How Is Mail Delivered?  The City Method

     Mail arrives at your local post office via truck.  It is sorted into five separate parts.  Each picture below can be clicked on for a larger image.  Rural carriers handle mail slightly different from city carriers.  To read the rural method, click here.  The city method is described below.

1.  DPS.  DPS stands for Delivery Point Sequence.  On a mailman's route, the delivery sequence is the order in which the mail is delivered, from the first house to the last.  This information is loaded into a sorting machine.  As letter-size mail is sorted by the machine, it is put into delivery sequence.  It arrives at the local post office in a tray, like you see at right (click for larger view).  A typical route will have anywhere from 3 to 6 trays of DPS mail per day

2.  Flats.  Flats are catalogs and magazines.  They are also sorted by machine, however, they are not put into Delivery Point Sequence.  They are delivered to the local post office in tubs, like you see to the left (click for larger view).  On a given day, a route may have only one or two tubs, or it could have 10 tubs.  These tubs are usually only half full of mail, allowing them to be stacked together with ease. 

3.  Bundled Mail.  Magazines or catalogs often come in bundles, already sorted by route.  A bundle may have 10 or more magazines or catalogs, and the route number is listed on the address area.  These are sent to the route's case for sorting by the mail carrier.  Bundled mail can also include what we call "boxholders," or "door-to-door."  A boxholder is an item that goes in every single mailbox on the route.  These are typically sale flyers from a store.  They can be addressed, or come without addresses.

4.  Accountable Mail.  This includes Certified, Insured, Registered, and Express Mail.  This is mail that you have to sign for in order to receive.  It may be letters or parcels.

5.  Parcels.  The Post Office calls packages "parcels."  These are sorted into hampers (one hamper per route), and they are rolled over to the route's case.  On a given day, a route may only have a handful of parcels, or it may have a hundred.  On average, there are about 20-40 parcels per day per route.

Preparing Mail For Delivery

I've heard people say I have an easy job.  All I have to do is show up for work, grab the mail, and start walking.  However, before the mailman delivers the mail, he must case it, which takes anywhere from one hour to three hours.  Each route has a case, where the mail is sorted (picture at right).  The mail is placed in the route's case by the mail clerks.  A mail clerk memorizes the streets and routes in the city, and can tell based on the address which route the mail goes to.

Each delivery point, or house address, has a place in the case.  When the mailman begins casing the mail, he reads the address and places it in the corresponding cell in the case.  Usually, the mailman cases the first and second class mail before going to the street to deliver.  Second class mail is otherwise known as periodicals, or magazines.  On a typical day, the carrier will case several hundred pieces of flat-sized mail.   Standard class mail, such as mail-order catalogs, are cased in the afternoon after the mailman returns to the post office.

After a mailman has been on a route for several months, he knows by heart most of the names of all the residents, and their address.  This makes casing the mail very fast.  Mailmen which substitute carry on his route are typically much slower when casing the mail, because they are not familiar with the location of all the addresses in the case.

After casing the larger pieces, the carrier will case the letter mail.  Although we rely upon the computer-sorted DPS, every day we pull mistakes out of the DPS, where the machine sorted pieces wrongly.  These are sorted by the clerks and given to the carrier to case.  Also, some mail pieces will not feed through the sorting machine correctly, and they have to be hand-cased.  Typically we have about 2 feet, or one tray full, of letter mail to case.  Depending on the thickness of the mail pieces, this could be anywhere from 200 to more than 500 pieces. 

After the flats and letter mail is cased, the carrier sorts his parcels, or packages.  Most carriers use a marker card of some kind for a parcel.  The house that is getting a parcel gets one of these marker cards.  When the carrier gets to that house, he sees the marker card, and knows that a package goes to that house. 

After the parcels are marked, the carrier "pulls" the mail down.  The carrier pulls down the mail in bundles according to the "loops" of the mail route.  More on what a loop is later.  Each loop is bound together by a rubber band, and put in a tray.  On light days, a carrier may only have one tray full of flat mail.  Sometimes, he may have eight.  Typically 2-3 trays of flats are normal for a route.  After the flats are pulled down, it's time to load up the truck.  At left is a picture of a full day's worth of mail ready to be rolled out to the truck.

On the Street

Once the carrier reaches the first delivery point, he grabs the mail for the first loop, and hits the street.  The parcels for the loop are put into the mail bag.  If you look at your parcel the next time you receive one, you may note a number hand-written on the parcel.  This is probably the loop number, to help the carrier identify which parcels he needs to put in his bag.  The flat mail is already divided by loop, so he merely grabs the first bundle of flats.  The DPS sometimes has marker cards in them to divide the mail into loops, but the majority of the time the marker cards are missing.    A loop is typically started at the end of one side of the street, and the mailman delivers up one side, then crosses, and delivers back down the other side, ending up by his truck with empty arms.  Some loops may branch off onto side streets.  A typical loop contains anywhere from 20-50 houses. A mail route may have anywhere from 15 to 30 loops. 

The letter carrier normally carries their flats resting on their left forearm, and carries their DPS in their left hand.  If the carrier has door-to-door, or "boxholders," these are carried in the mail bag.  After a delivery is made to a house, the mailman pulls the mail together for the next house as they are walking.  First he gets the DPS mail for the house, then he pulls the flats, then the door-to-door, which is also called "third bundle."  On a given day, the mailman must pull mail from at least two, sometimes three sources while walking in between the houses. 

Look at the picture of the carrier.  Please note that he only has one free hand.  As he pulls the mail, he holds the mail for the next house in his free hand.  You may have read my web page on mail slots, where I mention that I don't have a free hand to open the mail slot.  If the slot is at chest height, I can use my left hand, the one holding the DPS, to open the slot.  Otherwise, I have to open the slot and push the mail through with only one hand.  This makes mail slots hard to deliver to, and this is the reason that all mail carriers hate them.  If you have a mailbox, the carrier can be on and off your porch in as little as 5 seconds.  If you have a mail slot, he may be on your porch for a minute or more.  In that minute that he loses due to the mail slot, he could have delivered two more houses.

In some neighborhoods mailboxes are located on the street, and the mailman delivers them from his vehicle.  This type of delivery is called a "mounted" delivery.  The mailman's truck (called an LLV, or Long Life Vehicle),  has a tray upon which the mail sits (see picture).  In the picture, the flat mail is in the tray on the left, and the tray of DPS is in the middle.  The next packages to be delivered are on the right.  If the carrier has a third bundle to deliver, it may sit in the floor on his left, or on the tray where the packages are sitting.  Normally, the mailman will drive up to the box, and sit while he pulls the mail for that box, and then deliver it, and then drive to the next box.

Many times carriers will approach a box, but the box will be blocked, by a vehicle, or garbage cans, or even people standing around.  Normally the mailman will simply take the mail back to the post office and will redeliver it another day.

At the end of the delivery day, the letter carrier returns to the post office.  He sorts through the mail that is undelivered (vacant houses, mail on hold, etc), and any remaining time is spent casing Standard class mail.  This is bulk business mail, such as catalogs.  Any undeliverable standard class mail, such as mail sent to vacant houses, is thrown in a tub at each case.  This is called UBBM, or Undeliverable Bulk Business Mail.  This mail is recycled.

I Don't Want This Junk Mail!

Many times, customers who don't want this bulk business mail will write on it "Return to Sender" and place it back in their mailbox.  The carrier may take it, but all he will do with it is put it in the UBBM tub.  Bulk mail is not entitled to be returned to sender unless special conditions apply.  (In essence, the mailman is now your trash man, hauling away unwanted trash.) 

The customer is probably hoping that it will be returned, and the company will take them off their mailing list.  Unfortunately for them, they will get another catalog from the company.  To get off their mailing list, you need to contact the company, either by mail or phone.  Marking the mail "return to sender" will not do anything to remove you from their lists.