Some insight into US Mail shipping and how to package items for it, from someone who hauls it.

[A HERETIC I AM]

47. A significant number of packages....

are still, to borrow a trucking phrase, "Fingerprinted", meaning someone touches it and moves it. There are certainly a lot of facilities that have the equipment that can automatically read addresses and sort into different areas, but many of the smaller facilities are still using human eyes and hands to place a box or package from one bin to another.

But if you can imagine working in such a place just after I or another driver like me bumps the dock with a full load like I picture, and it has to all be gone through in a matter of say 2 hours, in order to go back on other trucks to move further on.

Those people are picking it up, looking at the zip, tossing (literally) it into the correct bin or GPC and so on and so forth till the rush slows down.

A place like....Bozeman, MT for example. Or Ocala Maricamp. Both facilities of comparable size, with 4 or 5 loading doors, but they sort incoming mail for the street for numerous other Zip Codes nearby as well as sort outgoing mail for transport to the nearest large distribution center.

It might be dead slow until their regularly scheduled truck arrives from out of town, then all hell breaks loose inside when that mail hits the floor.