Jun 20, 2008 9:45 pm US/Pacific
Good Question: Square Letters Cost More To Send
How can envelopes that weigh the same require postage to be mailed? The answer: when one is square. Pallas tells you why.
Every letter mailed come through a Mail Processing Facility. At this facility, that's 700,000 pieces a day all sorted by machines.
"From the time you drop it off to the time it ends up in the carrier's hands, it doesn't touch another human hand," said James Wigdel, U.S. Postal Service.
A Postal Service spokesman says the sorting machines measure each letter and flips it as needed to find the stamp for cancellation. But that process won't work on a square.
"With a square letter, it has no clue where to flip it and find the stamp. So therefore it kicks it out; we send it to a human being," said James.
The machine can cancel about 600 stamps a minute. But people? We can only do about 60.
"There's a lot more labor involved and therefore we charge a surcharge for square letters," said James.
The extra charge? Seventeen cents.
Square letters are such a small percentage of the mail the postal service hasn't built a special machine to handle them. Most are the familiar rectangle
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
Comments