Is it better to use a local mail house?

 It can be.  If you are sending a bulk mailing to local addresses you can save on postage and usually reduce delivery time by delivering the piece to the local post office.  The USPS provides postage discounts when mail is delivered to local or regional sorting facilities.

To understand how this works it is best to review how the USPS distribution network is setup. The way the USPS distribution is setup is that mail is first sent to a Network Distribution Center (NDC) where it is sorted by 3 digit zip codes.  The mail is then sent to a Sectional Center Facility (SCF), which is a sorting facility for each 3 digit zip code. The mail is then separated by each zip code and delivered to the Destination Delivery Unit (DDU), and then is delivered to the household or business.

If you are able to deliver mail pieces directly to the NDC, SCF, or DDU the USPS will provide a postage discount because you are essentially helping them with the distribution.  Obviously, the discount will be larger for delivering the piece to the DDU than the NDC.  Discounts range from 3.2 cents to almost 5.5 cents per piece depending on the type of piece you are mailing and which sorting facility you are delivering to.  Please note that not all pieces are eligible for these discounts.  For example letter size pieces are not eligible for DDU discounts and must be sent to the SCF or NDC in order to receive postage discounts. 

To better understand this lets go through an example.  Let’s say you have 5,000 flat size pieces to be mailed at saturation rates.  2,000 of these pieces will be mailed to Escondido 92029 and 3,000 will be mailed to San Diego 92103. If you mailed them from New York you would not get any discounts and would pay $0.205 per piece.  If you delivered them to the NDC for these zip codes which is located in Los Angeles you would pay $0.172 per piece.  If you delivered them to the San Diego post office which is the SCF for both zip codes postage would be $0.162 per piece.  If you delivered them to the DDUs which would be the local 92029 Escondido post office for the Escondido pieces and the the local San Diego 92103 post office for the San Diego pieces, postage would be $0.153.  It is also possible to deliver some mail to the SCF or NDC and others to the DDU, for example you can mail the San Diego pieces from the SCF and Escondido pieces from the DDU.  This would result in a cost of $0.162 per piece for the 3,000 San Diego pieces and $0.153 per piece for the Escondido pieces. As you can see there are significant discounts for delivering the mail to the local post office or sorting facilities.

To complicate this even further the mail will need to be checked in where the permit is registered.  The mail may stay at this location and will get postage discounts if the permit post office is also an NDC, SCF, or DDU. If not you have the option of transporting the mail to the appropriate NDC, SCF, or DDU, which is known as a drop shipment.

Action Mail's main permit is in San Diego and we make a deliver most mail to the San Diego SCF, so any mail being sent to San Diego zip codes will get the discounted SCF rate.  For every mailing we also run an analysis to see if it is worth delivering mail to NDCs, SCFs or DDUs, so even if your mail is not being sent to San Diego zip codes we can identify if it would be worth delivering your mail to local post offices to get lower postage rates.