USPS Service Standards Maps
postalpro.usps.com
postalpro.usps.com
Each embassy has a unique nonexistent house number and street name within the 20521 zip code.[2] For example, the embassy in Paris is "9200 Paris Pl, Washington, DC 20521-9200".
Oddly, the only duplicated number in the list is "3180 Grenada Pl" and "3180 St George’s Pl"; St George's is the capital of Grenada.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code#Scope_and_internation...
And since a small post office will have less than 9999 boxes you can identify one by zip+4.
I put a stamp on an envelope and wrote nothing but 95031-nnnn on the envelope, where nnnn was my PO Box number. Mailed it from some other local town, and sure enough it was delivered to my PO Box!
First of all, US copyrights can't be registered for mere facts. "This ZIP code corresponds to this location" (and a list with this string for all ZIP codes/locations) is a fact, and therefore not copyrightable.
However, even if one could convince a judge that it is (What arguments they could use, I have no idea) the whole thing falls apart because the USPS is a government agency, and works released by the U.S government hold no copyright protection inside the U.S
For instance, if I collate all the horse race results of the 19th Century into a single book, I could copyright it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._R....
i had hopes of Thiel/OUTBOX but they went about the implementation a*backwards. the machines the invented to scan the mail: check. the mail they wanted to scan: fail. instead of scanning the important mail (bank statements, insurance etc) they should have been scanning the junk and making the marketers pay for enhanced delivery to 1234MainStreet@ups.gov. customers could then just go through digital versions of offers etc and set it up to purge at various intervals. the pizza place, valpak now no longer need to print things thereby saving money and trees and we throw away less paper etc. they already have the EDD software and zip code db this was just one little step and it would have released the full value of the USPS. The royal post in the Uk and the Japanese post both posted record profits at at time when last mile logistics are a BIG deal...and we cant even deliver a postage stamp without problems.
> 17 U.S. Code § 105 - Subject matter of copyright: United States Government works
(a)In General.— Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.
> A “work of the United States Government” is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties.
Here is a hypothetical New York City address (that I have faked/obfuscated). Note that a penthouse is not an apartment. Note also how the APT or the PH (or suite or floor) goes on the same line as the street address, not a line by itself.
750 5TH AVE PH 1
NEW YORK NY 10002-2590
Here's where you can confirm how it is recommended that addresses be printed:
My personal issus are the apartment selectors. I live in a complex with about 300 units and having to scroll all the way to the bottom is a huge pain in the ass. lol
Every single decision I've seen him make had just one goal: Save money.
It somehow because a political thing, because that's what we do these days, but it never actually was.
That USPS needs to be profitable (it's a us govt service for the people). And that there were (bill just fixed it) onerous requirements that made 'profit' basically impossible.
For me it's also political. It's hard for me to separate his political agenda from things that materially impact elections.
And since USPS can't cut unprofitable routes and can't raise postage prices above inflation, again because of legislation, there are only few options left.
Unless the Congress decides to directly fund USPS, or let them raise more money, the cost cutting is the only way forward.
First, the USPS as a US service need not be profitable. They were also fiscally sound _until_ the Bush administration abruptly changed the rules of establishing pension liabilities as current https://theweek.com/articles/767184/how-george-bush-broke-po...
[1] https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...
Pensions for retired employees are, generally speaking, paid by the contributions of today's employees. No other federal agency has a business that is guaranteed to continue declining in volume and revenue. Congress recognized this in 2006; this is why said law was passed near unanimously. Better a decade of pain, than to not have USPS pensions fully funded in the future.
And as for the private companies that are also guaranteed to be declining in revenue, I bet a lot of retirees of newspaper publishing companies wish that their employers had been required to similarly bulk up their pension plans c. 2005.
The number of people who believe it's real is astounding.
As proof his policies are continuing exactly as they were before, no change now that the election is over. He's tying to reduce expenses, that's it.
Nor am I clear what you think is real and what fictional. Service reliability, speed, and cost have all demonstrably and intentionally worsened under his helm. This went into effect at the end of last year, for instance: https://archive.ph/snCSy
> Seventy percent of first-class mail sent to Nevada will take longer to arrive, according to The Post’s analysis, as will 60 percent of the deliveries to Florida, 58 percent to Washington state, 57 percent to Montana, and 55 percent to Arizona and Oregon. In all, at least a third of such letters and parcels addressed to 27 states will arrive more slowly under the new standards.
If you feel the Washington Post to be an unreliable source, here's one from a supply chain focused outlet: https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/usps-postal-service-fir...
It's hopeless. I've also tried to point out the logical flaws in peoples' USPS conspiracy theories (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24290622>), with little success. It's just as hopeless to tell people that Congress forcing the USPS to prefund pensions was a) bipartisan and b) a good thing, as opposed to yet another GOP anti-USPS plot.
The big changes that would have exasperated this were no overtime, shutting down and moving the bulk sorting machines, changing/closing processing facilities. there was reporting/evidence and photos of some of those large machines being taken out and thrown away.
Even if there were no - or small but inconsequential - material delays in delivery, it's a very common tactic of intimidation and fear/doubt to get what tend to be more democrats to not vote by mail.
spread rumors there will be delays in mail, that it might not get there. or that it is pure fraud.
Builds on old tactics (which still happen) that started with race profiling. police or bugalo whatever at polling stations for 'security,' intimidation that if you make a mistake you will go to jail (even if told by the sos staff you are eligible). so much more.
I fail to see how buying gas guzzling vehicles over electric ones will save money in the long term.
And they are not gas guzzling. They get slightly better gas millage then the current vehicle with the A/C on. The entire freak out some people are having is over that.
With the A/C off they do way better than the current ones.
The Post Office has become so politicized it leaves people unable to do basic math.
many people still pay bills by mail. they may not have access to the internet or know how to pay bills online (i.e., the poor and elderly). They still exist and this makes their lives harder and more complex and more uncertain.
Maybe it worked for a while, but it no longer matters now - no one sends stuff by mail if they are in a hurry.
People seem to have forgotten that faster mail was only like that for a (relatively) short time.
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/04/1003172114/fbi-investigates-p...
Not to mention, the USPS _is_ pretty fiscally sound. Until they were sabotaged for political purposes
https://theweek.com/articles/767184/how-george-bush-broke-po...
E.g. here in Finland the standard stamped mail service has been reduced from mostly 1 day to 4 days, and in many areas they are only being delivered on every other business day (so one carrier alternates between two routes, I think).
There are also significant yearly increases in stamp prices, which US has not yet seen I believe.
These non-US measures were also briefly explored in USPS Office of Inspector General report RISC-WP-20-004 in 2020 (https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library...).
I'm a huge fan of the USPS and really want them to succeed. For my personal stuff, it's really hard to beat Priority (typically I use the flat-rate packaging) for packages that need to cross the country in a reasonable time compared to the Big 2's "ground" services.
That’s how I do it.
https://support.pirateship.com/en/articles/1860717-how-does-...
They get discounted rates from UPS and USPS, keep a small percent of that discount for themselves, and pass the rest of the savings between the discounted rate and full retail rate on to the customer.
I have no relationship with Pirate Ship except that I'm a happy customer. It makes shipping via UPS and USPS easier than using the UPS or USPS sites directly, and it's cheaper. I only wish I'd discovered them sooner.
To give an example of one nice touch on their web site. When entering an address, you can fill out all the annoying individual fields, or you just click "Paste Address" and you get a box where you can paste the full address which it parses into the right fields.
I think the sweet spot for sending is to be in an area that is busy enough that the USPS is essentially running 24/7 behind the scenes, but not busy enough that they can't keep up with mail volume.
I used to live in downtown Chicago and (pre-pandemic at least) the main post office had a manned counter open until 11pm every day. You could drop off a package at 10:30pm, check the tracking info when you woke up the next morning, and discover that it arrived at the giant sorting facility near O'Hare 45 minutes after you dropped it off, was put on a truck an hour later, arrived at a facility out of state at 3am, and was already on another truck heading to its final destination.
I've been eyeballing a number of locations. It looks like Wichita, KS might be the best sending location. Not a single spot in the continental US that is more than 4 days. Kansas City has a tiny spot in Northern California that is 5 days. As far as the really large cities go, Dallas, Chicago, and Denver are really quite good.
I used to ship a ton of First-Class parcels and Priority parcels about 10 years ago, and learned that they had roughly the same delivery speed (2-3 days anywhere in the contiguous US) with First-Class just having a higher chance of delay.
As I never paid attention to letter delivery speed back then, I didn't realize that letters are much slower (except local). So seeing these maps today is informative.
A recent example is USPS Parcel Select packages from the SF Bay area to Sacramento being routed through Los Angeles (!). I have seen this twice in the past couple months. This does not happen with Priority Mail.
Especially the UPU report is ... surprising. I never would have guessed about some of the rankings. But it appears to be well researched, and methodology section seems sound.
[0]https://www.upu.int/UPU/media/upu/publications/2020-Postal-D...
~80 MB: https://github.com/philshem/usps-maps-gif/blob/main/usps-map...
I mean, it could be some sort of data entry thing, but now I wonder what's going on with that section.
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I wonder what the p95 latencies looks like, along with failure rates, and most challenging ZIP Codes, volumes, etc. Can USPS even log all this data?
I trust I'm not going to get a [[citation needed]] when I make the claim that Cleveland is somewhat bigger by any conceivable measure.
WRJ (population between 2,000-3,000) is not only smaller than Cleveland, it is not actually a town. WRJ is a village of the town of Hartford, VT and probably would not be known at all without the railroad station.
Found it: WRJ mail sorting plant is a "sectional center facility" for a lot of NH and VT.
A destination sectional center facility (SCF) is a processing and distribution center (P&DC) of the United States Postal Service (USPS) that serves a designated geographical area defined by one or more three-digit ZIP Code prefixes. A sectional center facility routes mail between local post offices and to and from network distribution centers (NDCs) and Surface Transfer Centers (STCs), which form the backbone of the network.
If you're in WRJ, hello neighbor! And if you're not, but are nearby, happy mud season :-)
How the mighty have fallen. What happened that caused Congress to suddenly support the post office this year after decades of abuse?
Vote-by-mail
Why is there a tiny portion of the center of Wyoming that is 3 day service when the surrounding area for hundreds of miles has 4 day service?
Perhaps it was an missle silo.
009 SAN JUAN PR
096 NY MILITARYThe default when you open the page is an interesting one- "005 MID-ISLAND NY". Almost all New York zip codes start with a 1, but the Mid-Island facility in Melville, which serves codes beginning 117, 118 and 119, also sorts mail addressed to the IRS processing center in Holtsville with the zip code 00501- which happens to be the lowest zip code in current use.
340 FL MILITARY
962 SF MILITARY