Tag: USPS

The U.S. Postal Service has proposed requiring larger-sized mailbox systems in new apartment and business buildings to alleviate rising levels of undeliverable mail. “Today’s small apartment boxes are not large enough to accept today’s larger-shaped mail,” said Jeffery Lewis, USPS program manager, apartment box standardization. “Our delivery confirmation data reflects that 30 percent more mail is undeliverable to apartments than to a regular household. Nationally, the average is 7.5 percent. In high-density metropolitan areas the undeliverable rate is 10 percent.” The existing apartment mailbox standard of 5 inches by 6 inches by 15 inches has been in effect since 1975 despite a rise in volume for flat mail and packages.

The U.S. Postal Service is in “financial and systemic distress,” a coalition of mailers said in a letter delivered to four members of the House of Representatives.

“True postal reform can be achieved only through a comprehensive set of measures … that address the difficult, yet crucial, issues of cost control and regulatory oversight,” said Robert Walker, head of Postal Reform in the Public Interest and one of nine members of the President’s Commission on the U.S. Postal Service last year, in the letter.

The United States Postal Service has awarded a USD370 million contract to Siemens Dematic Postal Automation L.P. to provide systems and upgrades to replace its existing fleet of Multiline Optical Character Reader (MLOCR) systems. This is the single largest contract the USPS has ever awarded the company.