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ZIP+4^® – Part of the American Landscape

Is ZIP+4 with us to stay?

We've had it for over twenty years. No one understood it when it came. No one understands it now. No one knows how to get rid of it.

You may wonder, why bother to write this? It cannot be ``proposed'' to the USPS that we dismantle ZIP+4. That would likely start an investigation as to how it got here, and, moreover, what's been spent on it. Correct. All of that would likely happen. And assuming the masterminds who designed and sold it to the government and the Service could now be found, what might be their fate? Could it be dismissed at a simple case of bad judgement, or would the motives be searched, and the dissenting opinions of those who were against it at its inception conjured up? No one can say for sure. But one thing is certain. The USPS cannot just one day announce: We've found a better way for the refinement of ZIP extensions; and, therefore, we will be discontinuing ZIP+4 during the coming months.

When you consider that a couple of trillion sheets of office stationary will have to be reprinted, and a certain few software vendors put out of business, it could raise a little commotion.

No, the reason I write this is in hopes that one day the Service will be run by a person who is bold enough to examine the logistics of mail delivery and ask all the right questions, such as, why don't we use carrier routes and deliver point validation (you know, ELOT) for our customer-used ZIP extensions, and scrap the ZIP+4 thing?.

Should a person such as that become PMG, we'd be headed for real postal reform! I mean, for the first time in twenty-one years, we'd actually be able to deliver mail to the intended addresses, all without the sideways motions of a failed and unnecessary ZIP+4 system that has impeded mail delivery since 1982. That's a real reform for you!

That person could today still be in high school, and stumble across this page, and think, "Yea, I could do that. I could be the one who saves America's mail delivery system and become the Lee Iacoca of my own generation!'' If that happens, then I will happy to have aided his or her decision by providing this simple information.

I guess I'm too suspicious by nature. When they unveiled ZIP+4 I thought, it must be communists or foreign subversives of the intellectual type that are putting this up. I must have an empathic connection with Eugene McCarty, or Fox Mulder. But who could not think similar things after reading the Domestic Mail Manual, or the US Tax Code?

I though, first they gain administrative control of the entire postal system, then they inflict upon it a method of destruction so clever and insidious that no examiner can detect the mischief at hand. I received a letter from one of them in the late `70's, and I can tell you his defense of the thing lacked no skill of artifice or misdirection. Its installation argument was both tidy and studied.

It was certainly sound enough to hoodwink the top brass in the Service, and equally so to fend off any mild questions the congressional oversight could ask, since they had no idea of how to manage the thing they were governing, and couldn't recite any of the fundamentals of mail-delivery theory or practice. They were not mailers; they were senators and congressional leaders.

But today, after much more reflection, I think it was a simple case of an implanted illuminati constructing the thing so they could themselves make millions by leaving the Service, once installed, and head up the companies they had propped up to vend the Service its ZIP+4 equipment. I think it was a pure case of avarice and ambition.

At this point I really don't care. If the Service could have been so misled to install it, then it's too late now to go back and see why, or to see if fraud was committed in the process. Nothing can bring back the billions lost. It's all over, but for its ultimate disposal.

Quickly, and basically, I will give the non-professional readers, those outside the mailing profession, a simple test as to what will carry mail in a direct and non-nonsense way, from a mail production plant, to the addressee on Main Street. All you must look for are three elements:

Does the ZIP Extension System under consideration use a system of numbering (codes) that actually reflects the addressee's:

1. 5-Digit ZIP Code, identifying a state and locality.
2. Carrier Route within that ZIP Code.
3. Walk Order for that Route, meaning every mailstop on it.

When you try to make mail delivery logistics into an advanced GPS science, or a phantasmagorical and mesmerizing grid, you are doomed to failure. And any proposed system, no matter how you barcode the thing, must also be human readable.

GPS co-ordination is wonderful within the domains of mail preparations, and we must expand and use it there, in our production plants. It is of no use whatsoever is making mail deliverable, and it has no place within the scope of actual mail addressing.

Postal zones are divided up into carrier routes, and box numbers, and the number of stops within the route is a function of the distance that must be traveled, and the number of physical addresses along the way. The number of stops on the route is limited to a half-day's work, at the most. The other half of the carrier's day is in the post office, in getting prepared to travel, and taking back postal items from the field, such as new mail picked up, and undeliverables from the last batch of mail attempts.

Irrespective of barcodes, envelope color, type size, address pattern or anything else, if the proposed system does not hit on all three of the above ``crucial elements for mail delivery,'' the system is doomed to failure. It's as simple as that. It's almost as simple to state, if the envelope has no address, we cannot deliver it in a straightforward manner.

Now I must say that I am sorry for having written all of the above. I am very sorry, because some postal officials, and perhaps some congressional leaders will stumble across this and say, ``Oh No. We're in some trouble now. Better see if we can make this writer go away, the sooner the better.'' Well, I understand that. I don't want to ruin your day, or your career; but I do want to make ZIP+4 go away, in as gentle a way as possible, all without investigation or recrimination. You see, I'm in the mailing business, and as such, I just want to return our business to the soundness we had in it twenty-five years ago. But with some improvements.

Those improvements are: let's get a true ZIP-Extension System up for the American people; one they can put on their mail and use. And one that all mailers can perfect, in their mailfiles, making them 100 percent deliverable and easy to maintain.

The mandate for ZIP Numbering has been brought about because of the disturbing crisis we have in America over the addressing deficiencies found in all USA mailfiles. The USPS itself has defined the deficiency level at over twenty-five percent of all the mail it receives. ZIP Numbering brings domestic mail addressing into the Twenty-first Century by making the delivery address an absolute certainty, in the same way an email address is absolutely certain.

Any modern user knows that email is address critical, and that any mistake whatsoever in the address, even one character, is a fatal flaw. But email has conditioned users for this kind of addressing accuracy, and they understand now that mail cannot be dealt with as a ``read it, interpret it, then go find it'' matter, as in decades past.

Mail preparations also rely on ZIP Numbering to bring mail to the Service, prepared, bundled and pre-routed for the correct letter carrier in the correct city and state. Going beyond this, ZIP Numbering puts the letters into each carrier's ``line of travel'' as the route is walked or driven; and it defines the addressee in particular, down to a mailstop, and even to a person within that mailstop, with its optional personal-identifier suffix capability.

In the future, a few items will be asked of people who subscribe for the delivery of mail, email or other services:

1. email address
2. zip number
3. telephone number

All three of the above are absolute identifiers, and the market knows that if they enter a single character incorrectly, it's no go, as any error is a fatal flaw. No harm, however: if they get any one of the three correct, we can reach them to get a correction on any of the others.

How To Do It

Zip Numbering: `The Tale of Mrs. Finch'

ZIP+4^® US Postal Service

Copyright  © 2003 mail-production.com^® created 2000 -- last modified 2003-06-01