Systems at work

Systems at Work

The daily operations performed by the Postal Service depend on an astonishing network of people and technologies that collect, transport, process and deliver the nation’s mail. The Postal Service operates hundreds of mail processing and distribution centers across the country. The employees in these facilities accept, sort and dispatch the nation’s mail.

• Postal Vehicle Service (PVS) operations include more than 12,000 uniformed motor vehicle and tractor-trailer operators. The PVS fleet includes 98 sprinter
  vans, 2,202 cargo vans, 2,364 tractors and
  7,351 trailers. Commuting within a 170-mile
  radius of their facility, PVS drivers travel more than
  184 million miles each year.
• To move mail using surface transportation, the Postal
  Service drove more than 1.9 billion miles in 2024 —
  more than 22.6 million trips in more than 2,202 box trucks and tractor-trailers daily.
• To move mail through the air, the Postal Service flew 3.7 million pounds of mail per day, using more than 150 domestic airports.
• The Los Angeles Processing and Distribution Center is the largest processing facility at 725 million square feet.
• The Postal Service is the world leader in optical character recognition (OCR) technology, with machines reading nearly 98 percent of all hand-addressed letters and 99.5 percent of machine-printed mail.

• The Postal Service:
• Deployed more than 560 new package processing systems in 2024, which increased package processing by 8.5 million pieces daily. The new machines enable the fleet of parcel sorters to now process 85 million packages daily.
• Has 365 automated guided vehicles (AGVs) in 25 facilities. AGVs use sensors and navigation technology to move around processing facilities without human involvement.
• Has one of the largest material-handling systems in the world for moving mail. There are more than 200 miles of conveyors within postal facilities.
• Has the largest gantry robotic fleet in the world with 165 robotics systems moving 300,000 mail trays per day.

The Postal Service operates more than 9,000 pieces of automated equipment that process and sort U.S. Mail.

• The largest piece of automated equipment, the Matrix
  Regional Sorter, sorts 52,600 packages an hour.

• The Flex Rover Sorter is a wheeled robot that sorts
  large and nonmachinable packages into containers.
  There are more than 600 rovers deployed at
  35 sites across the country.

• The Small Delivery Unit Sorter/Single Induction
  Package Sorter sorts packages and bundles of mail
  at a rate of 4,400 pieces an hour with 99.95 percent
  accuracy.

• The High Output Package Sorter can sort packages
  at a rate of 8,500 pieces an hour.

• The Automated Delivery Unit Sorter sorts packages
  and bundles of mail at a rate of 3,400 pieces per
  hour with a sort accuracy of 99.95 percent.

• The Robotic Containerization System sorts trays and
  automatically loads rolling containers or pallets.

• The Advanced Facer Canceller System positions
  letter mail and postmarks stamps at a rate of
  36,000 pieces an hour.

• The Delivery Barcode Sorter reads barcodes and can
  sort 36,000 letters an hour.

• The Automated Flat Sorting Machine can sort
  17,000 flat mailpieces an hour.

• The Automated Package Processing System sorts
  packages and bundles of mail at a rate of
  9,500 pieces an hour.

• The High Throughput Parcel Sorter sorts packages
  and bundles at a rate of 15,000 pieces an hour.

• The Automated Parcel and Bundle Sorter sorts
  packages and bundles of mail at a rate of
  6,500 pieces an hour.

• Tray sorting machines sort more than 10 million
  trays a day through conveyor systems.

• Mobile Delivery Devices provide real-time scanning
  for daily delivery operations. There are more than
  285,000 of these devices in use nationwide.

• The “Systems at Work” video has more information and
  can be seen on the USPS YouTube channel at
  youtube.com/watch?v=WX16-52bHvg.