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Package or Parcel Requirements:
- Maximum length is 24.
- Minimum size is large enough to accommodate required elements, such as postage, address, and customs form.
- The total of length, height, and thickness cannot exceed 36.
- Maximum weight is 4.4 lbs or 2 kg.
Maximum length plus twice the diameter combiuam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in vulputate velit ess
- Maximum length is 36.
- Maximum length plus twice the diameter combined is 42.
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<Header 1> Page Title One with CTA
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<p>Paragraph for Page Title One with CTA The Post Office Department issued its first postage stamps on July 1, 1847. Previously, letters were taken to a Post Office, where the postmaster would note the postage in the upper right corner extra word. 245
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<p>Paragraph for Page Title Two without CTA. The postage rate was based on the number of sheets in the letter and the distance it would travel. Postage could be paid in advance by the writer, collected from the addressee on delivery, or paid extra. 245
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Peace of Mind 13
Get packages delivered the first timne and together in one piece. 65
Protection from the Elements 28
Guard more of your packages from rain, sleet, and snow. 55
Convenience 12
Holds the majority of mail, so packages get delivered the same time. 68
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Peace of Mind Two
Second Get packages delivered the first timne and together in one piece.
Protection from the Elements Two
Second Guard more of your packages from rain, sleet, and snow.
Convenience Two
Second Holds the majority of mail, so packages get delivered the same time.
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<p> Paragraph for 1-Column Centered Short Section In 1837, Great Britain’s Sir Rowland Hill proposed a uniform rate of postage for mail going anywhere in the British Isles and prepayment by using envelopes with preprinted postage or adhesive labels. On May 6, 1840, the stamp that became known as the Penny Black. 263
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<p> Stamp booklets were first issued April 16, 1900. They contained 12, 24, or 48 two-cent stamps. Parafinned paper was placed between sheets of stamps to keep them from sticking together. The books, which carried a one-cent premium until 1963, had light cardboard covers printed with information about postage rates. 314
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<p>The first coil (roll) stamps were issued on February 18, 1908, in response to business requests. Coils were also used in stamp vending equipment. The Department hoped to place vending machines in Post Office lobbies to provide round-the-clock service without extra workhours. Nonsense distinctive perforations and separations.
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<p>Nondenominated Stamps Semipostals are stamps on which the price exceeds the cost of postage, with the difference devoted to a particular cause. An act of Congress resulted in the Breast Cancer Research stamp, the first United States semipostal, on July 29, 1998, with proceeds above the cost of postage going to breast cancer research.
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<p>Postal Stationery The first printed stamped envelopes were issued July 1, 1853. They have always been produced by private contractors and sold at the cost of postage plus the cost of manufacture.
Commemorative Stamps With the exception of manila newspaper wrappers used from 1919 to 1934, watermarks have been mandatory for stamped-envelope paper since 1853. Extra words word the watermarks usually changed with every four-year printing contract to help identify the envelope and paper manufacturers. 500
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<p> Austria issued the first postal card in 1869. The United States followed in May 1873. Postal cards, known today as stamped cards, are produced by the government and carry preprinted postage, unlike privately produced postcards, which do not bear postage. The 1873 Annual Report of the Postmaster General (on pages XXVI-XXVII) noted.
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<p>Stamp booklets were first issued April 16, 1900. Parafinned paper was placed between sheets of stamps to keep them from sticking together. The books, which carried a one-cent premium until 1963, had light cardboard covers printed with information about postage rates extra. 275
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<p> Coils and Vending Stamp booklets remain a staple and are enjoying a resurgence in popularity because of their availability at a wide range of non-postal retail outlets. Coils and Vending Stamp booklets remain a staple.
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<p>Steamboats At the turn of the 19th century, when the nation’s waterways were its main transportation arteries. Travel often depended on river currents 150
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<p>Traveling upstream on some rivers was so difficult that boat owners sometimes sold their vessels upon reaching their destination and returned extra.
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<p>On October 2, 1807, the New-York Evening Post asked would it not be well if she the boat could contract with the Post Master General to carry mail?
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<p>Fulton’s steamboat carried mail as early as November 1808. Initially letters were carried either by crew and passengers or under existing provisions.
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<p>Whereby postmasters at ports of call gave ship captains two cents for each letter and charged letter recipients six cents postage local Post Offices.
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<p>In 1810 Postmaster General Gideon Granger offered Fulton a contract to carry mail, but Fulton apparently declined - from this [city] to Albany.
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<p>The Post Office Department recognized the value of rail to move mail as early as November 30, 1832, when stagecoach contractors West Chester extra.
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<p>On a route from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, were granted an allowance of $400 per year for carrying the mail on the railroad extra words.
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<p>Post Office Department officials enthusiastically embraced this new mode of transportation. In 1834, when railroads were still short, isolated lines.
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<p> The cartoon figure, Mr. ZIP, was adopted by the Postal Service as the trademark for the Zoning Improvement Plan or ZIP Code, which began on July 1, 1963. However, the figure originated several years earlier.
<p> It was designed by Harold Wilcox, son of a letter carrier and a member of the Cunningham and Walsh advertising agency, for use by Chase Manhattan Bank in New York in a bank-by-mail campaign. Wilcox's design was a child-like sketch of a postman delivering a letter. The figure was used only a few times, then filed away.
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<p> Mr. ZIP, who has no first name, appeared in many public service announcements and advertisements urging postal customers to use the five-digit ZIP Code that was initiated on July 1, 1963. Within four years of his appearance, eight out of ten Americans knew who Mr. ZIP was and what he stood for.
<p>With the introduction of the nine-digit ZIP Code, or ZIP+4, in 1983, Mr. ZIP went into partial retirement. His image still was printed on the selvage of some sheets of stamps, but that practice ended in January 1986. Mr. ZIP still is used occasionally by the Postal Service.
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<p> Between 1789, when the federal government of the United States began, and 1860, the United States’ population grew from about 4 million people to more than 31 million. Its territory extended into the Midwest in 1787 through the Northwest Ordinance, and reached down the Mississippi River 288
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<p>Then, west to the Rocky Mountains after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Until the late 1840s, American emigration to California was a mere trickle, but two events in 1848 opened the floodgates. In early February, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ended the Mexican American War. 230
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<p>The Mexican American War, ceding more than half of Mexico’s former territory to the United States. This included what is now the entire southwestern United States, from Texas to California, and also parts of Wyoming and Colorado.
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<p> The Mexican American War, ceding more than half of Mexico’s former territory to the United States. This included what is now the entire southwestern United States, from Texas to California, and also parts of Wyoming and Colorado.
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<p>Because they helped build and bind together a nation. The mail contractors and carriers were pioneers, finding or creating the best routes of travel and building supply stations that later eased the way for emigrants heading west. 230
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<p>First Overland Mail to California: Central Route via Salt Lake City. The first overland mail service to California came via the central route, by way of Salt Lake City. In the spring of 1851, Absalom Woodward, who was 50 years old.
<H2> Frequently Asked Questions - Moving Mail West
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Open First Left Drawer First Paragraph Weather also posed a great hazard. Three eastbound carriers made it through deep snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains that winter, but it took them two months to reach Salt Lake City.
Open First Left Drawer Second Paragraph They reached it on foot, reportedly having survived by eating their own mules, which had frozen to death in blizzards.
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Open Second Left Drawer First Paragraph. Stumped by the snowy Sierras, Chorpenning redirected the mail to avoid the mountains. From San Francisco, he sent the mail south by steamship to San Pedro, near Los Angeles, and then overland to Salt Lake City via the Mormon Trail.
Open Second Left Drawer Second Paragraph. Californians complained about not getting their mail regularly. The Postmaster General cancelled Chorpenning’s contract and gave it to someone else.
header--4 Third Left Drawer George Chorpenning, who was 30, agreed to carry mail from Salt Lake City to Sacramento. (Mail had been carried between Independence, Missouri, and Salt Lake City since the previous year.) For $14,000 a year Woodward.
Open Third Left Drawer First Paragraph. Mr. Chorpenning traveled to Washington, D.C., and successfully argued for its reinstatement. His company continued to carry the mail, using the Mormon Trail via San Pedro during the winter months, through July 1854.
Open Third Left Drawer Second Paragraph. Mr. Chorpenning traveled to Washington, D.C., and successfully argued for its reinstatement.
- His company continued to carry the mail
- Using the Mormon Trail via San Pedro
- During the winter months
- Through July 1854
header--4 Fourth Left Drawer Then Chorpenning agreed to leave from each end of the route once a month and complete the trip in 30 days. Both were Pennsylvania natives who had met in California. They soon found that transporting mail in the West was easier promised than accomplished.
<p> Open Fourth Left Drawer First Paragraph Hoping to prove that the central route was the quickest to the West, in December 1858, Chorpenning arranged with the contractors who carried the mail to Salt Lake City to deliver President James Buchanan’s second annual message to Congress to the West Coast in record time.
Open Fourth Left Drawer Second Paragraph They made it in 17 days. At least one historian thinks the concept of the Pony Express may have grown from this 1858 express run.
header--4 Fifth Left Drawer John A. “Snowshoe” Thompson ensure that the mail made it through the Sierras in winter. Thompson, Norwegian by birth, was a local legend for carrying mail through heavy snows. When necessary, he packed the mail on his back and used cross-country skis – at the time called “snowshoes” – to deliver it.
<p>Open Fifth Left Drawer First Paragraph. Greeley wrote about fording the Laramie River that the group “had the usual trouble with mules turning about in mid-stream, tangling up the team, and threatening to upset the wagon.”
Open Fifth Left Drawer Second Paragraph. On another day, Greeley saw that at the very first crossing, one of our lead-mules turned . . . and ran into his mate, whom he threw down and tangled so that he could not get up; . . . in a minute another mule was down, and the two in . . . danger of drowning. The mules survived, but Greeley’s luggage did not. His carpetbag was fished out, but, to his great distress, his trunk was left at the bottom of the Sweetwater River.
header--4 First Right Drawer Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, traveled with the mail stage from Laramie, Wyoming, to Placerville, California, in 1859. He described the experience in his book An Overland Journey. By the time Greeley traveled, the route was well-established, but travel was still a challenge. It relied upon mules, and mules could not always be relied upon.
<p>Open First Right Drawer First Paragraph. When Woodward1 headed back to Sacramento in August, his mail train was ambushed by Indians. In September, Indians killed two mail carriers, and the next month, attacked once more. The carriers managed to escape, but lost the mail.
Open First Right Drawer Second Paragraph. Phocion Way, a 31-year-old from Cincinnati, Ohio, traveled along this route as far as Arizona in the spring of 1858. He described dinner on the trail as “bad beans and bad bacon poorly cooked.”(8) When there was time to sleep, travelers rolled themselves up in blankets and slept under the stars.
header--4 Second Right Drawer San Antonio to San Diego Route. In 1857, the Post Office Department opened up another artery to the West when it contracted with James Birch, the former president of the successful California Stage Company, for twice a month service between San Antonio, Texas, and San Diego, California. (Mail arrived at San Antonio from the East by way of New Orleans.)
<p>Open Second Right Drawer First Paragraph. Birch hired Isaiah Woods to oversee the mail service. Unfortunately, neither man, it seems, had ever traveled the route, and later this would cost them. Until the late 1840s, American emigration to California was a mere trickle, but two events in 1848 opened the floodgates.
Open Second Right Drawer Second Paragraph. In early February, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially ended the Mexican American War, ceding more than half of Mexico’s former territory to the United States. This included what is now the entire southwestern United States, from Texas to California, and also parts of Wyoming and Colorado.
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<p>Open Third Right Drawer First Paragraph. Although people at the time did not know it, just a week before the treaty was signed, James Marshall, building a sawmill for Captain John Sutter in Coloma, California, spotted gold in the water near the mill. That August, his discovery became headlines in eastern newspapers, and the Gold Rush was on.
Open Third Right Drawer Second Paragraph. California’s population exploded, and so did the need for connecting this population with the rest of the country – through the U.S. Mail. In November 1848, Postmaster General Cave Johnson dispatched a special agent to California to establish Post Offices. By Christmas, steamships were carrying mail from New York to California via the Isthmus of Panama.
header--4 Fourth Right Drawer California’s population exploded, and so did the need for connecting this population with the rest of the country – through the U.S. Mail.
<p>Open Fourth Right Drawer First Paragraph. This was before the construction of the canal. When the ships reached Panama, the mail was taken off and transported in canoes or on pack animals – and later by railroad – about 50 miles to the Pacific coast. Another steamship collected the mail on the Pacific side and headed north.
Open Fourth Right Drawer Second Paragraph. Map showing mail routes that steamships traveled along the Atlantic Coast, from New York south to Charleston, Savannah, Havana, New Orleans, and on to Panama. On the Pacific side, the mail route followed the coast from Panama north to Oregon, with stops in Mexico and California.
header--4 Fifth Right Drawer The first U.S. Mail traveled to California by steamship, via the Isthmus of Panama, in 1848.
<p>Open Fifth Right Drawer First Paragraph. The ocean routes via Panama remained a vital link in the nation’s mail system until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869. In the 1850s, Congress authorized four mail routes that linked the new settlers in California with the rest of the nation over land.
Open Fifth Right Drawer Second Paragraph. Congress authorized funding for the overland routes not because they brought any financial profit to the Post Office Department or the federal government, but because they helped build and bind together a nation. The mail contractors and carriers were pioneers, finding or creating the best routes of travel and building supply stations that later eased the way for emigrants heading west.
header--4 Sixth Right Drawer First Overland Mail to California: Central Route via Salt Lake City
<p>Open Sixth Right Drawer First Paragraph. The first overland mail2 service to California came via the central route, by way of Salt Lake City. In the spring of 1851, Absalom Woodward, who was 50 years old, and George Chorpenning, who was 30, agreed to carry mail from Salt Lake City to Sacramento. (Mail had been carried between Independence, Missouri, and Salt Lake City since the previous year.)
Open Sixth Right Drawer Second Paragraph. For $14,000 a year Woodward and Chorpenning agreed to leave from each end of the route once a month and complete the trip in 30 days. Both were Pennsylvania natives who had met in California. They soon found that transporting mail in the West was easier promised than accomplished.
<H2> Frequently Asked Questions - African American Postal Workers
header--4 First Drawer Early African American Postal Workers
<p> Open First Drawer First Paragraph. African Americans began the 19th century with a small role in postal operations and ended the century as Postmasters, letter carriers, and managers at postal headquarters.
<p> First Drawer Second Paragraph. Although postal records did not list the race of employees, other sources, like newspaper accounts and federal census records, have made it possible to identify more than 800 African American postal workers.
header--4 Second Drawer Fear of African American Workers' Intelligence
<p> Open Second Drawer First Paragraph. . Southern whites, fearing an American rebellion like the one in Haiti in 1791, persuaded Postmaster General Gideon Granger that American slaves working as post riders were active and intelligent, travelling and mixing with people, could learn that a man’s rights do not depend on his color. This awareness could lead to an uprising.
<p> Open Second Drawer Second Paragraph. Postmaster General Granger in turn lobbied Congress to prohibit post riders of color. This prohibition lasted until 1865, when Congress directed that “no person, by reason of color, shall be disqualified from employment in carrying the mails” (13 Stat. 515).
header--4 Third Drawer First known African American Post Office clerk appointed in 1863 was William Cooper Nell, a clerk at the Boston, Massachusetts, Post Office.
<p> Open Third Drawer First Paragraph. Mr. Nell is not only the first known African American employee of the U.S. Post Office Department, but also the first known African American civilian employee of the federal government.
<p> Open Third Drawer Second Paragraph. William Cooper Nell was born in 1816 into a middle-class family in Boston. He excelled in school and at the age of 14 went to work for abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, printer of the newspaper The Liberator. In Garrison’s print shop, Nell advanced from errand boy to apprentice printer. Eventually he wrote articles for the newspaper, chronicling the challenges and achievements of Boston’s black community and, like his mentor, devoting himself to the emancipation of slaves and civil rights for African Americans.
header--4 Fourth Drawer African American vote influenced elections because African American men had political power. In many areas of the South, African Americans comprised the majority of voters. In three states, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, most of the population was African American.
<p> Open Fourth Drawer First Paragraph. After the Civil War, the black vote was decisive in the election of several Republican Presidents, including President Ulysses Grant in 1868.
<p> Open Fourth Drawer Second Paragraph. More than 800 African Americans are known to have served as postal employees in the 1800s. These individuals likely represent only a small fraction of the total number who served.
header--4 Fifth Drawer Minnie M. Geddings Cox was born in Mississippi in 1869 and was educated at Fisk University. In the 1890s, she was among the most respected and prosperous citizens of Indianola in predominantly black Sunflower County, Mississippi. When her first term ended, she was immediately reappointed.
<p> Open Fifth Drawer First Paragraph. In the fall of 1902, some white citizens of Indianola drew up a petition demanding that Cox resign. Following veiled threats to her safety, she agreed. However, President Roosevelt refused to accept her resignation. According to a report in The New York Times on January 3, 1903, The President decided that this was the best possible time to test … whether the Federal government was powerless to interfere in the race problem.
<p> Open Fifth Drawer Second Paragraph. Roosevelt ordered that the Indianola Post Office be closed until the townspeople accepted Minnie Cox as Postmaster. Meanwhile, the town’s mail was sent to Greenville, 25 miles away. The situation resolved itself in January 1904 at the expiration of Cox’s 4-year term. She adamantly refused reappointment and instead recommended the appointment of William Martin, one of her bondsmen and a loyal friend throughout her troubles.
header--4 Sixth Drawer More than 300 African Americans served as letter carriers in the 1800s. (See “List of Known African American Letter Carriers, 1800s.”) The earliest known was James B. Christian, appointed as one of the first letter carriers in Richmond, Virginia, on June 1, 1869. Later that same year Civil War hero William Carney began delivering mail in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Carney — the first African American to earn a Congressional Medal of Honor — carried the mail for nearly 32 years until he resigned on October 15, 1901.
<p> Open Sixth Drawer First Paragraph. John W. Curry, another early letter carrier, started as a clerk at the Washington, DC, Post Office in 1868 and joined the carrier force on April 20, 1870. He served until about 1899. His obituary in the June 1899 issue of The Postal Record, the monthly publication of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), praised his “steadfast devotion to duty” and his advocacy of carriers’ rights.
<p> Open Sixth Drawer Second Paragraph. At least 16 African Americans served as letter carriers in Washington, DC, in the late 1800s.(23) In February 1895, ten of these carriers served as pallbearers at the funeral of Frederick Douglass. One of the carriers so honored, Richard B. Peters, explained, When the news of the death of Frederick Douglass was whispered around amongst the carriers, a meeting was immediately called, and a committee sent to ask the family the privilege of appointing or selecting pall-bearers from our force. The offer was accepted
2018 Holiday Shipping Dates for International Mail
Recommended send-by dates for expected delivery before December 25
Expand All| Destination | Column One Shipping International | Global Express Guaranteed® Service3 | Priority Mail Express International® Service | Priority Mail International® Service | First-Class International® Service |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | Dec. 19 |
Dec. 19 |
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| Asia/Pacific Rim | Dec. 19 |
Dec. 19 |
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| Australia/New Zealand | Dec. 19 |
Dec. 19 |
Dec. 19 |
Dec. 19 |
Dec. 19 |
| Canada | Dec. 19 |
Dec. 19 |
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Dec. 19 |
Dec. 19 |
| Caribbean | Dec. 19 |
Dec. 19 |
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