With the extra financial stress that May’s postal rate change created for some advertisers, it can be difficult to remember some of the great things about our nation’s postal service. Today’s factoids cover a variety of the positive characteristics and accomplishments of USPS, and are gathered from a variety of sites, including the Federal Citizen’s Information Center of Pueblo, Colorado, and the United States Postal Service site.
Did you know . . .
The United States Postal Service delivers to every home and business in the US, processing and delivering 8,000 pieces of mail per second, 488,000 pieces per minute, 29 million pieces per hour, resulting in almost 703 million pieces per day — that’s more than 213 billion pieces of mail per year. The USPS delivers more mail in a day than FedEx does in a year, and more mail in 3 days than UPS does in a year. They handle almost half of the world’s total card and letter mail volume — delivering more mail to more addresses to a larger geographical area than any other service. Japan is a distant second, with only 6%.
If the USPS was a privately owned company, it would be the 10th largest in the US. They are the second-largest employer in the US, with almost 700,000 career employees earning nearly $2 billion in salaries and benefits every payday. It runs the largest retail network in the country, largest intranet in the world, largest civilian fleet of vehicles in the world, including the largest fleet of alternative fuel vehicles. A single cent rise in gasoline costs the postal service an extra $8 million dollars in fuel. Many citizens forget that the USPS is a self-supporting agency, receiving no tax dollars, and relying solely on the revenue generated by the sale of postage and products to cover their expenses.
The postal service is also a source of community assistance and activism. In 2006, the Postal Service recognized more than 300 employee heroes around the country who put their own lives at risk to save the lives of customers they serve. According to research by the respected Ponemon Institute, the postal service is the most trusted of all government organization, chosen by the American public for three years running. Some of their most notable community campaigns have been extraordinarily effective, including the Breast Cancer Research Stamp (raised more than $53.1 million for research since July 1998), the USPS and National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive Day (the largest in the nation which has collected over 765.5 million pounds of food since its inception, 70.5 million pounds in 2006 alone), and the “Have You Seen Me?” Campaign (in coordination with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, has reunited 144 children with their families).
For nearly 20 years, the USPS has striven to be environmentally-friendly by reducing the use of paper and supporting the use of recycled products and recycling waste — about 1 million tons last year alone. For seven years straight, the USPS has won the EPA’s WasteWise Partner of the Year Award, for reducing solid and industrial wastes in innovative ways. They use their own network to transport recycling, saving money, and sell their recyclables to companies as raw materials, creating more than $9 million in revenue.
Post offices are a study in extremes:
- The oldest post office is in Castine, ME, and has been in continuous operation since 1814. New offices are opened all the time, including one in Surf City, NC on July 30th.
- The nation’s smallest post office is in Ochopee, FL, and was formerly an irrigation pipe shed until its conversion in 1953. The building is just 8′4″ x 7′3″. The Morgan Processing & Distribution Center in midtown Manhattan is the largest postal facility in the US, employing about 4,300 workers who process more than 12.5 million pieces of mail a day.
- Leadville, CO is home to the post office with the highest elevation, while Mecca, CA has the lowest.
- The employees of Wainwright, AK post office work in the coldest area in the postal system, while the hottest employees sweat it out in Death Valley, CA.
- The western and easternmost post offices are in Pago Pago, Samoa and Majuro in the Marshall Islands, respectively. The Pago Pago office is also the most southern location, with Barrow, AK taking the northern point.
Come back for more fun facts next Friday, and remember, Martin Worldwide is here to help you figure out how to get the most from your postal mailing campaigns!
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[...] This week’s facts are a little bit of overflow from our last post on facts about the USPS. While our previous focus was the organization itself, we also discovered a lot of fun and curious factoids about our tiny friend, the postage stamp. Today’s facts are of course gathered from different sources, including Wikipedia’s article on the history of postage stamps and PostageHQ. [...]