Drop Shipping is where a mailer moves their mailing to a postal facility closer to the destination before handing it over to the Postal Service. The further downstream mail is entered into the system, the greater the postage discount given to the mailer. The USPS has found this to be so beneficial to their cost-cutting efforts that they have recently increased the Drop Shipping entry discounts in order to encourage its use.

Here’s a quick look at how the Postal Service moves the mail. When mail is collected by local Post Offices from mailboxes and large mailers throughout a city, it is combined at a central facility known as a Sectional Center Facility, or SCF. Mail from a large number of SCF’s are then combined at a larger regional National Distribution Center, or NDC before being sent across the country. At the other end, the process is reversed at a destination NDC where the mail is broken down to separate SCF’s and then to individual local Post Offices for delivery. Drop Shipping bypasses up to three stops on the origin end of the process and delivers the mail directly to a destination processing facility. This saves costs for the Postal Service and results in faster delivery of your mail.

And depending on how far your mail is going, there could be as much as a one week reduction in the delivery time. There are shipping costs for getting the mail to a destination BMC or SCF that will use up some of the postage savings. However, if these costs are less than the entry discounts, you will save both time and money. Even if the costs and savings break even, your time savings could justify using Drop Shipping.

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