letters does not fall under such a free carriage exception. For example, buying a friend dinner in exchange for having him deliver a letter is not considered without compensation; in such a case one would be required to affix and cancel a sufficient amount of postage to the letter. Another example not falling under this exception would be a business that is carrying letters "free of charge" in the hopes of building business or incidental to some other delivery as an accommodation for its customer; this use would also require the affixation and cancellation of a sufficient amount of postage to be in compliance with the PES.
There is an exception for the delivery of what otherwise would be considered a letter if it is sent with cargo and the letter is somehow incidental to the ordering, delivery or shipping of the cargo [39 CFR 310.3(a)].
Other exceptions to the PES include:
A letter is a written message conveyed from one person to another through a medium. Something epistolary means that it is a form of letter writing. The term usually excludes written material intended to be read in its original form by large numbers of people, such as newspapers and placards, although even these may include material in the form of an "open letter". The typical form of a letter for many centuries, and the archetypal concept even today, is a sheet of paper that is sent to a correspondent through a postal system. A letter can be formal or informal, depending on its audience and purpose. Besides being a means of communication and a store of information, letter writing has played a role in the reproduction of writing as an art throughout history. Letters have been sent since antiquity and are mentioned in the Iliad. Historians Herodotus and Thucydides mention and use letters in their writings.
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage, who then affix the stamp to the face or address-side of any item of mail—an envelope or other postal cover —that they wish to send. The item is then processed by the postal system, where a postmark or cancellation mark—in modern usage indicating date and point of origin of mailing—is applied to the stamp and its left and right sides to prevent its reuse. The item is then delivered to its addressee.
The Universal Postal Union, established by the Treaty of Bern of 1874, is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that coordinates postal policies among member nations, in addition to the worldwide postal system. The UPU contains four bodies consisting of the Congress, the Council of Administration (CA), the Postal Operations Council (POC) and the International Bureau (IB). It also oversees the Telematics and Express Mail Service (EMS) cooperatives. Each member agrees to the same terms for conducting international postal duties. The UPU's headquarters are located in Bern, Switzerland.
A postmark is a postal marking made on an envelope, parcel, postcard or the like, indicating the place, date and time that the item was delivered into the care of a postal service, or sometimes indicating where and when received or in transit. Modern postmarks are often applied simultaneously with the cancellation or killer that marks postage stamps as having been used. Sometimes a postmark alone is used to cancel stamps, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. Postmarks may be applied by handstamp or machine, using methods such as rollers or inkjets, while digital postmarks are a recent innovation.
The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U.S., including its insular areas and associated states. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the U.S. Constitution. The USPS, as of 2021, has 516,636 career employees and 136,531 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.
Canada Post Corporation, trading as Canada Post, is a Crown corporation that functions as the primary postal operator in Canada. Originally known as Royal Mail Canada, rebranding was done to the "Canada Post" name in the late 1960s, even though it had not yet been separated from the government. On October 16, 1981, the Canada Post Corporation Act came into effect. This abolished the Post Office Department and created the present-day Crown corporation which provides postal service. The act aimed to set a new direction for the postal service by ensuring the postal service's financial security and independence.
Postage stamp reuse is the technique of fraudulently reusing postage stamps from sent mail to avoid paying the cost of postage.
Postal service in the United States began with the delivery of stampless letters whose cost was borne by the receiving person, later encompassed pre-paid letters carried by private mail carriers and provisional post offices, and culminated in a system of universal prepayment that required all letters to bear nationally issued adhesive postage stamps.
A postal marking is any kind of annotation applied to a letter by a postal service. The most common types are postmarks and cancellations; almost every letter will have those. Less common types include forwarding addresses, routing annotations, warnings, postage due notices and explanations, such as for damaged or delayed mail and censored or inspected mail. A key part of postal history is the identification of postal markings, their purpose, and period of use.
Permit mail is anything sent through the postal service where postage is paid by a post office issued permit. No postage stamp is affixed to letters sent by permit mail.
Dead letter mail or undeliverable mail is mail that cannot be delivered to the addressee or returned to the sender. This is usually due to lack of compliance with postal regulations, an incomplete address and return address, or the inability to forward the mail when both correspondents move before the letter can be delivered. Largely based on the British model that emerged in the late eighteenth century, many countries developed similar systems for processing undeliverable mail.
Registered mail is a mail service offered by postal services in many countries which allows the sender proof of mailing via a mailing 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.
Postage due is the term used for mail sent with insufficient postage. A postage due stamp is a stamp added to an underpaid piece of mail to indicate the extra postage due.
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 early years of the nation. In the middle of the 19th century, rates stabilized to 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 price of a first class stamp has been steady. The logo for the Post Office showed a man on a running horse, even as the railroads and then motorized trucks moved mail. In 1970, the Post Office became the Postal Service, with rates set by the Postal Regulatory Commission, and some oversight by the Congress. Air mail became standard in 1975. In the 21st century, prices were segmented to match the sorting machinery in use; letters too large for the machines required slightly higher postage.
The American Letter Mail Company was started by Lysander Spooner in 1844, competing against the legal monopoly of the United States Post Office.
Freepost is a postal service provided by various postal administrations, whereby a person sends mail without affixing postage, and the recipient pays the postage when collecting the mail. Freepost differs from self-addressed stamped envelopes, courtesy reply mail, and metered reply mail in that the recipient of the freepost pays only for those items that are actually received, rather than for all that are distributed. Freepost of preprinted cards issued by businesses is also different from postal stationery sold by postal administrations.
The Facing Identification Mark, or FIM, is a bar code designed by the United States Postal Service to assist in the automated processing of mail. The FIM is a set of vertical bars printed on the envelope or postcard near the upper edge, just to the left of the postage area. The FIM is intended for use primarily on preprinted envelopes and postcards and is applied by the company printing the envelopes or postcards, not by the USPS.
U.S. Special Delivery was a postal service paid for with additional postage for urgent letters and postal packets which are delivered in less time than by standard or first class mail service. Its meaning is different and separate from express mail delivery service. Essentially it meant that a postal packet was delivered from a post office to the addressee immediately once it arrived at the post office responsible for delivering it, rather than waiting for the next regular delivery to the addressee.