Effective January 25, 2015, the Postal Service™ will revise Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®) section 203.4.0 to clarify requirements for preparing trays when mailing letter-sized mail.
The use of standard 2-foot Managed Mail (MM) trays must be used for all letter-size mail, except when there is 1-foot of letter-size mail or less; in this instance, 1-foot MM trays would be used. When letter-size mail exceeds the inside dimensions of MM trays, Extended Managed Mail (EMM) trays must be used. Additionally, when using EMM trays, the 1-foot MM tray may be used in order to minimize the number of letter trays.
As a reminder, mailers must use as few trays as possible without jeopardizing price eligibility. For instance, a mailer should never have two 1-foot trays to a single destination; instead, that mail must be placed in a single 2-foot tray. A 1-foot tray would be prepared only if it is a full tray with no overflow; or if there is less than 1 foot of mail for that destination; or if the overflow from a full 2-foot tray is less than 1 foot of mail.
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Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM)
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200 Commercial Mail
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203 Basic Postage Statement, Documentation, and Preparation Standards
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4.0 Letter and Flat Trays
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4.3 Letter Tray Preparation
Letter trays are prepared as follows:
[Revise 4.3a as follows:]
a. Subject to availability of equipment, standard 2-foot MM trays must be used for all letter-size mail, except that EMM trays must be used when available for letter-size mail that exceeds the inside dimensions of MM trays defined in 4.2. When using EMM trays, the 1-foot MM tray may be used in order to minimize the number of letter trays. When EMM trays are not available for those larger pieces, they must be placed in MM trays, angled back, or placed upright perpendicular to the length of the tray in row(s) to preserve their orientation.
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We will incorporate these revisions into the next update of the online DMM, which is available via Postal Explorer® at http://pe.usps.com.
— Product Classification,
Pricing, 1-8-15
