Postal logistics is a way of lowering your postage costs, speeding delivery of your mail and ensuring that you can track the mail as it travels through the system for outgoing and return mail.
Postal logistics utilizes the workshare principles adopted some years ago by the Post Office: the more mail sorting and preparation that is done before a mailing reaches the mail stream, the lower the postage price you’ll pay. And the closer you can get the mail to the recipient’s mailbox before it enters the mail stream, the more efficiencies you will realize in both delivery time and price.
A good way to understand what postal logistics is and how it can benefit you is to first understand how a typical Entry Point mailing travels from post office to mailbox.
After a mailing is delivered to the local post office by the mail shop, it is taken to the Origin SCF (Sectional Center Facility) where it is combined with other mail so that it can travel to a larger, regional facility called an NDC (Network Distribution Center).
The mail is then resorted and sent to the nearest Destination Network Distribution Center (NDC) and Destination SCF where it is broken down, delivered to individual post offices and then delivered to individual mailboxes. As you can see, this takes many steps and much time.
Postal logistics shares much of the work normally conducted by the USPS and delivers the mail directly to the Destination NDCs and SCFs, skipping the Origin SCF completely. This is done by either commingling your mailing with others before it reaches the postal system or if your quantities are sufficient, drop shipping is utilized.
