How does the US postal system work?

Right I live in England and here we have the Royal Mail. You get a stamp, put it on your envelope then put the envelope in a red letter box.



On American movies and tv they always seem to put their mail in their own letter box at their house. Is this true? Does the postman pick up your sent mail for you?

How does the system work across the pond?



(probably the most random question i've asked on here haha)How does the US postal system work?
In the US, they have a similar system to here in the UK. All mail requires stamping or franking, and can be posted in a post box or post office.



However, the critical difference is that nearly all postmen in the US drive (either for their whole round, or at least they have a vehicle allocated to them that they can stop and park where they like, and have access to throughout their round). This is in sharp contrast to the UK, where most postal deliveries are done by postmen on foot, who get to the start of their rounds in minibuses or on bicycles, and have to make their own way back to the sorting offices.

This means that the US postmen have means of storing outbound mail, keeping it separate from inbound mail to be delivered. Most UK postmen don't, and all mail in their possession at any given time has to be carried on their person. UK postbags are about 16kg in weight at the point the postman picks it up (each round has about 6-10 sacks, and are picked up at lockers / post offices on the route - the postman doesn't return to the sorting office). UK postmen deliver to 450-650 addresses on their rounds, so you can imagine the weight if they had to collect mail as well as deliver it, especially when you add in the weight of parcels that nobody was in to collect or sign for. This is why Royal Mail doesn't offer this service (although if you send enough mail regularly, you can arrange for a Royal Mail collections van to pick up at your premises each day).

Some Royal Mail delivery drivers - the postmen who deliver to extremely rural areas, or deliver oversized or heavy items in urban areas - combine collections with their delivery rounds, but usually this is done from post offices and postboxes only. Some community-minded rural drivers may be happy to collect unofficially from people's addresses.How does the US postal system work?
In large cities it works the same as in England. In rural and suburban areas, some people have mailboxes with flags that indicate there is outgoing mail in the box. In my neighborhood when have community mail boxes that service the neighborhood. There is a Central Point Delivery System on each block that contains all the mailboxes for all the houses. They're called Neighborhood Delivery Collection Boxes. It also contains a box for outgoing mail. It saves time and gas since the mailman doesn't have to go door to door. The trend nationally is to go to such systems outside of densely populated urban areas.

http://www.usps.com/receive/businesssolu鈥?/a>How does the US postal system work?
As in your country we have central mail boxes but they are blue. That or you can have the mail carrier pick it up at your house when he/she drops your incoming mail off. It is a nice service that our underpaid and nice postal workers do. I appreciate them. And no, I am NOT a mail carrier! LOL!
YES THERE SYSTEM IS ROUGHLY THE SAME AS OURS BY HAVING TO PUT A STAMP ON THE LETTER AND THEN YOU PUT THE LETTER IN YOUR OWN MAIL BOX AND RAISE THE FLAG ON THE SIDE AND THE POST MAN COMES AROUND ONCE A DAY AND EITHER DELIVERS LETTERS OR SEES THE FLAG AND STOPS TO COLLECT YOUR MAIL.

IT TAKES ABOUT 4 DAYS FOR A LETTER TO ARRIVE IN ENGLAND FROM THE STATES