postal system

postal system, the institution—almost invariably under the control of a government or quasi-government agency—that makes it possible for any person to send a letter, packet, or parcel to any addressee, in the same country or abroad, in the expectation that it will be conveyed according to certain established standards of regularity, speed, and security. The service is paid for in advance by the sender according to a relatively simple scale of fees based on weight and, in some countries, on speed of service required. Prepayment is ordinarily made by means of postage stamps, franking machine impression, or printed indication of postage paid; payment is not usually required of the addressee.

It may seem tedious to catalog at such length characteristics that are familiar to everyone. Their very familiarity, however, and the consequent unthinking acceptance of them make it important to emphasize that until recently postal systems lacked many of these features. Although the basic need for a system to exchange written communications has been felt by all human societies and has been met in many ways, the evolution of varied postal systems adopted by different societies through the centuries into the basically similar pattern of today’s state monopoly service has been a long and difficult process.

Today the governments of many countries use their postal systems to provide a range of services that often have no direct connection with the traditional function of exchanging letters. To provide for the collection, transport, and delivery of letters throughout a country, it has been necessary to establish a network of post offices extending into the remotest areas. Such a network of offices, staffed by agents of the state, provides an efficient banking service in areas in which it would be uneconomic for a commercial or state bank to establish a branch office. Many governments also pay various social security benefits—such as pensions and family allowances—through vouchers that can be cashed at post offices. In some countries post offices also collect certain taxes, normally through the sale of licenses and revenue or tax stamps. In fact, a wide range of ancillary services is provided through the postal system. In some African and Asian countries, for instance, the postal system helps distribute antimalarial drugs. While the variety of such services clearly reflects the ever-increasing use made of postal systems throughout the modern world, they lie outside the scope of this article, which concentrates on the traditional postal or mail services.

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Postal operations and management

The raw material of the postal services, always a single object that demands individual treatment, is something sent by one person (or entity) to another who may be anywhere in the world. Letters and parcels in all shapes and sizes are subject only to the limits of weight and dimension prescribed by postal legislation. Yet, if postal services are to be efficient and economical, these items must be mass-processed, as far as is possible. Thus, the basic function of postal organization is to convert the individual item as rapidly as possible into something that can be handled on a bulk basis, ensuring, however, that it finally regains its individual status.

The collection and sorting of individual items by the most economic method, concentrating together all items that are going to the same place or in the same direction, involves the use of local transport, usually operated by the postal services themselves, and sorting offices. The size of the sorting office depends on local requirements, but some are, in fact, large centres that handle several million items a day and employ thousands of personnel. Certain ancillary operations are involved, such as the canceling (by machine in all except the smallest offices) of stamps that have served to prepay the postal charge.

The next stage is to transport the grouped items to different destinations that may be intermediate sorting offices, perhaps a railway sorting car. Items are combined by further sorting with mail from other sources to permit grouping the mails for final destinations.

The third stage is the arrival of the mail at the sorting office of the final destination, where it is sorted systematically. The items finally recover their identity and are grouped for delivery to the individual address. In most countries, delivery is on a house-to-house basis, although boxes at a local post office are sometimes used.

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All stages have to be planned and dovetailed to meet an overall standard of performance. The transport of mail between sorting offices is normally by services not necessarily directly operated by the post office—i.e., by truck, bus, train, marine shipping, or air services. In some countries, however, the administration operates its own air service, usually by night, to supplement the public services. Post-office counter services (i.e., the public offices that existed originally as depots where the public could buy stamps, make inquiries, and post and collect correspondence) have in many countries gone beyond the role of accessory to the postal service proper and pose their own problems of organization.

Postal services require extensive manpower. Many countries are striving to mechanize or even automate sorting, transport, and counter processes. Postal organization depends largely on geography; large agglomerations of population present the greatest problems. Furthermore, geography usually determines the routing of mails and the intermediate steps between the posting and destination offices. Traffic problems have forced postal managers, through the years, to develop their own approach to the operational aspects of postal organization. They developed their own work-study methods and operational research techniques long before these terms were invented. Apart from postal operations as such, postal management is concerned with the efficient administration and deployment of large bodies of manpower, the organization of large transport fleets, many aspects of property management, and financial and economic problems, particularly in an increasing number of countries where the postal services are expected to depend on their postal revenue in order to meet all of their costs (including those related to capital expenditure). Computer technology is increasingly exploited as a management aid.

In this connection, many of the developed and developing countries have come to realize that postal services often operate within a commercial market where competition can be fierce and efficiency is the watchword. With the adoption of marketing and sales techniques, new services emphasizing speed, convenience, and reliability have been introduced. One such service is express mail, known under different service names according to the country (Express Mail in the United States, Datapost in Great Britain and Germany). At additional cost, this service, in which about half the UPU membership participates, provides expedited conveyance and individualized priority handling of correspondence and goods.