SIZE AND SCOPE

The U.S. Postal Service® delivers more mail to more addresses in a larger geographical area than any other post in the world. We deliver to more than 149 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes™ in every state, city, town and borough in this country, as well as to American Samoa, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Palau, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, Republic of Marshall Islands and U.S. Virgin Islands.

By the Numbers

75 billion	Revenue in 2008, in dollars
203 billion	Total mail volume processed in 2008, in pieces
667 million	Average amount of mail processed each day
28 million	Average amount of mail processed each hour
463,000	Average amount of mail processed each minute
7,700	Average amount of mail processed each second
46	Percentage of the world’s card and letter mail volume handled by the United States Postal Service
835 million	Number of pieces of international mail processed
2.1 billion	Dollar amount paid every two weeks in salaries and benefits
656,000	Number of career employees
221,000	Number of vehicles in our fleet — the largest civilian fleet in the world
1.2 billion	Number of miles driven each year by our letter carriers and professional truck drivers
121 million	Number of gallons of fuel used in 2008
32,741	Number of Post Offices™ nationwide
14	Percent of the nation’s population that moves annually
46 million	Number of address changes processed every year
1.2 million	Number of people who visit usps.com® each day
442 million	Revenue from online stamp and retail sales at usps.com
8.5 million	Number of passport applications accepted in 2008
597,000	Average number of Postal Service Money Orders issued daily
510 million	Revenue from nearly 92 million transactions on 2,500 Automated Postal Centers® in 2008
56,659	Number of stores and banks that sell postage stamps
1.2 million	Number of new delivery points added to the network in 2008
0	Tax dollars received for operating the Postal Service

CUSTOMER SERVICE

The U.S. Postal Service has been connecting people and businesses since the nation’s founding. Our mission has remained the same for more than 230 years — to provide trusted, affordable and universal service.

The Postal Service Online

• usps.com is one of the most frequently visited government sites, with 438 million visits in 2008 — averaging 1.2 million visitors each day.
• The Postal Store is the nation’s official online Post Office, featuring sales of postage stamps, stationery, philatelic collectibles and other gift items.
• In 2008, stamp and retail sales at the Postal Store totaled more than $442 million.
• Click-N-Ship® allows customers to print shipping labels with postage for Priority Mail®, Express Mail®, Priority Mail International™, Global Express Guaranteed® and Express Mail International®.
• CardStore, Premium Postcards and Click2Mail allow customers to create and send customized mailings from the convenience of their personal computer.
• Internet Change-of-Address allows customers to change their address, sign up for various services and order moving supplies from their personal computers.
• Hold Mail Service allows customers to have their mail held safely at their local Post Office while they are away from home. Scheduling to hold mail can be done online.
• With Carrier Pickup™, customers can go online to request that Express Mail and Priority Mail packages be picked up at their home or office — for free.
• Redelivery Service allows customers to schedule the delivery of the package they missed.
• In order of popularity, the top five areas visited on usps.com in 2008 were:
  1. ZIP Code™ Lookup
  2. Track & Confirm
  3. Calculate Postage
  4. Post Office Locator
  5. Postal Store

Quick, Easy, Convenient Service

• Automated Postal Centers are self-service kiosks that provide customers with access to the most frequently purchased postal products and services, such as stamps. Customers also can weigh packages and renew PO Boxes.
• Priority Mail flat-rate boxes and envelopes virtually eliminate the need to weigh packages or calculate postage. Low, flat rates and four different sizes to choose from let customers ship up to 70 pounds anywhere in the United States or up to 20 pounds to other countries.
• A Customer’s Guide to Mailing can be found online usps.com/customersguide.
• Priority Mail, Express Mail and Global Express Guaranteed shipping supplies are free. A variety of box sizes, envelopes, Tyvek® mailers, mailing labels and customs forms are available at no charge.
• Take your mailbox with you. Premium Forwarding Service forwards all of your mail from your permanent address to a temporary address once a week.
• Express Mail service is offered every day, even on Christmas.
• Working with the U.S. Department of State, the Postal Service accepted 8.5 million passport applications in 2008.
• There are more than 200 Postal Customer Councils® across the country offering regular meetings, education programs, mailer clinics and seminars. For more information, go to usps.com/pcc or e-mail pcc@usps.gov.

National Postal Forum®

The National Postal Forum is the mailing industry's premier educational venue, trade show and networking event for industry professionals. Since 1967, it has provided business mailers with ongoing training and education, and helped them keep pace with the mailing industry's rapid progress. Held annually each spring, the forum is an educational conference/trade show offering a wide range of opportunities for attendees. Currently, more than 6,000 industry professionals attend the National Postal Forum and participate in more than 140 workshops on the hottest issues facing the mailing industry. For more information, go to npf.org.

PEOPLE. COMMUNITY. SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY.

The U.S. Postal Service is an essential part of the fabric of the nation. We always have been a welcomed and trusted part of the communities we serve.

• Each year, postal employees around the country risk their own safety to save the lives of the customers they serve. In 2008, the Postal Service recognized more than 300 employee heroes.
• For the fourth straight year, the Postal Service was rated by the American public as the most trusted government agency according to the 2008 Privacy Trust Study of the U.S. Government conducted by the Ponemon Institute.
• Sales of the Breast Cancer Research Semi-Postal Stamp have raised more than $62 million in voluntary contributions for breast cancer research since July 1998. Sales of the stamp have been extended until 2011.
• In 2008, 36.6 billion stamps were printed. These stamps reflect the American experience and highlight our values, heroes, history, achievements and natural wonders in a collection of miniature works of art.
• Each year, the Postal Service sponsors National Dog Bite Prevention Week. This public safety campaign builds awareness concerning animal attacks.
• Sixteen years ago the Postal Service and the National Association of Letter Carriers launched the largest one-day food drive in the nation. Since then more than 900 million pounds of food have been collected; more than 73.1 million pounds in 2008 alone.
• The Postal Service, the National Marrow Donor Program and The Marrow Foundation created the Delivering the Gift of Life campaign. More than 42,000 postal employees have joined the registry, many have donated marrow.
• The “Have You Seen Me” campaign demonstrates the power of the mail. The campaign has returned 148 missing children to their families (as of Dec. 31, 2008).
• For nearly 100 years, postal employees, charitable organizations, corporations and individuals have volunteered to help children and families in need have happy holidays by answering letters to Santa.
• Postal employees pledge about $38 million annually to the Combined Federal Campaign, the world's largest and most successful annual workplace charity campaign.

SECURITY. LAW ENFORCEMENT. PRESERVING THE TRUST.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is mandated to safeguard the entire postal system — from the nearly 663,000 employees who process and deliver the mail, to the millions of customers who use it.

• One of the oldest federal law enforcement agencies, the Postal Inspection Service secures the nation’s mail system and ensures public trust in the mail.
• Postal Inspectors are leading a global initiative to protect consumers from counterfeit check scams. To date, the initiative has stopped nearly 800,000 fake checks worth nearly $2.7 billion from entering this country. For additional information, go to fakechecks.org.
• The Inspection Service and the Postal Service Consumer Advocate’s office educate consumers about fraudulent schemes and provide them with tools and information to combat these frauds every year during National Consumer Protection Week.
• In 2008, Postal Inspectors arrested more than 9,000 suspects for crimes involving the mail or against the Postal Service. More than half of the arrests were related to mail theft and identity crimes and more than 1,300 were for frauds sent through the mail.
• To respond quickly to major incidents such as natural disasters, the Inspection Service has 18 mobile command centers and a mobile mail screening station ready for action.
• The Inspection Service was the first law enforcement agency to offer federal agent careers to women.
• The Postal Inspection Service plays a major role on the President’s Identity Theft Task Force and works closely with the financial services and mail order industries to maintain America’s confidence in the mail.
• Postal Inspectors helped develop the “2 SMRT 4U” campaign tailored for teen girls, the group targeted most by online sexual predators. It includes a website to educate them about how to chat and post wisely online.
• In 2008, the “2 SMRT 4U” campaign was honored with a Silver Effie Award. The prestigious Effie Awards recognize leaders in the industry for the creativity and effectiveness of their campaigns. For additional information go to 2smrt4u.com.
• The Postal Inspection Service was honored with a U.S. Department of Justice Internet Safety Award for its dedication to protecting children and fighting child exploitation.
• To ensure safety in postal facilities and to keep the mail moving, Postal Inspectors use modern equipment to verify reports of hazardous substances and/or suspicious mailpieces.
• Postal Inspectors made 100 arrests for mailed explosives, false alarms, hoaxes and vandalism in 2008.

SUSTAINABILITY

The U.S. Postal Service is committed to actions that promote sustainability — meeting the needs of the present without compromising the future. We are working to create a culture of conservation among our 663,000 employees in our more than 34,000 facilities.

Protecting the Environment

• The Postal Service is the only shipping company that has earned Cradle to Cradle^SM certification for the environmentally friendly design and manufacturing of its shipping products — Priority Mail and Express Mail boxes and envelopes.
• The Postal Service won the 2008 EPA WasteWise Partner of the Year Award — for the ninth consecutive year — for overall waste reduction achievements.
• The White House Closing the Circle Award recognizes outstanding environmental achievements of federal employees and their facilities. The Postal Service has received 39 awards since the program began in 1996.
• The Postal Service is working with agencies in Maine to launch the nation’s first program allowing consumers to dispose of excess pharmaceuticals by mail, helping to prevent prescription drugs from contaminating natural resources.
• Postage stamps are printed using water-based inks made from soybeans and contain no lead.
• Mail is delivered by bicycle in locations throughout Arizona and Florida, reducing emissions and saving fuel.
• Three-wheeled electric vehicles are being tested in Florida, California, Arizona and Washington, DC. The T-3 has a range of 40 miles, a maximum speed of 12 mph and can carry 450 pounds. It has zero emissions and averages 4 cents a mile in energy costs.
• Two-ton electric vehicles have been delivering mail in New York City since 2001.
• In 2008, more than $12 million in revenue was generated by selling recyclables as raw materials, diverting tons of wastepaper, cardboard, cans, plastics and other materials from landfills.
• We are constantly streamlining our mail delivery routes to reduce driving time and fuel consumption.
• We have a “fleet of feet,” delivering in the most environmentally friendly way possible. More than 10,000 of our letter carriers never get in a vehicle at all.
• We are piloting a mail-back program where consumers can mail used electronic items such as PDAs, cell phones and ink cartridges for recycling.
• We are working with OSRAM SYLVANIA and Veolia Environmental Services to help consumers properly recycle used compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs).

Conserving Energy

• The Postal Service has a large solar photovoltaic system. Photovoltaics convert sunlight directly into electricity. The emissions eliminated by using solar power are equal to planting more than 850,000 trees.
• Detailed energy audits are ongoing at our largest energy-consuming facilities. These facilities represent about 40 million square feet of space and roughly 60 percent of the Postal Service’s energy consumption.
• More than 1 trillion BTUs of potential energy reductions already have been identified and projects that will save 400 billion BTUs have been completed.
• We operate the world’s largest fleet of alternative fuel-capable vehicles — more than 43,000 — that can use clean fuels such as ethanol, compressed natural gas, liquid propane gas, electricity and bio-diesel.
• We are testing hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicles, which emit water from their tailpipes.

Building Green

• Postal facilities are becoming greener. New buildings are being constructed and older buildings are being renovated using green-friendly features including:
  • Recycled fiberglass insulation
  • Straw bale insulation
  • Natural lighting
  • Thermal window frames
  • Solar electric systems
  • Solar thermal systems
  • Water tanks to harvest rainwater for reuse
  • Vegetative roofs
• We’ve embarked on increasing sustainability in our facilities with features like high efficiency lighting and HVAC, recycled building materials, low water usage fixtures and low volatile organic compound (VOC) materials.
• Native plant species are used in landscaping at postal facilities around the country to minimize the use of valuable resources.
• We are upgrading our buildings to reduce energy use. Our objective is to reduce our energy consumption 30 percent by 2015.

INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY

The U.S. Postal Service has a long, proud history of creating and using the most advanced technology available to process and deliver mail and better serve customers. From the Pony Express to Air Mail, from sorting letters by hand to high-speed automation and from self-adhesive stamps to computerized postage.

Information Technology

• The Postal Service maintains one of the largest intranets in the world — connecting more than 28,000 locations to critical business systems 24/7.
• There are 5,213 remote locations within the postal system that receive Internet service via satellite.
• Our communications network supports and maintains nearly 28,000 mobile phones and more than 9,000 BlackBerrys.
• For the fifth straight year, the Postal Service has been named one of the best IT places to work by Computerworld magazine.
• We store more than 2 petabytes of data online — equivalent to more than 4,000 years of songs on a MP3 player.
• More than 383,000 postal employees use computers on a daily basis at work.
• We have one of the world’s largest e-mail systems, with nearly 200,000 employees with postal e-mail accounts delivering nearly 16 million e-mails a day.
• Nearly 4 billion e-mail messages were delivered in 2008 and every month 330 million e-mail messages are scanned for viruses.
• The Postal Service’s call center is manned 24x7 and handles over 31,000 customer calls per month.

Innovative Technologies

• The Postal Service uses more than 10,000 pieces of automated processing equipment to sort nearly half the world’s mail volume.
• Intelligent Mail® services increase the value of mail for the Postal Service and its customers. Intelligent Mail barcodes uniquely identify pieces of mail, as well as trays, sacks and containers of mail, and track them through the mail processing system.
  
• The Flats Sequencing System is the Postal Service’s latest piece of equipment. It sorts large envelopes and magazines known as “flats,” at 37,000 pieces per hour in carrier walk sequence.
• The Delivery Input Output Subsystem machine reads and verifies the address on a piece of mail, sprays a barcode and sorts the mail at 39,000 pieces per hour.
• The Postal Automated Redirection System automatically forwards nearly 3 billion pieces of mail every year. In 2008, 46 million postal customers who submitted address changes.
• We are the world leader in optical character recognition technology — our machines read 93 percent of all hand-addressed letter mail.
• The Advanced Facer Canceller System positions letter mail and cancels stamps at 36,000 pieces per hour.
• The Delivery Barcode Sorter reads the barcode on letter mail and sorts them at 36,000 pieces per hour.
• The Automated Flat Sorting Machine sorts flat mail at 17,000 pieces per hour.
• The Automated Package Processing System processes packages and bundles of mail at more than 9,500 pieces per hour.

FUN FACTS

Postal Service superlatives. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know — and more.

Post Office Fun Facts

• Highest Elevation — Leadville, CO (about 10,150 ft)
• Lowest Elevation — Mecca, CA (about 180 ft below sea level)
• Easternmost in US — Lubec, ME
• Westernmost in US — Wales, AK
• Northernmost in US — Barrow, AK
• Southernmost in US — Naalehu, HI
• Closest to the geographical center of the 50 united states — Belle Fourche, SD
• Closest to geographical center of the 48 contiguous states — Lebanon, KS
• Smallest — Ochopee, FL (8’4” x 7’3”)
• Oldest — Hinsdale, NH (since 1816)
• Coldest — North Slope Borough, AK (average winter temp is -22°)
• Hottest — Death Valley, CA (average summer temp is 115°)
• Most Unusual Construction — The Corrales, NM, Post Office was built using 875 bales of straw. The facility looks like others, but has a “truth” window in the lobby so the public can see its uniqueness. This Post Office also has a hitching post for our customers on horseback.
• Most Unexpected — The Peach Springs, AZ, Post Office is equipped with walk-in freezers for food destined for delivery to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by mule train to the Havasupai Indians.
• Most Isolated — Located in the farthest reaches of northern Alaska, the Anaktuvuk Pass Post Office is the only link to the outside world for the residents who live there. There are no roads to the town, everything must be flown in.
• Most Needing a Bridge — The Point Roberts, WA, Post Office cannot be reached by vehicle unless you drive through British Columbia, Canada. Only a boat or float plane will get you there directly.

Just For Fun Facts

• The Postal Service is the nation’s second largest employer and operates:
  • Nation’s largest retail network
  • World’s largest civilian fleet of vehicles
  • World’s largest alternative fuel-enabled fleet
• The Postal Service moves mail using planes, trains, trucks, cars, boats, ferries, helicopters, subways, float planes, hovercrafts, T-3s, street cars, mules, bicycles and human feet.
• Most Unusual Delivery Method — mule trains in Arizona. Each mule carries about 130 pounds of mail, food, supplies and furniture down the 8-mile trail to the Havasupai Indians, averaging 41,000 pounds per week.
• Another Unusual Delivery Method — the JW Westcott is a 45-foot contract mail boat out of Detroit, MI, that delivers mail to ships passing by the Detroit River. The JW Westcott even has its own ZIP Code (48222).
• The Postal Service manufactures over 380,000 locks and 3.2 million keys every year.
• Located in MD, the William F. Bolger Center for Leadership Development is a Postal Service training center. It is the only hotel in the nation featuring an on-site Smithsonian exhibit.
• The longest rural delivery route in the country is 176.7 miles in Fordville, ND.
• The shortest rural delivery route in the country is 1.9 miles in Henderson, NV.
• The lowest number ZIP Code is 00501, a unique ZIP for the Internal Revenue Service in Holtsville, NY.
• The highest number ZIP Code is 99950 in Ketchikan, AK.
• Clinton is the most common Post Office name in the country (26). Tied for 2nd place are Franklin, Madison and Washington (25 each).
• The top five most common street names in the country are Main, Maple, 2nd, Oak and Park.