Did you know the USPS assigned a ZIP Code for Santa Claus? It is 88888. How does knowing that help your (kids’) letters get to the North Pole? Okay, you don’t care about getting mail to Santa Claus, but I bet you care about your customers getting their orders. How do ZIP Codes factor into that?
The USPS adopted Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) Codes in the 1960s following World War II. Many of the millions of Americans who enlisted and volunteered to serve in the military war effort were postal workers. The loss of those postal workers and their institutional knowledge was a logistical loss for the USPS. The ZIP Code system was adopted in part to bridge the knowledge gap.
A ZIP Code is a set of five (5) numbers that instruct postal workers on how to direct articles of mail. The first number represents a zone of the USA ranging from “0” in the east to “9” in the west. The second and third numbers direct mail to a specific sectional center facility (SCF) within a zone, think regional postal facility. The fourth and fifth numbers sort mail to a local post office.
In the 1980s, the USPS added an additional four (4) number after a hyphen to the preexisting ZIP Code formula; this extended code is called ZIP+4. The extra numbers direct mail to a more specific destination: road, block, and side of the road.
To learn more about ZIP Codes, consider listening to Mailin’ It! – The Official USPS Podcast, specifically the September 28, 2021 episode, An Ode to the ZIP Code.
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