Effective April 6, 2009, the Postal Service™ is revising Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®) 705.16 by introducing new Open and Distribute tray boxes. Open and Distribute service is a premium offering designed for mailers who want to expedite the transportation of shipments of other classes of mail to destination processing facilities using Express Mail® or Priority Mail® service. Customers who use Open and Distribute service place mailpieces into an approved USPS® container, affix an address label with a service barcode onto the appropriate tag or label, and present it to the business mail entry unit (BMEU) or authorized acceptance location. The mail container is transported through the Express Mail or Priority Mail network to the destination facility selected by the customer where it is scanned and opened, and the mailpieces are distributed based on the enclosed mail class.
Currently, for customers using USPS-provided letter trays for Priority Mail Open and Distribute, the Postal Service supplies Label 23, Priority Mail Open and Distribute, an adhesive label that must be affixed to the letter tray. Open and Distribute customers have expressed concern regarding the ability of a USPS-provided letter tray sleeve to secure all the mail inside the letter trays during processing. To improve the security of the mail and control costs, the Postal Service introduces Open and Distribute tray boxes. These boxes are less expensive to produce and the enclosed mailpieces are more secure because customers will place letter trays into the tray boxes instead of using a sleeve for transportation to the destination facility.
The Open and Distribute tray boxes are provided at no additional charge by the Postal Service to all Open and Distribute customers and are available in both half-size and full-size. The half-size tray box accommodates the 1-foot letter tray; the full-size tray box accommodates the 2-foot letter tray. The Open and Distribute tray boxes are available as Express Mail Open and Distribute tray boxes and Priority Mail Open and Distribute tray boxes.
We will incorporate this revision into the next printed version of the DMM and into the April update of the online DMM, which is available via Postal Explorer® at http://pe.usps.com.
— Mailing Standards,
Pricing, 4-9-09
