Two large candy canes flank the entrance of the North Pole Post Office on Santa Claus Lane, in Alaska’s interior. A mule train carrying mail for the USPS can be spotted in the village of Supai, Arizona, which lies within a branch of the Grand Canyon. Mail boats on the Rogue River bring letters and freight to Agness, Oregon. The list of more than 30,000 Post Office names is an eloquent reminder of how extensive the range of the USPS really is: Caribou, Maine; Culebra, Puerto Rico; CPU Dededo, Guam. The USPS even has a Post Office in Antarctica at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which has its own special postmarks and hand-stamps. Since the mail to the South Pole Station is transported on C-130 Hercules military cargo planes, the mail would be addressed as an FPO (Fleet Post Office), with domestic rates. A little history: the Little America base-camp on the Ross Ice Shelf was the site of the first Post Office on Antarctica, established in 1933.
The USPS represents an important force in uniting us across vast distances and disparate landscapes—and it receives no tax dollars with which to fund its extensive operations.
Making USPS and Stamps.com work for you
The 155 million addresses to which the USPS delivers are at your fingertips with Stamps.com! Stamps.com’s powerful Electronic Address Book allows you to save both domestic and international addresses. You can save Alaskan and Hawaiian addresses into the Stamps.com Electronic Address Book without having to worry about higher rates or extra charges for these locations.
You can also advantage of USPS’s delivery network for locations such as Puerto Rico or Guam. U.S. Territories are considered domestic mail, so you can avoid exorbitant rates for non-contiguous locations, and if you need a customs form, Stamps.com takes the guesswork out of this process. The Stamps.com software will automatically alert you or convert the label into the appropriate Shipping Label/Customs Form when you enter a territorial address. If you’re a seller, your customer base can include buyers in the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands! The reach of the USPS extends even to independent countries. The Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands use USPS domestic mail service.
What’s more, the Stamps.com software will check these addresses against the Address Matching System (AMS). After you enter an address in the delivery address box, and click on Print Sample or Print Postage, Stamps.com will first have your address cleansed and verified.
APO/FPO/DPO addresses and PO Boxes
The USPS closely collaborates with UPS and FedEx, but it is also offers unique support that sets it apart from private carriers. USPS is the only shipping service that delivers to APO/FPO/DPO addresses and PO Boxes. This means that you can send your mailpieces to a buyer who receives all of their mail at a PO Box. We proudly support Military Mail, and with Stamps.com, you can send mail to Army Post Offices (APO), Fleet Post Offices (FPO), and Diplomatic Post Offices (DPO). Like mailpieces going to Hawaii and Puerto Rico, the USPS delivers Military Mail for the same domestic prices as they would for mailpieces going to California or New York. Make the extensive USPS network work for you!
