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Comment by jrochkind1 | Hacker News Reader

In the US, someone I know who had a Post Office box liked writing simply `box-number zip-code` as their address.

It worked. Eg, if you wrote on an envelope:

    1034
    21240

It would get there! You might want to add a "Box" before the "1034" to be safe -- and to disambiguate between a house number, as in OP? (I'm not sure just a house number would ever work in the USA?)

But it looks cooler with just two numbers. Especially it did 20 years ago when my friend did it. Very futuristic cyberpunk. Maybe a square glyph for "box" would be good.

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This is true. As others have pointed out, all PO Boxes can be appended to a 5 digit zip to get to the box (e.g. ZIP-BOX#) No city or state should be needed (zip covers that), nor name (not needed for mail in general, but might cause other issues).

The US Postal System actually uses a full 11 digit number to identify a "Delivery Point". The "+4" after a zip code is basically a subroute within that zip code, but there are two numbers after that you don't really see that will identify the full delivery point, which is basically a mailbox. The USPS tracks a number of things at this delivery point level, including whether a secondary address is needed, if they are currently delivering to that address, or if service is temporarily suspended (potentially due to a natural disaster or road outage in the case of a more remote rural address).

I'd really love to see if just a full 11 digit number is enough to get mail delivered to my house. I guess I could try, as it's easier than you'd think to find out your code

Dang, I came to post my ultra lean address from years ago, but wish I had known this!

PO 1234 NY, NY 10010

Do you think removing all instances if NY would have still got the mail delivered? 10010 is NY in NY.

As of reading the posts above, it sounds like yes! Very neat, and I'll be trying it with my hometown PO box soon.

In many cases, the PO box number becomes the suffix of ZIP+4 so you could probably write 21240-1084. I have friends use this nine digit number as their return address.

Note: the real barcodes use 11 digits. There are two extra digits beyond the Zip+4 that encode the stop along the route. The Zip+4 gets you to the block but then you need two more digits to specify the house/apartment etc. If you can decide the barcodes sprayed on the front of the envelope by the USPS, you'll find the extra two digits. But the Zip+4 that everyone knows isn't that precise.

WOW!

My ZIP+4 describes exactly three houses - we're all on one side of one given block. I'm trying to figure out the minimum amount of info the delivery person would need to find my house among the other two.

Is it cheating if I put a photo of the house on the envelope?

Zip+4 + delivery point is for the set of mailboxes. If you each have individual mailboxes (not clustered), the 11 digit code is enough. Or house number plus scrawl plus zip+4.

We're individual units. House number was my choice, and that's 3 digits. Trying to figure out if I get it to one alphanumeric character. First letter of my last name might do it.

I was excited to learn PO box numbers are unique in my city and have their own ZIP code so theoretically mail could reach me with an address of only "37939-0002" (ZIP only) or "PO Box 2, Knoxville" (no ZIP) if someone wants to test it out. I'll send something fun in reply.

No state either? Would they know which state to route that to? I think yours is the largest but apparently there are a bunch of cities in the US with that name.

I suspect that would work for the Knoxville you are in, but not from one Knoxville to another.

ZIP is inclusive of state

But (no ZIP) isn’t a ZIP

Zip codes are nation-scoped, not state-scoped, so yes they'd know which state.

What I meant is: if you address to just "Knoxville" how would they know it's the one in Tennessee?

The replies here are close, but not exactly right. Zip codes largely map to individual post offices. Once mail gets to the correct post office, then it will get sorted into routes for delivery.

The reason why the distinction of post offices is important is that zip codes are not required to follow state boundaries (technically, zip codes aren't an area, but a list of delivery points). In fact, there are a lot more than you'd think that span across state lines, so there may actually be a mismatch between the state for your address and the state for the post office your mail is delivered by.

I can confirm that "<Room Number> New York New York, Las Vegas, Nevada 89109" doesn't work. They wanted the actual street address of the hotel. Which surprised me, as I'm used to big hotels being well-known enough that you can just write a room number, hotel name and city and have it arrive in the right place.

I wonder if it would have worked at a hotel that does not share the name of a place.

No, it almost certainly has to do with the local postal workers not wanting to put out the effort. If the zip code is there, it will usually be sent to that particular post office first.

That particular hotel is some distance outside Las Vegas, too, in Paradise NV

As noted above, ZIP+4 uniquely identifies most (all?) US PO Boxes, so theoretically provides everything the post office needs to make the delivery.

For what it's worth, I've personally mailed an envelope addressed only to my PO Box ZIP+4 with no return address, and it worked.

Note, however, that abbreviated "addresses" of this type violate USPS's published guidelines, so they may be rejected by automated mail sorting systems and therefore delayed, or, especially in cases where discounted bulk rates apply, rejected altogether.

In other words, YMMV.

Futuristic? Mate, you've just invented physical versions of phone numbers.

At my college dorm I was able to receive mail sent to:

  Room number
  9-digit zip

  219    
  65432-9876

It may have helped that all mail to that 5-digit zip went to the school, and its mail room people might have had more time on their hands than the USPS.

I worked with someone who painted and mailed a bunch of bagels. As in the bagels you toast and eat. As in a stamp stuck onto a painted bagel with the address written with marker. They all got to their destinations.

My parents went to Hawaii a couple of years ago and mailed a coconut to my house. Turns out that it's a whole thing:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/you-can-mail-coconut-a...

Oh man I love this. Thanks for sharing.

Its potentially possible for individuals/orgs too.

The post office standard mentions something to the effect "If a firm name is assigned a unique ZIP+4 then it must be used" (rather than just the zip code).

Which implies its possible for a "firm" to get their own zip+4 number and that by itself is probably sufficient for the automated mailing system to identify the recipient.

The ZIP+4 is intended to be a redundant checksum against the name+address (which doesn't strictly require a zip code for handwritten/non bulk mail), so presumably a bunch of "hacks" work in the post office system as well.

AKA, for a lot of rural/etc places just a name and a basic zip code probably works/etc.

When I was living in Dubai a decade ago, the PO box numbers were unique across the country, and there is no postal delivery service, so that's the only way to receive post[0]. Usually you'd use your work's PO box for the rare time you get post (typically AliExpress) but I was freelancing so had to rent my own.

My address was simply "12345 UAE" from anywhere in the world. I typically had to add more detail, as address forms would not let me enter only these fields.

[0] Couriers would of course come to your building. Typically the address you gave would include directions "Near Yacht Club" as street names were not always clear.

My family lives in a rural community where most people know everyone's name. So I have successfully sent a postcard to myself across the US with simply my first name and the zip code.

YMMV depending on the driver

Or post office worker anyway. There isn't actually a "driver" involved, the PO Box is in the post office identified with that zip code, the only driving involved is to get it to that building in the first place!

A bunch of US zip codes are for PO Boxes only, so this seems to stand a strong chance of working, at least in those places.

Not only are their PO Box only zip codes, but there are also zip codes that are associated with various business and government entities. In those cases the USPS literally doesn't care what you put for the address bc they will hand over all the mail addressed to that zip code to the entity and let them handle it.

The most famous example of this is the zip code 12345, which is actually for GE in Schenectady, NY.

The IRS also has some of these dedicated 5-digit ZIP codes. For example, 00501 is the IRS processing center in Holtsville, NY. (According to Wikipedia, this is also the lowest-number ZIP code currently in use in the US.)

Even more interestingly, most IRS ZIP codes are unique from their surrounding cities' (e.g. 70001 within 78xxx surroundings).

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