Consumers often wish they could know for sure whether a letter has been delivered and, if so, when. Unfortunately, unless they pay quite a bit more for Priority Mail or Certified Mail, there’s no way for most individuals to track their mail.
Businesses, however, have more options. If your business has mailing software capable of applying Intelligent Mail barcodes to outgoing mail, you can track the journey through the mailstream of each piece of mail.
Mail may travel through as many as six different postal facilities before being delivered to a home or office across the country. From the local post office, it will travel to the closest of 194 Sectional Center Facilities (SCFs) and then to whichever of the 21 Network Distribution Centers (NDCs) or 8 Auxiliary Service Facilities (ASFs) that serves that region. It will then be trucked to the regional NDC/ASF serving its destination, from which it will be delivered to an SCF and finally to the local post office closest to its destination. At each step, it is resorted and its Intelligent Mail barcode logged.
Companies with a Mail Tracking & Reporting Business account can log in to the USPS’s Mail Tracking service and see when and where a piece of mail was most recently handled.
MailSmart Logistics makes it even easier for our clients. Not only do we shorten the time mail spends in the mailstream by delivering mail directly to the destination SCF, NDC or ASF, but our clients have the option to automatically track every piece of mail we commingle for them. Our interactive database shows the percentage of a mailing that has been scanned at the postal facility closest to its final destination, and allows users to drill down into the data by state or by Sectional Center Facility (SCF). In fact, users can even determine whether a specific envelope has been delivered. Best of all, we provide this service to our customers for free!
If you’d like to learn more about the many benefits of commingling, please read our free eBook Is Commingling Right for You?
MailSmart Logistics provides worry-free shipping at remarkably-low postal rates –
You’re going to love working with MailSmart Logistics!
