Wish You Were Here

Interesting Postal Facts

If the U.S. Postal Service were a private company, it would be the tenth largest in the country.

The United States Postal Service:

• Handles 46% of the world's card and letter mail volume.
  Japan is second with approximately 6%.
• Operates more than 38,000 post offices.
• Delivers mail to 134 million delivery addresses.
• Delivers more than 200 billion pieces of mail a year. Of these, 107 billion pieces are First Class.
• Average daily delivery per carrier 2,300 pieces of mail a day to 500 addresses.
• 234,033 mail carriers deliver mail in cities across the country.
• Forward over 2 billion pieces of mail for every household every week.
• Handles more than 41 million change-of-address cards each year free of charge.
  (17% of the nation's population moves each year.)
• Is the nation's largest civilian employer with more than 765,000 career employees.
• Delivers more mail in 1 day than FedEx in one year and more mail in 3 days than UPS in a year.
• Operates a $5.5 billion transportation network with 200,000 vehicles and contract space on approximately 15,000 commercial flights daily.
• 1.1 billion miles driven to move the mail annually.
• 192,904 vehicles to pick up, transport and deliver the mail.
• When the price of gasoline goes up 1 cent, the cost to the Postal Service rises more than $1 million.
• Listed by Fortune Magazine as 29th on the list of the world's largest companies.
  Annual budget nearly 1% of the United States economy.
• Recycles more than one million tons of material annually.

31. Aerial View, University Hospital
Iowa City, Iowa
1948