page_title: United States Postal Service
section_title: Types of postal facilities
hierarchical_section_title: United States Postal Service / How delivery services work / Sorting and delivery process / Types of postal facilities
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of the United States Federal Building (officially named the United States Post Office, Customs House &amp; Court House House Building) in downtown Galveston, Texas, USA, built in 1937. Español: Edificio Federal de Galveston (Edificio de Aduanas, Correos, y Justicia de los Estados Unidos) - Construido en 1937
context_page_description: The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States, including its insular areas and associated states. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution.
  The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, when Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general. The Post Office Department was created in 1792 with the passage of the Postal Service Act. It was elevated to a cabinet-level department in 1872, and was transformed by the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 into the United States Postal Service as an independent agency. Since the early 1980s, many direct tax subsidies to the USPS have been reduced or eliminated.
  The USPS, as of 2019, has 469,934 career employees and 136,174 non-career employees. The Postal Service is legally obligated to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality. The Post Office has exclusive access to letter boxes marked "U.S.
context_section_description: Although its customer service centers are called post offices in regular speech, the USPS recognizes several types of postal facilities, including the following:
  A main post office (formerly known as a general post office) is the primary postal facility in a community.
  A station or post office station is a postal facility that is not the main post office, but that is within the corporate limits of the community.
  A branch or post office branch is a postal facility that is not the main post office and that is outside the corporate limits of the community.
  A classified unit is a station or branch operated by USPS employees in a facility owned or leased by the USPS.
  A contract postal unit (or CPU) is a station or branch operated by a contractor, typically in a store or other place of business.
  A community post office (or CPO) is a contract postal unit providing services in a small community in which other types of post office facilities have been discontinued.
  A finance unit is a station or branch that provides window services and accepts mail, but does not provide delivery.
  A village post office (VPO) is an entity such as a local business or government center that provides postal services through a contract with the USPS. First introduced in 2011 as an integral part of the USPS plan to close low volume post offices, village post offices will fill the role of the post office within a ZIP code.
  A processing and distribution center (P&DC, or processing and distribution facility, formerly known as a General Mail Facility) is a central mail facility that processes and dispatches incoming and outgoing mail to and from a designated service area (251 nationwide).
  A sectional center facility (SCF) is a P&DC for a designated geographical area defined by one or more three-digit ZIP code prefixes.
  An international service center (ISC) is an international mail processing facility. There are only five such USPS facilities in the continental United States, located in Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
  A network distribution center, formerly known as a bulk mail center (BMC), is a central mail facility that processes bulk rate parcels as the hub in a hub and spoke network.
  An auxiliary sorting facility (ASF) is a central mail facility that processes bulk rate parcels as spokes in a hub and spoke network.
  A remote encoding center (REC) is a facility at which clerks receive images of problem mail pieces (those with hard-to-read addresses, etc.) via secure Internet-type feeds and manually type the addresses they can decipher, using a special encoding protocol. The mail pieces are then sprayed with the correct addresses or are sorted for further handling according to the instructions given via encoding. The total number of RECs is down from 55 in 1998 to just 1 center in December 2016. The last REC is in Salt Lake City, Utah.
  While common usage refers to all types of postal facilities as "substations", the USPS Glossary of Postal Terms does not define or even list that word. Post Offices often share facilities with other governmental organizations located within a city's central business district. In those locations, often Courthouses and Federal Buildings, the building is owned by the General Services Administration while the U.S. Postal Services operates as a tenant. The USPS retail system has approximately 36,000 post offices, stations, and branches.
caption: A combined Post Office, Customs House, and Federal Court House in Galveston, Texas
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