The United States Postal Service Is the Way to Go

The United States Postal Service Is the Way to Go

Do you have a friend or relative that lives out of state or on the other side of the U.S.? Have you ever sent or wanted to send a letter or package to them and wondered what was the best way, how much it was going to cost, or will it even get there safely? The U.S. Postal Service is a government agency responsible for mail delivery for the population at large. It is headed by the Postmaster General and serves the entire United States with uniform postal rates charged to everyone, regardless of the distance of service. The U.S. Postal Service is the core of the trillion dollar mailing industry that employs more than 8 million workers and operates over 218,000 vehicles, which makes it the largest vehicle fleet in the world. They deliver approximately 167 billion pieces of mail each year, that's 554 million pieces a day. The Post Office Department was created in 1792 and transformed into its current form in 1971 under the Postal Reorganization Act. USPS has several delivery options, but its Standard Mail delivery is the one best- known and most used by the public. With Standard Mail, anyone with a physical street address can receive mail, delivered right to the front door, for a fixed price. All it takes is a stamp affixed in the corner of an envelope, to prepare a letter for delivery. Cost, reliable delivery, delivery options and free material are some of the advantages of using USPS as your number one method to ship.

First of all, low cost is probably the best advantage of using USPS. Postal rates, in spite of consistent increases over the decades, are still inexpensive when you consider how far your mail travels for such a low cost. Their rates are the cheapest compared to other sources. Whether it is flat-rate priority shipping, first-class parcel delivery, or the capacity to send a postcard, the USPS makes a point to be the most economic option available to Americans. I like that I can mail any standard letter for a cost of only 44 cents to any location in the United States. The U.S. Postal service has complete control in this area, so unless you can use e-mail instead, you have no choice but to use the U.S. Postal Service for standard mail delivery.

Secondly, I have found that delivery through U.S. Postal Service is generally reliable. When something leaves my house, I can feel pretty confident that it will arrive at its destination, and that it will get there in about three to five days. Sure, it would be nice if I could say that the mail always arrives in three days or four days or something consistent, but considering the varying distance for mail delivery and other factors, a two- day window is still pretty good. Their reliability is so time-honored that it has even given creation to the cliché expressions of the postman having the duty to deliver "whether rain or shine," and "through sleet or snow".

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