18 Not So Obvious Ways the Post Office Helps Americans

Military veterans trade one uniform for another when they join the United States Postal Service. The USPS is one of the largest civilian employers of U.S. military veterans, with about 68,000 former service people working for the agency. As a nod to our men and women in uniform, the USPS has issued more than 140 stamps honoring America’s military history.

One of the most enduring holiday traditions is children sending letters to Santa Claus. In 1912, Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock authorized local postmasters to allow postal employees and citizens to answer letters addressed to Santa. This practice eventually evolved into the program Operation Santa. Over time, the USPS invited charitable organizations and corporations to participate for philanthropic purposes. In 2021, 4.3 million people visited USPSOperationSanta.com. Generous customers made the season magical for families and children by adopting 21,175 letters and shipping 21,443 packages.

In 2021, the Postal Service recycled 277,994 tons of mixed paper, cardboard, plastic, metal, electronic equipment, and other items. The USPS has a solar-power generation system consisting of more than 25,755 solar panels at its Los Angeles mail-processing facility. The USPS has a goal of cutting energy used per square foot of building space by 25% by 2025.

The Postal Service has more than 500 copyright registrations. Many of these are to protect artwork on postage stamps.

The United States Post Service has been a means of linking people together for almost 250 years, so you might call it the original social network. Even so, you can find the USPS represented on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

The United States is a nation of more than 330 million people, and the USPS delivers mail to more than 163 million addresses in this country, so keeping those addresses up to date is a huge task. The USPS processed 36 million address changes in 2021, more than 20 million of them submitted online.

Every two weeks, the Postal Service pays its employees $2.15 billion in salaries and benefits.

The Postal Service is pushing ahead in optical character-recognition technology, with machines reading nearly 98% of all hand-addressed letters and 99.5% of machine-printed mail.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service enforces federal laws and thwarts crimes to keep customers, employees, and the mail safe. The Inspection Service has about 2,400 employees, including nearly 1,300 postal inspectors, roughly 500 uniformed postal police officers, and 600 professional, technical, and administrative support personnel. Postal inspectors responded to and investigated 2,010 suspicious mail incidents in 2021.

Part of the USPS’ responsibilities is interdicting illicit drug packages. The Postal Service uses data, forensics, and tips from citizens to combat drug distribution. In the fiscal years 2017 to 2021, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service made 2,113 seizures of synthetic opioids – including 790 seizures (985 pounds’s worth) in fiscal 2021 alone.

There has been a surge in voting by mail in the United States in recent years. Election mail consists of mail to or from election officials. This includes ballots, ballot applications, and registration forms. During the 2020 general election, the USPS said it delivered ballots from election officials to voters in an average of 2.1 days and ballots from voters to election officials in an average of 1.6 days.

Founded in 1775, the USPS is one of the nation’s oldest law-enforcement organizations. The U.S. Mail is protected by more than 200 federal laws that are enforced by the Postal Inspection Service.

In 2021, U.S. Postal Inspectors recovered misappropriated or stolen mail-transport equipment that was valued at $1.1 million.

Every day the Postal Service picks up, processes, and delivers millions of letters and packages.

The Postal Service generally receives no tax dollars for operating costs and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to fund operations.

The USPS tries to protect military veterans from scams. Postal Inspectors, in partnership with the AARP, promoted Operation Protect Veterans to raise awareness of scams that target military veterans. The Inspection Service launched a special web page dedicated to Operation Protect Veterans at https://www.uspis.gov/veterans.

Every year, the Postal Service and the National Association of Letter Carriers hold a one-day food drive. The post office in Peach Springs, Ariz., has walk-in freezers for food intended for delivery by mule train to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

The United States Postal Service has more than 630,000 employees as of Sept. 30, 2019. It is the second-largest civilian employer in the U.S. (only Walmart is bigger).