A few things about the Post Office and how it works from...well...me. (This might get a little long)
First of all, a disclaimer;
I am NOT an employee of the United States Postal Service. There may be details in what follows that are not entirely correct or that are not complete. If anyone has further knowledge, I am happy to be corrected.
In my latest position as an Over The Road truck driver, I am now working for a Postal Contractor. I worked in Motor Racing, hauled general freight, hauled cars and now I move mail between cities from one large facility to another.
A couple points on how mail moves from here to there;
When you post a letter in the mailbox at your driveway, it's picked up by a guy who typically goes to your nearest post office, where all the mail he or she has picked up that day is dumped into large hampers. Those hampers are then loaded onto a larger truck that takes your letter to the next stop, which might be in your city or town, or many miles away, sometimes in the totally opposite direction of its destination.
There are facilities that "Sort for the street" meaning they have the equipment to arrange letters and packages so they are in order and easily delivered and are then loaded onto the vehicle that brings mail to your house and/or business. There are facilities that simply sort by zip code. The ones that sort for the street are typically called a "P&DC" or "Processing and Distribution Center" (Or "P&DF" for "Processing and Distribution Facility" ) and the ones that sort by zip code are typically called an "NDC" (Network Distribution Centers). NDC's used to be called "Bulk Mail Centers", and some still are, but most have taken on the acronym "NDC" . A P&DC here in my town of Jacksonville, Florida might very well sort for the street in your neighborhood, if for instance, it has a contract to do so for a large mailer, like an insurance company or similar (Often large mailers will pre sort in-house and as a result get a discount on postage). Mostly however, my local P& DC sorts mail going out of town only down to the FIRST 3 numbers of a zip code. Further sorting is done at the destination P&DC.
However,,,,
P&DC's get mail in via tractor trailer from distant cities as well as getting it from small US mail trucks who may make multiple stops gathering unsorted mail from smaller post offices. They also get mail from even smaller contractors who gather mail in a vehicle as small as a minivan or as large as a Ryder straight truck. All this mail has yet to be sorted to street level. Some may have already been sorted down to zip code and even down to the last 2 digits of a zip code, but typically, mail coming into a P&DC is NOT sorted for the street.
My firm deals with and delivers to and ships from two MAJOR postal facilities; P&DC's and NDC's
An NDC DOES NOT take in mail from the street. It only handles mail delivered and shipped via tractor trailer or large straight truck. In other words, the smaller blue US Mail trucks we are all familiar with, do NOT enter into, nor are they dispatched from an NDC. Mail going FROM Florida to say...the Bay Area of California, will be loaded onto a tractor trailer at our NDC here in JAX and sent to another NDC in Richmond, North of Oakland, for instance, and THEN to a P&DC to get further sorted for delivery. Shipping from an NDC to a P&DC happens, but it is not that common as far as my firm is concerned.
So why is any of this important or or how does it relate to recent events?
I want to illustrate and make clear how and more importantly, WHEN an individual letter or package is tracked.
Some speculation here and elsewhere relates to how the bomb maker actually got these packages into the system in the first place as well as how far down the chain the Post Office is able to track an individual letter or package. From what I have gathered, he used simple, padded envelopes, the kind you can buy by the hundreds at any Office Depot anywhere.
THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE WILL DELIVER ALMOST ANYTHING, PROVIDED IT HAS PROPER POSTAGE.
They will and regularly do deliver baby chicks, honey bees, crickets, worms and other small animals as long as they are hardy enough to stand the rigors of the process. They won't handle puppies and kittens, or any livestock of any kind, but you can ship a small chicken via the post office, no problem.
So what gets tracked and how?
Your letter to Aunt Flo at Christmas time, sent with a "Forever" stamp or other first class mail WILL NOT BE INDIVIDUALLY TRACKED. You can send it "Priority" or "Registered" (in the latter case there is an actual chain of custody that is rigorously enforced, including receiving from and handing off to specific personnel) and then a bar code is attached to those individual pieces, but otherwise, regular, individual pieces of mail are only scanned as a member of a group of other similar pieces according to zip code. In other words, it's loaded onto a truck along with hundreds of other letters going to the same basic zip code and is scanned onto and off of the truck as a group. If you take a package down to your local PO to send to your Aunt, unless you pay for special handling, it is NOT individually scanned into the system. Federal Express and The United Parcel Service absolutely DO scan individual packages, regardless of size or service level.
The Post Office does not.
The Post Office knows when a cart loaded with mail from the 33### area codes (South Florida, as an example) arrived in the Post Office facility handling 208## codes (Metro DC, Maryland). They can tell you the trailer number it was loaded on, the drivers name and the company/contractor who hauled it, but can not tell you which exact letters were on the cart. UNLESS THEY ARE PRIORITY OR REGISTERED.
So this person could have made up all his packages and popped one into each of 10 different mailboxes or even taken them into different Post Offices and the Post Office system would not know exactly when they were dropped off or when they went through the initial sort. The system will "Postmark" each package, something I am sure we are all aware of, and even though much of the modernization of the processing equipment includes photographing individual pieces as they are postmarked, there is still no way to track that piece from start to finish, unless it is, as I previously stated, sent with a higher level of service.
The individual post office might be able to say "A cart of mail going to New York City Zip Codes left our dock at 8 Am" but they would not be able to say with absolute certainty that this mans bombs were among them.
In the case of mail destined to The White House, Congress and/or the US Capital or protected individuals, mail goes through a further sorting/distribution center where it is more closely scrutinized before delivery. These facilities are the ones that found the suspicious packages addressed to the Clinton's and the Obama's among others.
I hope that all made sense and give a wee bit of insight into how this shit happens.
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