by Sue Simpson

Created on: August 07, 2008   Last Updated: November 18, 2011

The United States Postal Service has been around for what seems like forever, so they've had a lot of practice delivering mail over the years. The primary way for mail to be delivered is based on the address. The most important part is the zip code, becasue those five numbers (and the four other numbers that follow after the dash, e.g. 92064-7071) give the post office a precise sector of your city and neighborhood in which to deliver your piece of mail.

Most of their machines first distribute and sort mail based on the zip code on the envelope, since each zip code represents a distinct place in the country. After the zip code, the city and state are the most important to determine that your letter is delivered. They look to see which city and state match up with the zip code and also sort letters based on that classification. Of course, the most important part of the address which ensures delivery is the address itself. You need to make sure to clearly print the name, street number, street name, and apartment number (if it applies) on the front of the envelope. This helps the postman to deliver your letter to exactly the right place.

Aside from how you address your envelope, mail is delivered by the United States Postal Service through a long system of distribution centers and trnasportation mechanisms that are probably too detailed to go into here. But the point is that letters travel carefully through this system based on the way you've addressed your envelope, mostly (as mentioned before) based on the zip code assigned to each piece of mail.

The United States Postal Service was developed as a national way to distribute, send, and receive mail across the whole country and has been a service to the nation since the eighteenth century when Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General. Since then it has seen many changes happen including internet and electronic changes as well as mechanical advances that have allowed machines to do much of the sorting and placing and transporting of mail.

Never the less it is still the men and women of the United States Postal Service that allow for mail delivery. They pick up, sort, transport, distribute, and deliver every piece of mail that you send at any time during the year, and they even make it possible to send mail outside of the country by air, sea, or other transport. It's an impressive system, so next time you open your mailbox, be impressed that all your mail got to you at all.

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