Speaker 1: Hey, friends and family, it's me Josh, your pal, your buddy,
Speaker 1: avenging angel, all that jazz. For this week's s Y
Speaker 1: s K Selects. I've chosen How the US Postal Service
Speaker 1: Works because, as you may know, the postal services under
Speaker 1: threat of being closed and going under yet again, and
Speaker 1: we don't want that. For some reason, we can't quite
Speaker 1: put our finger on. So I hope you'll enjoy this
Speaker 1: episode and it rouses you to do something like save
Speaker 1: the post Office. Welcome to Stuff. You should know, a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. Uh, there's Charles w Chuck Bryant.
Speaker 1: I'm Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now, the Warrant Peace Report,
Speaker 1: warr in peace dot Org, etcetera. I'm Stevenski. How you
Speaker 1: doing good. Jerry just said let's do this old school
Speaker 1: right before she recorded, and I have no idea what
Speaker 1: she meant. Speck in like, yeah, you know she's back.
Speaker 1: I thought she meant, let's make it crappy in five
Speaker 1: minutes long, and we need like little empty tin cans
Speaker 1: to speak and dude, make it sound right. How you doing, Jerry?
Speaker 1: That's great. Jerry gave us the thumbs up, I know
Speaker 1: in our new murder room. Um, Jerry is within our
Speaker 1: eyesight again after a long layoff where she was not
Speaker 1: within our range of viewing. It's kind of weird because
Speaker 1: now I'm looking at you, but I can clearly see
Speaker 1: my peripheral vision that she says on Facebook. She's waving,
Speaker 1: she's brusting her teeth, she's reranging the severed human heads
Speaker 1: that are in jars all around the place. That's creepy. Um.
Speaker 1: You want to talk post office man, you want to
Speaker 1: give the disclaimer that we're only talking about the post
Speaker 1: office in the US of A. Think he just did. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: we don't know how it works in your country. No,
Speaker 1: And actually it's probably not nearly as interesting as what's
Speaker 1: going on with the US Postal Service, the USPS. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I don't know if you know this or not chucked,
Speaker 1: but the U s PS is in a lot of
Speaker 1: trouble there. Yeah, there's solvency that the amount of money
Speaker 1: that they have to keep the lights on and keep
Speaker 1: everything going is expected to run out in October of
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen if they don't do something. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, I think they lost sixteen billion dollars
Speaker 1: last year, yes, and five billion the year before. So
Speaker 1: that's a three times as much money in a year.
Speaker 1: That's bad news. Here's the caveat to that sixteen billion
Speaker 1: dollar loss, though, eleven billion of that was in payments
Speaker 1: to uh, the future benefits of postal workers that have
Speaker 1: not yet retired. But well, and the posts serve. The
Speaker 1: Postal Service is the only federal agency of any sort
Speaker 1: that is required to prepay its employees benefits for the future.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and six, a lamed accession of Congress said,
Speaker 1: you know what, you guys need to make sure that
Speaker 1: your workers are taken care of. So you guys have
Speaker 1: to start pre paying um and over the next ten years.
Speaker 1: And they have been, and they've been bleeding money. I mean,
Speaker 1: like a sixteen billion dollar loss, but eleven billion of
Speaker 1: it was to these future payments. I guess that would
Speaker 1: make sense. Then then if you took out that eleven
Speaker 1: they would just be about the same loss as before,
Speaker 1: a mere five billion a year, right, But and that's
Speaker 1: a lot of money to lose, it is, but um
Speaker 1: they're figuring out ways to make up for that extra loss,
Speaker 1: and one of the big ones it's on the table
Speaker 1: now is cutting out Saturday delivery. They figured they can
Speaker 1: recoup two billion dollars a year by doing that, so
Speaker 1: then they're down to three. The thing is is the
Speaker 1: post the post office. It's a part of the executive branch. Man,
Speaker 1: it's all over the place. It's a part of the
Speaker 1: executive branch. It's a part of the federal government. But
Speaker 1: it gets zero dollars in tax revenue. And it's also
Speaker 1: a thrill kill cult, right exactly. That's the horrible secret
Speaker 1: of the US. Right. Um. So they get no money
Speaker 1: besides what they can make off of their own revenue corporation. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: So they get no but they get but they're also
Speaker 1: under the purview of the federal the federal government. It's
Speaker 1: a weird, weird thing, and they can't act without asking Congress.
Speaker 1: And Congress hasn't exactly been forthcoming lately. They haven't approved
Speaker 1: the Saturday thinget have they Congress. Here's the thing they've
Speaker 1: been trying to get Congress throughpprove that forever. The Senate
Speaker 1: passed a bill that said, after two years, we'll let
Speaker 1: you cut out Saturday service, will give you eleven billion
Speaker 1: dollars in over payments. That you guys made towards the
Speaker 1: retirement stuff, all this stuff back that went to the House,
Speaker 1: and the House didn't do anything with it. Right, So
Speaker 1: you know the fiscal cliff, Well, the the US Congress
Speaker 1: passed the stop gap measure, basically a federal budget that says,
Speaker 1: within this period, we're still able to operate, right, And
Speaker 1: the USPS says, ha ha, you didn't include our mandate
Speaker 1: from nineteen one that we have to carry out Saturday
Speaker 1: service in that stop gap. So technically, under current federal law,
Speaker 1: we don't have to carry out Saturday service. And they're
Speaker 1: arguing it legally, so they're just saying that's the loophold
Speaker 1: are going to use to shut down Saturday service. Sack medicines,
Speaker 1: just packages. They're going to deliver packages on Saturday. And
Speaker 1: here's a really good reason. Express mail. They're revenues from
Speaker 1: packages of increased over the last ten years, whereas first
Speaker 1: class mail, you know, letters have gone down, I believe.
Speaker 1: So they're making all almost all of their money because
Speaker 1: it's only forty cents to mail a letter from Florida
Speaker 1: to Hawaii. Um. But they make, however much shipping in
Speaker 1: the shipping game, which is where they make all their money,
Speaker 1: which is ironically the one place they don't have a
Speaker 1: monopoly as far as the mail goes. I'm glad to
Speaker 1: see medicine mail order medicine on that list to express
Speaker 1: mail packages in medicine, because at first I was like,
Speaker 1: who cares, I don't need you don't yet. I don't
Speaker 1: need my mail on a Saturday, right, but you need
Speaker 1: your medicine on a Saturday, or else you go blind.
Speaker 1: That's why they included that as a you know something,
Speaker 1: they would still deliver, right and post offices that are
Speaker 1: already open on Saturdays will still be open on Saturdays.
Speaker 1: So if you want to go to your PO box,
Speaker 1: maybe there'll be some mail, maybe there won't be who knows,
Speaker 1: I bet you've had a PO box. I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about this, haven't you have? You know, you just struck
Speaker 1: me as a kind of person that would have had
Speaker 1: a PO box at one point. You know, that's where
Speaker 1: I get all my guns in the mail. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty worked up about this, as you can see. Um,
Speaker 1: it's kind of interesting. And who would have thought that
Speaker 1: the postal service would ever be interesting? Uh? Sure, I
Speaker 1: think parts of this are very interesting. Um, and we
Speaker 1: would just want to go ahead and say hello to
Speaker 1: all of our postal carriers out there that um listen
Speaker 1: to our show who who wont us over during the
Speaker 1: Bush Era? Because we've got an emails from you guys
Speaker 1: and gals. Yeah, including one of our favorite people out
Speaker 1: there is a postal worker, very nostrim. Oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: one should really be a tribute to Van Nostris. I
Speaker 1: didn't he's a carrier. I'm he's always been kind of
Speaker 1: cryptic about what he does. But I'm under the distinct
Speaker 1: impression that he's employed by the Postal Service. A right,
Speaker 1: Bangalore's Van Nostrian. Yeah, this is for you. Um, But okay,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about this. Let's talk about the Postal
Speaker 1: service man. I'm all jazzed about the USPS. Dude, glad
Speaker 1: you are. Um. So, for a little while, even after
Speaker 1: the advent of electronic mail, the postal services, the amount
Speaker 1: of mail they were delivering was still increasing. As of
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, it was on an upward trajectory. Sorry,
Speaker 1: two thousand six, right, two hundred and thirteen billion, one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty seven million pieces of mail that year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's down to one sixty seven now and then Uh,
Speaker 1: their when was this written? Do you know? I think
Speaker 1: two thousand seven eight. Okay, so then they had seven
Speaker 1: hundred thousand employees. Now they have about five hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty thousand. So they've been in and trim the budget
Speaker 1: mode I think for the past few years. Well, and
Speaker 1: the reason why. In two thousand and six they also
Speaker 1: made seventy two point eight billion dollars. I mean those
Speaker 1: stamps they add up, you know. Um, in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven they made sixty six billion. Wow. Not bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're still losing a lot of money. I mean
Speaker 1: that's what seven billion dollars in difference in just five years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not good. It's not good. Um So, where the
Speaker 1: where'd all this come from? Chuck? It came from back
Speaker 1: yonder day. You know. People have always need to communicate,
Speaker 1: obviously from long distances. And uh in sixteen thirty nine, Um,
Speaker 1: they you know, colonists here in the in the New
Speaker 1: I guess they weren't United States yet, but in the
Speaker 1: New World needed to get word back to England occasionally
Speaker 1: and say things like hey, quit bugging us, or hey,
Speaker 1: sind it's more t and crumpets and um. So the
Speaker 1: first official postal service was established in sixteen thirty nine. UM.
Speaker 1: Richard Fairbank's tavern in Boston was the official mail drop
Speaker 1: for overseas there in Massachusetts, and that was the place
Speaker 1: to go if you wanted to mail something. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't find what happened or where it went on
Speaker 1: the other side of the Atlantic. Probably I would imagine
Speaker 1: then you just went to that pub and said, hey,
Speaker 1: is there any mail? And they said no, and you
Speaker 1: turn around and traveled the five miles back to your village.
Speaker 1: So that was step one. Step two was about uh forty.
Speaker 1: So nine years later three William penn established very famous
Speaker 1: person obviously um, the first official post office in penn Sylvania.
Speaker 1: He give his name after him. That's right, and uh,
Speaker 1: I love this side note. Here in the South, private
Speaker 1: messages were just sent between plantations, so they would probably
Speaker 1: just give it to a slave and say carry this
Speaker 1: over to that guy. Uh. And then flash forward a
Speaker 1: little bit more. Um, the British Crown gave to a
Speaker 1: man named Thomas Neil a twenty one year grant for
Speaker 1: the postal service in the United States, and he paid
Speaker 1: UM like seven seven shillings a year. So that's nothing, right,
Speaker 1: he still died in debt with the monopoly. So the
Speaker 1: postal service has always been kind of tricky to call
Speaker 1: money from. Interesting. So that continued until seventeen seventy four,
Speaker 1: and a lot of big stuff was happening around that time, like, Hey,
Speaker 1: we don't like you anymore in England controlling us over
Speaker 1: here and taxing us. So we're gonna start and establish
Speaker 1: our own constitutional post office for for any kind of
Speaker 1: mail going from anywhere, basically intercolonial mail. Yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was just was very cutting edge at that time, I'm sure.
Speaker 1: And actually, um, you know that when the British were
Speaker 1: carrying out the postal service on behalf of the colonies.
Speaker 1: In the colonies, um, there was a guy named Benjamin
Speaker 1: Franklin who was appointed the postmaster of Philadelphia and he
Speaker 1: actually killed it as postmaster, of course he did. He
Speaker 1: like totally improved the road. He said, like, we're gonna
Speaker 1: start working like twenty four hours a day. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have like lots of shifts, we're going to put up
Speaker 1: milestones like the The postal service helped improve the connectedness
Speaker 1: of the colonies thanks to him. So when the Continental
Speaker 1: Congress said, hey, we want our own Postal Service. Ben
Speaker 1: Franklin became the first Postmaster General, and of course he
Speaker 1: ran it like a tight ship. And he's one of
Speaker 1: those dudes. I get a feeling if we could like
Speaker 1: resurrect him and bring him out today, he could fix
Speaker 1: what's going on in this country. Yeah, and he'd say
Speaker 1: something pithy and ask for a glass of sherry exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: So this is to me when it gets super interesting. Uh,
Speaker 1: was in the nineteenth century when westward expansion happened California
Speaker 1: gold Rush. All of a sudden, we needed to get
Speaker 1: stuff from the East coast to San Francisco, let's say,
Speaker 1: so as quick as possible, right, what's crazy? As quick
Speaker 1: as possible was to go down New York around Florida, yes,
Speaker 1: like a steamship, uh, through the Caribbean and then across
Speaker 1: like Panama and then up on the Pacific side to California.
Speaker 1: That was the fastest way to get mail for a while. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And how long three to four weeks to send a
Speaker 1: letter from the East coast to the West coast. And
Speaker 1: that's you know, the best case scenario, right, And that's
Speaker 1: how that's what that's how the US the East coast
Speaker 1: um communicated with the West Coast for a while. Yeah,
Speaker 1: until some stagecoach routes. Routes were um, we're established. There
Speaker 1: was a southern route and there was a central route,
Speaker 1: and the Southern route you could supposedly use a year
Speaker 1: round because it's lovely down here. But then the Central
Speaker 1: route it was faster, but they said you can't use
Speaker 1: that year round their storms. Yeah, and it also killed me. Man.
Speaker 1: The way they used to name companies back then was
Speaker 1: so like it made perfect sense. You basically just said
Speaker 1: what you did. Like one the Pacific Mail Steamship Company
Speaker 1: said we're going to carry your mail to the Pacific
Speaker 1: by steamship, and then the Overland Mail Company like, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it over land, so that's what we're
Speaker 1: gonna call our company. So they got the contract the
Speaker 1: Overland Mail Company. Um, along the Southern route. Took about
Speaker 1: twenty five days, and then my favorite, one of my
Speaker 1: favorite parts of American history was born, the Pony Express. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's just so amazing, like the the idea that
Speaker 1: they had to do this. It was a different company
Speaker 1: that was competing. They wanted to get that contract away
Speaker 1: from the Overlink Company, right the CEOC and p P.
Speaker 1: And they said, you know what, we know the central
Speaker 1: route shorter. We're gonna prove that we can use a
Speaker 1: year round and we're gonna set up something that it's
Speaker 1: just gonna blow this twenty five day thing out of
Speaker 1: the water. And they set up the Pony Express and
Speaker 1: they had stations what every ten twenty miles, and a
Speaker 1: rider would ride from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento or
Speaker 1: be part of a line of rides. Well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the key. They go about a hundred miles and then
Speaker 1: they change horses every like ten or fifteen miles. Yes,
Speaker 1: so the same rider would change horses because they rode.
Speaker 1: They average ten miles an hour, which doesn't sound fast,
Speaker 1: but you got a factor in like the Sierra Nevadas
Speaker 1: where they're just crawling up these mountains. So these dudes
Speaker 1: were riding hard and on flat ground. If they're averaging
Speaker 1: ten miles an hour, right, and they're going twenty four
Speaker 1: hours a day, uh, they're going two thousand miles ten
Speaker 1: miles an hour, that's what twenty hours? Yeah, that's no,
Speaker 1: that's two hundred hours. So what is that That's less
Speaker 1: than ten days. So that's that cuts that over link
Speaker 1: company's rate by Yeah, there was always one set of
Speaker 1: writers going east, one set going west. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: when you when you were relieved by another rider, you'd
Speaker 1: hang out at that station and wait for the other
Speaker 1: for somebody to come the other way and then relieve them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They were paid really well at the time five bucks
Speaker 1: a week, which at the time unskilled labors made about
Speaker 1: a dollar a week. So um, and did you read
Speaker 1: the first ad they ever put in? Wanted young, skinny,
Speaker 1: wiry fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers willing
Speaker 1: to risk death daily. Orphans preferred, And that's maybe legend,
Speaker 1: but supposedly that's what it says. But apparently they were young, little,
Speaker 1: light lithe, skinny kids because you know, you didn't want
Speaker 1: some big dude like me up on a horse. The
Speaker 1: horse would be like, I don't want to ride anymore.
Speaker 1: So they were like these young boys, like I think
Speaker 1: the youngest one is like fourteen. And supposedly Buffalo Bill
Speaker 1: Cody was a rider, although people have disputed that. Now.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, well he's he's the stuff of a legend. Well,
Speaker 1: he's by far and away the most famous famous Pony
Speaker 1: Express rider, if in fact he did. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: so think about the amount of infrastructure built up along
Speaker 1: this central route to have a station every ten or
Speaker 1: twenty miles. You've got all these employees going. And they
Speaker 1: proved it. They proved that the central route could be
Speaker 1: used year round, and so they got the contract. Then
Speaker 1: right now, the Overland Company got the contract to use it,
Speaker 1: to use that same route that was already established. And
Speaker 1: the Pony Express was like, you have to be kidding me.
Speaker 1: And so the the U. S. Government said no, no,
Speaker 1: you guys do half and then let the let the
Speaker 1: Overland Company do the other half. Yeah, And they were
Speaker 1: mad for about a year and a half and really angry.
Speaker 1: And then the telegraph line was completed. Now everyone's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I guess I guess we're all out of business now. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was it. Pony Express the soul the Wells Fargo
Speaker 1: and basically shut down. Yeah. I think American Express ended
Speaker 1: up branching out of Wells Fargo to like these are
Speaker 1: old old companies, like these modern banks and credit card companies.
Speaker 1: Is interesting how far they go back. But think about
Speaker 1: that man. Even as far back as the mid nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: new technology was putting mail delivery out to pasture, and
Speaker 1: then mail delivery would evolve and like figure out how
Speaker 1: to come back. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Foreshadowing. So this
Speaker 1: is a big jump forward to the mid nineteen sixties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot happened in between. Then it didn't. Actually, we
Speaker 1: started to go move further and further out into the suburbs.
Speaker 1: There was a huge population boom in the in the
Speaker 1: post war era, and businesses started to realize the value
Speaker 1: of direct mailing. And all these factors put together meant
Speaker 1: that the postal Service was totally overwhelmed. Yeah, completely, because
Speaker 1: it became such a big deal. Everyone was writing letters
Speaker 1: and they were using the same old hand um, I
Speaker 1: guess hand delivery methods, sorting methods, that's what it was.
Speaker 1: They weren't automated at all, and they needed to be.
Speaker 1: And so there was a postal reform that that was undertaken. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was in nineteen seventy one the Post Office Department.
Speaker 1: And I didn't even know this. It was shortly after
Speaker 1: I was born. We weren't the United States Postal Service
Speaker 1: until nine that was when we officially became the USPS. UH,
Speaker 1: it became an independent establishment. Um was no longer a
Speaker 1: part of the cabinet of the federal government, but was
Speaker 1: part of the executive branch and got the monopoly basically
Speaker 1: to deliver mail, even though it was supposedly just a company,
Speaker 1: and they and they re up the mandate from I
Speaker 1: think Sevo that said you the postal Service is one
Speaker 1: of the most essential services of the federal government. No
Speaker 1: person has cut off in this country. None shall not
Speaker 1: get delivered exactly. Everyone's going to have a mailbox, and
Speaker 1: everyone's going to get mail to that mailbox every day
Speaker 1: because we need to help keep intellectual freedom um going
Speaker 1: and and and ideas in business and commerce going all
Speaker 1: the time. And the Postal Services, this federal agency that
Speaker 1: carries that out, and that I'm sure that put a
Speaker 1: financial burden on them when people started building in these
Speaker 1: especially rich people, when they started building in these remote areas,
Speaker 1: because then all of a sudden, you had to add
Speaker 1: that to your route. Well, there's if it's sixty miles
Speaker 1: up a mountain and it's the only house there's there's
Speaker 1: a guy who services the Grand Canyon. There's a group
Speaker 1: of Indians that live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon,
Speaker 1: and he has a donkey train that goes down there
Speaker 1: every day with the mail. Really yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: part of it's a federal mandate. You have to be
Speaker 1: able to get mail. Everyone has a mailbox. He's like,
Speaker 1: don't you guys you smoke signals? Come on, they do.
Speaker 1: In fact, that actually wrote an article on spoke singles. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say we should podcasts on it, but
Speaker 1: it's it's like super basic, is it really? It would
Speaker 1: be like a five minute podcast. Well, we'll have to
Speaker 1: figure out some other way to use it. Agreed, because
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Um, so do we cover going postal now?
Speaker 1: It was sort of just thrown in the middle of
Speaker 1: this army. Yeah, it really was. It was talking about
Speaker 1: how packages are delivered, and all of a sudden, it says,
Speaker 1: and then people started killing each other in nine six yeah,
Speaker 1: which is actually, Um, the post Office has the dubious
Speaker 1: distinction of kicking off the workplace shooting trend in the
Speaker 1: United States. Was that the first one as far as
Speaker 1: I could tell, Alright, So Edmund Oklahoma, Patrick Henry A.
Speaker 1: Cheryl killed fourteen co workers. Um. And another one happened,
Speaker 1: including a uh supervisor getting killed with a samurai sword. UM.
Speaker 1: November nineteen Thomas H. McIlvaine shot and killed four co workers,
Speaker 1: wounded five others, then shot himself and then nine and
Speaker 1: then in two thousand three two more incidences of postal
Speaker 1: workers killing fellow postal workers. It was like just between
Speaker 1: eighties six and nineties seven, forty people died at postal
Speaker 1: post offices from postal rampage and gave birth to the
Speaker 1: term going postal, which is used as a vernacular for
Speaker 1: like just losing it basically, um. And if you're interested
Speaker 1: in that at all, there's a really good documentary I
Speaker 1: think it's on Netflix streaming right now called um Murdered
Speaker 1: by Proxy, and it's all about the postal shootings, like
Speaker 1: where they came from. There's a lot of scrutiny at
Speaker 1: like the of the management techniques of people at post offices,
Speaker 1: and there's got to be something to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, if you watch that's like it was like
Speaker 1: how many other industries had that many office shootings? You know, retail, actually,
Speaker 1: you're the homicide rate is three times higher in retail
Speaker 1: than it is at the post office. You don't say
Speaker 1: go in retail, that just means you're going shopping. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like drinking the kool aid. They really drank flavor
Speaker 1: aid and it's right kool aids some one with that distinction.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, alright, so that was going. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we had to mention it, but I don't want to
Speaker 1: dwell on it. But it was weird in this article
Speaker 1: the way it went right in the middle of this
Speaker 1: came up out of nowhere. Um zip codes, this is
Speaker 1: kind of cool. Um zip codes were introduced in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty three and then officially put in place in mandatory
Speaker 1: in seven because just so much mail going on you
Speaker 1: had to categorize it more specifically, right, that was part
Speaker 1: of that, the post office being swamped. This was the
Speaker 1: first step toward automation. Was like a standardized code. Well
Speaker 1: they did have other ones, but it was like one
Speaker 1: was New York City or something like that. You know.
Speaker 1: So ZIP this is just a nice little cocktail party
Speaker 1: factoid stands for zone improvement plan. I never knew that
Speaker 1: until I read this. Did you know that I had before?
Speaker 1: But I had forgotten. Okay, so it's his own improvement
Speaker 1: plan and it's uh here in the United States at least,
Speaker 1: it's a five digit number represents you know, a location
Speaker 1: obviously where you're trying to send something and it now
Speaker 1: they have the ZIP code plus four in some areas
Speaker 1: of like I guess major urban areas have a little
Speaker 1: more specificity, right, they like deliver it to your like
Speaker 1: they put it on your stomach if you plus four.
Speaker 1: I think certain buildings even will have their own plus
Speaker 1: four if it's a big enough building, or if you
Speaker 1: get a lot of mail as a person, is that
Speaker 1: what you're after is a plus four for your well,
Speaker 1: it says that some high volume mail receivers get it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, if it was cool mail, I'd
Speaker 1: love to get the mail. UM. So the first digit
Speaker 1: there represents the state here in Georgia, that's a three. UM.
Speaker 1: It increases as you move west, and there are some
Speaker 1: states that share each digit. Yeah, like two. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: taken up by a lot of states. There's the District
Speaker 1: of Columbia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia.
Speaker 1: Man all two's. I would be mad if I lived
Speaker 1: in one of those states. So then you got the
Speaker 1: second third digits. Those are regions within the state. UM.
Speaker 1: The first three of those create what's called the SCF code,
Speaker 1: the sectional center, facility, and UM. Then the fourth and
Speaker 1: fifth digits are even more specific. Basically, it just hones
Speaker 1: down as you go left or right until you've got
Speaker 1: Josh Clark's house right, like this state, this section facility,
Speaker 1: this UM post office, yeah, this neighborhood yeah, and then
Speaker 1: this maybe this building, this high volume mail receiver named
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. That's right. Um, So you've got the zip
Speaker 1: code that allowed automation. And a little known fact is
Speaker 1: the US Postal Service doesn't just handle a ton of
Speaker 1: the US as mail. It handles of all of the
Speaker 1: mail in the world. Really yeah wow, So before the
Speaker 1: zip code, this was really difficult. It also went from
Speaker 1: if you're mailing something from New York to San Francisco,
Speaker 1: it went through every distribution facility in the country in
Speaker 1: between New York and San Francisco. Um before it got there.
Speaker 1: Really yes, Now zip codes, Well, let's talk about how
Speaker 1: what a letter does, and this is all thanks to
Speaker 1: zip codes. So I write a little love letter, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna mail it to Emily, which is weird because we
Speaker 1: live together. Just be a romantic. That's actually a great
Speaker 1: example though, because you can mail something from your mailbox
Speaker 1: to be delivered back to you. I reckon, I've never
Speaker 1: done it. That's a that's a the poor man's trademark
Speaker 1: I've heard about that is to mail something to yourself
Speaker 1: into this. I think it depends on the judge. Yeah. Probably. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you put it in your mailbox. Postal carriers gonna
Speaker 1: pick it up. They're gonna take it to the post office. Um,
Speaker 1: they're gonna put it on a truck and then take
Speaker 1: that from the post office to a processing plant where
Speaker 1: we have our long awaited machines doing some sorting, shape
Speaker 1: and size. Yeah. Well, first they sort everything out and
Speaker 1: make sure everything's facing the right way up right. Um.
Speaker 1: And then the the they packages, well, packages are put
Speaker 1: on one one belt and then letters are put in another.
Speaker 1: And there the letters say, let's just stick with the
Speaker 1: letter that you wrote. Okay. Uh it's it goes into
Speaker 1: a slot so it's facing upwards and upright. Yeah if
Speaker 1: if front words and upright. And then they put a
Speaker 1: little barcode on the back of the letter and uh
Speaker 1: I think ultra violet ink. Yeah. Well, first thing it
Speaker 1: does is it gets a postmark and cancelation line saying basically,
Speaker 1: you can't use the stamp again. Yeah. Don't even try it.
Speaker 1: Don't be cheap. We've seen the wide out tricks. We've
Speaker 1: seen doctoring up a stamp, which is probably a federal offense.
Speaker 1: It probably is UM. And then so after that the
Speaker 1: barcodes in it on the back of the piece of mail.
Speaker 1: And then there's an optical scanner that reads the address,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. And if you if they're really
Speaker 1: really really accurate to UM, but if your handwriting is terrible,
Speaker 1: they have a new system now where the this UM
Speaker 1: conveyor belt takes a picture of it, send emails a
Speaker 1: picture to a human being at a computer who reads
Speaker 1: it what I think it is, types it in and
Speaker 1: then it's so it stays on the line. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to come out any longer. It's pretty much technology. Yeah. UM.
Speaker 1: And then so based on this UM this address, including
Speaker 1: the ZIP code, it prints a barcode at the bottom.
Speaker 1: If you look at a letter, any letter you get
Speaker 1: has a little barcode on it. And so that's what's red.
Speaker 1: That's right that the thing on the back is invisible.
Speaker 1: I think right, it's fluorescent. That's just showing off. We
Speaker 1: have invisible link. Other processing machines then read those barcodes
Speaker 1: and then sort them in their little bins according to
Speaker 1: zip code. And it's just basically placing everything and what
Speaker 1: will eventually be a trade that will be delivered back
Speaker 1: to a post office or a sorting facility or does
Speaker 1: it go straight to a post office? UM, it goes
Speaker 1: to another processing plant, right, So imagine each processing plant
Speaker 1: regional I guess, has a bunch of mail coming in
Speaker 1: on trucks. Then it sorts and then sends out and
Speaker 1: then based on its zip code that it serves UM,
Speaker 1: it gets a bunch of flats from other UM distribution
Speaker 1: facilities that's right with that are already according to the
Speaker 1: zip code. So let's say it's getting a flat of
Speaker 1: mail by zip code. It then also sorts through those
Speaker 1: that's right, and it actually sorts them into an individual
Speaker 1: carriers route in order, and that's what's delivered to the
Speaker 1: post office. So it arrives at the post office ready
Speaker 1: to go on the truck. Yes, okay, And that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that the postal worker doesn't have much to do.
Speaker 1: They also still have like circulars, magazines, bulk mail. They
Speaker 1: have to go through and put it for every address,
Speaker 1: all that crapped it and where all that my recycling
Speaker 1: ben basically yeah, although the coupons. I'll remember our junk
Speaker 1: mail episode from years and years back, and we've got
Speaker 1: so much from people who are like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you can't get rid of junk mail, right, that's the
Speaker 1: only thing keeping us in business. So if you're going
Speaker 1: to address a letter, there are a few guidelines. You know.
Speaker 1: You gotta put your address legibly on the front. You
Speaker 1: gotta put your little return address in the upper left corner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: on the front, don't put it on the back, upper
Speaker 1: left corner there. And don't use periods in commas, like
Speaker 1: if you write p O box it's not p period
Speaker 1: oh period, Although that doesn't matter. Apparently it allows for
Speaker 1: greater efficiency in reading your letter, maybe because I always
Speaker 1: put like Atlanta comma g A period. I do too,
Speaker 1: and they still get there. But don't you wonder if
Speaker 1: they get there like earlier? I don't know. Maybe, so
Speaker 1: uh it is um, Supposedly you need to be able
Speaker 1: to read the address at arms length, so don't write tiny,
Speaker 1: and uh, don't write so big that they can't do
Speaker 1: other things to the envelope like scan and stamp and
Speaker 1: things like that. Um. And then you know, you gotta
Speaker 1: put your return address because if something happens, you want
Speaker 1: it to come back to you. Although I don't do
Speaker 1: that much anymore, A lot of times I'll just put
Speaker 1: like Atlanta, Georgia. Really, you don't put your return address
Speaker 1: on there. No, but I rarely mail things, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times when I do, it's for work, So
Speaker 1: I'll just put, you know, Atlanta, Georgia, houstaff works or something.
Speaker 1: And it's not the kind of thing that if it
Speaker 1: doesn't come back to me, I would care. I got
Speaker 1: I've had some precious thing. I would put a Richard address.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that you're going to get some
Speaker 1: email from postal carriers that are like I hate people
Speaker 1: like you, because whether you care if it comes back
Speaker 1: to you or not, I'm sure they have to get
Speaker 1: it back to you. Uh. There's a lot of type
Speaker 1: of delivery surfaces we surfaces services. We won't go over here,
Speaker 1: but I did want to say that media mail is
Speaker 1: a great little ah trick, not a trick, but a
Speaker 1: great tool if you're mailing things like books and or
Speaker 1: DVDs because it's super cheap, but it takes a while.
Speaker 1: But that's part of that mandate from that. They want
Speaker 1: to keep the intellectual juice of America flowing through the
Speaker 1: Postal Service, so things like that creative stuff for books
Speaker 1: or correspondence, like and I think that's how if you've
Speaker 1: ever ordered a book on Amazon for like two cents,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, how can they sell a book for
Speaker 1: two cents, It's because they charge you like four for shipping,
Speaker 1: and they probably pay like eight cents to mail it
Speaker 1: with media mail. That's the greatest scam of the century.
Speaker 1: Well not really, I mean they're making their money via
Speaker 1: shipping instead of the book itself. But publishers don't like it,
Speaker 1: of course, because they want to sell their books new
Speaker 1: and not for two cents on Amazon. So. Um, I
Speaker 1: think we said that the Postal Service has a monopoly
Speaker 1: on delivering mail but not on delivering packages, right, Um,
Speaker 1: so because they're kind of in competitive business against like
Speaker 1: UPS and FedEx and d h L and all those guys. Um,
Speaker 1: those guys have gone ahead and in and invested in
Speaker 1: infrastructure of say like air delivery, air transportation of mail,
Speaker 1: and the U. The Postal Service has tried that before,
Speaker 1: like they tried a guided missile in ninety three, which
Speaker 1: they shot full of mail from a submarine to a
Speaker 1: naval station in Florida, but it was just too expensive.
Speaker 1: So the Postal Service said, hey, Ups, Hey FedEx, you
Speaker 1: guys have a bunch of planes. Can we start putting
Speaker 1: our mail on it? And they said sure for a
Speaker 1: few billion dollars a year. And the Postal Service said great.
Speaker 1: But at the same time they kind of, um, they
Speaker 1: stepped forward into the twenty first century by doing so.
Speaker 1: And the Postal Service, having access to everyone's mailbox, is
Speaker 1: often tapped by UPS and FedEx deliver what's called in
Speaker 1: the business the last mile. Yeah. So a lot of times,
Speaker 1: especially if you're a rural person, if you get something
Speaker 1: from Amazon, it's it was shipped by UPS, but eventually
Speaker 1: it made its way into your postal carriers route and
Speaker 1: being delivered by the Postal Service. Yeah, there's way more
Speaker 1: mixing of package mailing than you would think. Um, it's
Speaker 1: like a swinger party or something pretty much. Uh. And
Speaker 1: part of that deal in two thousand one with FedEx was, Hey,
Speaker 1: FedEx said, can we put our boxes at your post offices?
Speaker 1: And they said sure for six million dollars And they said,
Speaker 1: you know, can we hit your ride on your plane.
Speaker 1: They said, sure, for six point three billions over seven years.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, seems like a good agreement. And
Speaker 1: they did the same with ups and uh we scratch
Speaker 1: our back, you scratch yours, we scratch your back, we'll
Speaker 1: scratch yours. That works. Yeah, why didn't everybody scratch them back?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Okay, um, because it's hard to reach.
Speaker 1: Uh So, if you realize that the postal service needs
Speaker 1: a few billion extra dollars, you say, why are you
Speaker 1: just up the postal rates? Yeah, well, the federal government
Speaker 1: keeps its thumb on that they want to make sure
Speaker 1: that anybody who needs to mail a letter can do
Speaker 1: so without great expense. Yeah, it's a big deal to
Speaker 1: change the postal rate. Like it is, much more than
Speaker 1: you would think, because a layman like me would just
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, I just add a few cents. Who cares. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the problem just printing those forever stance genius idea.
Speaker 1: You don't have to go back and reprint a bunch
Speaker 1: with the amount great idea or the one cent. Remember
Speaker 1: in Fargo, Yeah, when the Wade got the one center
Speaker 1: with the ducks. Yeah, and she was like everyone needs
Speaker 1: the once sent whenever they raise the rates. Yeah, he's like, cool, Gee,
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that. Um so, but yes, there's
Speaker 1: a very long, protracted, difficult process of raising the postal rates.
Speaker 1: It's not a very easy thing and it involves a
Speaker 1: ton of bureaucracy. Should we get into that or just
Speaker 1: leave it at that? It's up to you, man, I
Speaker 1: think we should just leave it at that. Okay. So
Speaker 1: if you are going to mail something from your house,
Speaker 1: you need your little mailbox, and I just installed mine
Speaker 1: in what seemed like a sensible manner. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that there were actual rules. Um. In fact, you were
Speaker 1: supposed to contact the post office before installing your mailbox,
Speaker 1: which I had no idea. UM, to make sure it's
Speaker 1: like the correct placement and height and so like the
Speaker 1: post office person or the mail career, I don't have
Speaker 1: to get out of the truck. Oh well they'll they'll
Speaker 1: burn it down if it's not the specification. So you
Speaker 1: want to contact the post office? I didn't, but I
Speaker 1: guess I just lucked out because, um they say generally
Speaker 1: in from the road surface to the inside floor of
Speaker 1: the mailbox or point of entry, and then set back
Speaker 1: six to eight inches from the front face of the
Speaker 1: curb or road edge to the mailbox door. I guess
Speaker 1: I just got lucky then, because I get my mail,
Speaker 1: you know, without any burning down over here now or
Speaker 1: without a post office spots box, which we talked about.
Speaker 1: They've been around for a couple of hundred years. And
Speaker 1: that's if you want to have a little key to
Speaker 1: your little loan box in a post office and get
Speaker 1: your mail there, you can certainly do that. It's handy
Speaker 1: if you're starting out of business and you want to
Speaker 1: make people think that you're not working out of your house. Um,
Speaker 1: you can get a post office and say, look, I
Speaker 1: have a PO box, which means I'm working out of
Speaker 1: my bedroom. It's like code, I think, are you getting
Speaker 1: guns in the mail? Is that what people do? I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's a lot of people who try to get
Speaker 1: guns in the mail in the p O boxes. Yeah sure, okay.
Speaker 1: Or if you um tend to move around a lot
Speaker 1: in the same town and you don't want to worry
Speaker 1: about changing your mail and forwarding mail, you could always
Speaker 1: just get a PO box. Yeah. So those are some reasons. Um,
Speaker 1: you want to talk the future of the post office
Speaker 1: if it's around after October two. What is the future
Speaker 1: of the post Office. Well, there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: coming down the pike. Um, there's the cancelation of Saturday
Speaker 1: mail this August. They're really going hard after package delivery services.
Speaker 1: Now what trying to oh with like the flat rates
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Just really like courting businesses to say, hey,
Speaker 1: consider us instead of ups or FedEx um and uh,
Speaker 1: especially with prescription medicines because we have an aging population
Speaker 1: is going to do nothing but increase in size, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna need more prescriptions through the mail. So hey,
Speaker 1: let's get into that. Yeah, and you can get stuff
Speaker 1: like that certified and insured and uh, signature delivery approved
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. It's helpful. Part of the post
Speaker 1: office is pledged that your letter carrier won't take your
Speaker 1: medication before delivering it might hit you up for something, right. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's also a line of clothing coming out postal service.
Speaker 1: Line of clothing coming out, I'm not kidding, called rain,
Speaker 1: heat or snow. And as we almost didn't mention this,
Speaker 1: so the Postal Services creed right, neither rain nor snow,
Speaker 1: nor sleep, sleep nor holland rain or sleep nor snow,
Speaker 1: nor neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of
Speaker 1: night stays these carriers from the swift completion of their
Speaker 1: appointed rounds. And that's actually not the post Office's official model.
Speaker 1: They don't have one, but it's been linked to them.
Speaker 1: And it's actually an adaptation of something from Herodotus, the
Speaker 1: Greek historian, who was making a comment about how the Persians,
Speaker 1: even during their war and like five b c. They
Speaker 1: were one of the first ones to establish a real
Speaker 1: postal service, and even during war, the postal service didn't stop.
Speaker 1: They were still documents being delivered, and Herodotus was commenting
Speaker 1: on that, and that's where that came from. It should
Speaker 1: include like or loss of limb. It did originally, Like
Speaker 1: that's an adaptation. It wasn't loss of limb, but it
Speaker 1: was something like some sort of sicknesses befalling you. They
Speaker 1: were putting the mail before themselves. The show must go on, right. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's a line of clothing called the rain or
Speaker 1: heat or snow um and then um. They're also talking
Speaker 1: about creating federal email addresses that you get at birth.
Speaker 1: Just like you have a physical address, you would also
Speaker 1: have an email address, but your email address is attached
Speaker 1: to you rather than the physical location you live at.
Speaker 1: And if you say need to correspond with the I
Speaker 1: R S Or Social Security Administration something like that, you
Speaker 1: would send like this very secure email through this Postal
Speaker 1: Services portal. Everything else you could just use like you know,
Speaker 1: Gmail or Yahoo or whatever for everyday stuff. But this
Speaker 1: is like the big stuff, the really important stuff. And
Speaker 1: then the postal service would also offer like a digital
Speaker 1: lock box for um, the like like a will or
Speaker 1: your medical records or something like that. Yeah, and listen,
Speaker 1: is every conspiracy uh person in the country now says
Speaker 1: in a way, I want a federal email attached to
Speaker 1: my name that I have to send things through. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's the number of the Beast. Obviously, I don't
Speaker 1: know that I would want that either. And I'm not
Speaker 1: a big conspiracy guy. Oh, it's not that you have
Speaker 1: to send it through that. It's that if you send
Speaker 1: it through that, if somebody hijacks that er reads it,
Speaker 1: you're going to be in a lot more trouble federally
Speaker 1: speaking than they would be if like they read your Gmail.
Speaker 1: Because didn't it illegal to to open like a federal
Speaker 1: offense to get someone's exactly? And that's what this there's
Speaker 1: this guy who runs a think tank for the Postal
Speaker 1: Service who's who's like, it's not just about mailing documents,
Speaker 1: it's about protecting the connectedness of the United States and Americans,
Speaker 1: So how do we do that in a digital world?
Speaker 1: He's thinking about this. So if you're even the least
Speaker 1: bit interested by this episode that we just recorded, Um,
Speaker 1: there's an Esquire article called too I did, there's ae do.
Speaker 1: It's called do We Really Want to Live Without the
Speaker 1: Post Office? And it's by Jesse Lichtenstein, And um, it
Speaker 1: is really good, man. It's a really good overview of
Speaker 1: what does Jesse think, Uh, we need he or she
Speaker 1: I think kind of leans toward we need it. And
Speaker 1: the more you start to read about it, the more
Speaker 1: this weird kind of civic affection for the post office developed.
Speaker 1: And you know where I'm like, yeah, we don't want
Speaker 1: to get rid of the post office. You want the
Speaker 1: post office? Who doesn't want the post office? It's kind
Speaker 1: of it kind of develops. Yeah, I used to like,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it was a simpler day, or maybe
Speaker 1: the people stuck with their routes longer, But I remember
Speaker 1: my postman growing up. It was the same guy for years,
Speaker 1: and we lived on We didn't live in a neighborhood.
Speaker 1: We lived on a street in the woods with like
Speaker 1: six houses, and so you know, I would run out
Speaker 1: and check the mail and wave at them, and we
Speaker 1: would give him like gifts at Christmas and that's awesome.
Speaker 1: And now I have no idea who my postal curious?
Speaker 1: Which is my fault? I need to just go out there,
Speaker 1: I think you do. Yeah. And also the postal services
Speaker 1: responsible for the largest food drive in the United States
Speaker 1: every year. Yeah, you know that food drive where you
Speaker 1: like you just put like canned food in your in
Speaker 1: your mailbox, in your postal you can do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of. It hasn't been very well publicized,
Speaker 1: but it's like at least around here, I guess. But um,
Speaker 1: it's a huge food drive or at the very least,
Speaker 1: postal carriers are taking and eating cans of viol for
Speaker 1: dinner like this is delicious. I love this food drive. Yes,
Speaker 1: I don't just put cans of food in your mailbox.
Speaker 1: Check in too when that is supposed to That's got
Speaker 1: to be the worst day of the year for letter carrier,
Speaker 1: my gosh. Yeah, can you imagine it's a lot of weight. Yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: you got anything else? No respect your post postal carrier?
Speaker 1: You want everybody go out and meet their postal carry? Yeah,
Speaker 1: why not give him a hug? Actually, don't do that,
Speaker 1: they might make you or something. Yeah, but give him
Speaker 1: a wave. Um. If you want to learn more about
Speaker 1: the post office, you can type that word those words
Speaker 1: into the search bar house to works dot com and
Speaker 1: uh be sure to check out the Esquire article too.
Speaker 1: It's very cool. Um and uh, I guess before we
Speaker 1: get into that, chuck, you want a message from our sponsor,
Speaker 1: let's do that. Yeah, Uh okay, now it's listener mel Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh um fan who thought we
Speaker 1: were wrong and did a little research and we may
Speaker 1: not be wrong after call. Oh, yeah, that's a nice.
Speaker 1: We had a bunch of filmmakers right in when we
Speaker 1: talked about the um subliminal messages being inserted into movies
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties by James Vickery, because we said
Speaker 1: it's one three thousand of a second or something, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of filmmakers went, there's only twenty four frames
Speaker 1: per second, so if you switched out one frame, it
Speaker 1: would only be there's no way, there's no way. And
Speaker 1: where'd you get this number? Where'd you get this number?
Speaker 1: I went back and looked, and I was like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I see this number in various places. But um so,
Speaker 1: we got this email from Brian Henry that disputed this,
Speaker 1: and then he wrote back with this, Hey, guys, looks
Speaker 1: like a may I have've spoken too soon. I was
Speaker 1: assuming that Vickery was just changing the film itself, which
Speaker 1: were dissolved in the messages showing much slower in at
Speaker 1: the maximum the second. But I did some research and
Speaker 1: apparently he used something called a uh I've never heard
Speaker 1: this before, a tachi stato scope tacha stop to to
Speaker 1: just the scope. I think you got it to just
Speaker 1: the scope okay, to project the messages on the screen,
Speaker 1: not the movie projector. He said, so this way he
Speaker 1: would have had a lot more control over the speed
Speaker 1: of the messages. And um So, to all the filmmakers
Speaker 1: out there who wrote in and challenged us boom, I
Speaker 1: wrote back to a few that was like, jeez, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I'm like, I'm looking for it. Then
Speaker 1: they you know someone we're even kind of snotty about,
Speaker 1: like the should research the more so, apparently put that
Speaker 1: in your tits, gope and smoke it. That's what I say.
Speaker 1: And that is from Brian Henry. Yeah. Thanks for the
Speaker 1: research you know, and being a good guy saying hey,
Speaker 1: I was wrong because you were wrong. He was. He
Speaker 1: was one of the nicer ones about it. Well, thank you. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: if you want to let us know that you were wrong,
Speaker 1: even though you had told us that we were wrong
Speaker 1: at first, we love those um you can tweet that
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K podcast. You can
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: or you can send us an email to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
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Speaker 1: M