EAF Logistics

Don’t do it! When you are shipping to a Military Post Office (MPO), save yourself the headache and the expense; ship using the Military Postal Service Agency (MPSA) via the United States Postal Service (USPS). If you don’t want to take my word for it, here are three (3) reasons why you should avoid shipping through a commercial shipping service (i.e., FedEx, UPS, or DHL) to an MPO.

1. MPO Addresses are explicitly designed to be serviced by the MPSA. Similar to how street addresses are issued by the USPS, MPO addresses are issued by the MPSA. However, unlike the transparency of the USPS’s address structure, MPO addresses are opaque. While you can search the internet for crowd-sourced insight into an MPO’s location, they are intentionally opaque for matters of National Security. Private shipping companies can adopt USPS addresses for their operational uses, but they have been incapable of penetrating the MPSA’s system. Therefore they must operate with a local address for an MPO; this requires the sender to obtain the local address from the recipient, which they may or may not be privy to or may not exist. The recipient’s physical location may not be serviceable by commercial shipping providers as the MPO’s location may be remote, think the middle of the desert, jungle, or ocean.
2.  If reason number one has yet to deter you from pursuing a commercial shipping solution to an MPO, perhaps the financial burden will. The financial expense to ship commercially to an MPO can be exponentially greater than shipping with the MPSA. The MPSA uses domestic USPS rates for shipping to any MPO, foreign or domestic. The military covers any outsized expense to move mail in its operating budget. Practically speaking, if I am the shipper, my expense to ship a package from Virginia to a Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Iraq will cost the same as sending a package from Virginia to New York. However, if I have a local street address for the same FOB and choose to ship via FedEx, my shipping rates will increase as I will no longer be shipping “domestic” and will now incur “international” shipping rates. International shipping rates are naturally greater than domestic, as international shipping requires a more extensive infrastructure to facilitate transit from point A to point B. Unlike the MPSA, commercial shipping providers pass this additional expense on to the consumer. An additional fee for undeliverable parcels is also a possibility. When shipping with a commercial shipping provider, if your parcel is undeliverable, one of two things may happen: (1) the package may be returned to the sender for an additional expense that may be equal to or greater than the initial shipping expense, or (2) the package is abandoned at the commercial shipping provider’s local facility near the shipping address. If abandoned, the sender or receiver may be able to retrieve the package at a future date by contacting the shipping provider; additional fees may incur. In addition to international shipping and possible return fees, there are Customs Duties.
3.  Customs Duties are the taxes levied on goods entering a country. All international commercial shipments must include customs documents and are subject to Customs Duties, which means more work and expense. The sender must prepare the customs documents for the shipment and have a Harmonized System (HS) code(s) specific to the goods contained in the shipment. The destination country will then process these documents and levy duties based on the content of the shipment. The duty rates may vary country by country based on the HS codes. Destination countries reserve the right to inspect the content of shipments to clarify/verify the information declared on the customs documents. The estimated duties can be paid in advance by the sender (DDP), or the actual duties can be paid upon receipt by the receiver (DDU). If a parcel is shipped DDP and the paid estimated duties do not meet the actual duties due, the difference must be paid before the shipment is released to the receiver. Shipments tendered to the MPSA are exempt from duties. Similar to how shipping rates for MPSA packages are comparable to domestic postage, MPSA packages are considered domestic shipments as their MPO address is considered to be under the authority of the USA and not a foreign country. All MPSA packages require digitally generated customs documents; however, they do not require HS codes. These documents aim to ensure that shipments do not contain contraband. The foreign nation hosting the MPO reserves the right to inspect customs documents and shipments within the MPSA system for compliance.

If you have made it this far and are still determined to ship to an MPO via a commercial shipping provider, I would love to hear about your experience! Leave me a comment or send me an email, hello@eaflogistics.blog. I look forward to hearing from you.