# Does Royal Air Mail (UK) make US ground deliveries like UPS? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 26, 2005, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828 "2005-11-26T19:41:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dishfunctional](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/35a633/32.png) [@Dishfunctional](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dishfunctional)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2005, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/1 "2005-11-26T19:41:09Z")
Does Royal Air Mail (UK) make ground deliveries to U.S. addresses like UPS? I’ve ordered a book from a British publisher, and I’ve provided them with a street address here stateside. It’s a rural address not serviced by the US Postal Service - we have to go into town and pick up mail from a post office box. The only way we can get anything delivered directly to our door is via UPS or FedEx or some other similar ground delivery service. I’ve just received a notice that the UK publisher is sending the book via “Royal Air Mail”. I need to know if that package will be delivered directly to this address by RAM, or will they turn it over to the US Postal Service (in which case it may well be returned as undeliverable as addressed), or will they (RAM) turn the parcel over to a ground delivery service such as UPS which should deliver it to our door straight away. The notice indicated that I should expect to wait about ten business days before receiving the package, so I still have some time to intervene, if necessary. If intervention is not necessary, I’ll thankfully avoid it, having had fits often enough with just one country’s asinine mail protocol! ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2005, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/2 "2005-11-26T19:44:52Z")
Sounds like a misprint/typo, which should read “Royal Mail Airmail”. Royal Mail equates to the USPS, airmail being the standard overseas shipment. So I suspect it’ll be passed onto the USPS, not a private company such as UPS. ---
**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2005, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/3 "2005-11-26T19:49:40Z")
**GorillaMan** is correct; your book will be delivered by your regular postman along with all your other mail. ---
**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/4 "2005-11-27T00:43:36Z")
> [@Biffy the Elephant Shrew](#): > > **GorillaMan** is correct; your book will be delivered by your regular postman along with all your other mail. Except that the OP lives where “here be dragons” and the USPS dosen’t deliver to his/her home. Sounds as though the Royal Mail, oops, the company sending the item has to be told to deliver it to the approriate post office instead. ---
**Author:** ![Dishfunctional](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/35a633/32.png) [@Dishfunctional](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dishfunctional)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/5 "2005-11-27T00:46:36Z")
Thank you all very much… I’ll get right on it! ---
**Author:** ![Clock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19adc/32.png) [@Clock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clock)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/6 "2005-11-27T09:00:03Z")
> [@Dishfunctional](#): > > Does Royal Air Mail (UK) make ground deliveries to U.S. addresses like UPS? > > I’ve ordered a book from a British publisher, and I’ve provided them with a street address here stateside. It’s a rural address not serviced by the US Postal Service - we have to go into town and pick up mail from a post office box. The only way we can get anything delivered directly to our door is via UPS or FedEx or some other similar ground delivery service. > > I’ve just received a notice that the UK publisher is sending the book via “Royal Air Mail”. I need to know if that package will be delivered directly to this address by RAM, or will they turn it over to the US Postal Service (in which case it may well be returned as undeliverable as addressed), or will they (RAM) turn the parcel over to a ground delivery service such as UPS which should deliver it to our door straight away. > > The notice indicated that I should expect to wait about ten business days before receiving the package, so I still have some time to intervene, if necessary. If intervention is not necessary, I’ll thankfully avoid it, having had fits often enough with just one country’s asinine mail protocol! Don’t really understand why the USPS doesn’t deliver direct to your home. As an ex UK postman I can assure you that here EVERY home/business would receive mail direct to their home address no matter the location. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/7 "2005-11-27T11:33:58Z")
> [@Clock](#): > > Don’t really understand why the USPS doesn’t deliver direct to your home. > > As an ex UK postman I can assure you that here EVERY home/business would receive mail direct to their home address no matter the location. Even if they don’t deliver the mail at the OP’s door, there’s still something I don’t understand : why don’t they keep the mail sent to the non serviced adress at the post office where the OP usually retrieves it? Apart from that, except if you send a package through a private international delivery service, it will be passed by your national postal service to the other country’s national postal service which will dispose of it as it would do with any other mail. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/8 "2005-11-27T14:40:39Z")
> [@Clock](#): > > Don’t really understand why the USPS doesn’t deliver direct to your home. > > As an ex UK postman I can assure you that here EVERY home/business would receive mail direct to their home address no matter the location. Population density in many (most?) parts of the USA is considerably lower than it is in the UK. Here in Britain, there really isn’t a lot of remote wilderness. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/9 "2005-11-27T14:52:01Z")
I’d be surprised if the proportion of the British population who live in ‘remote’ areas, as in particularly inaccessible for postal delivery, is much less than the proportion for America, discounting Alaska. ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/10 "2005-11-27T17:15:46Z")
I think that has something to do with the way developments are put together in the different countries. In the UK you have to get planning permission and so forth, which basically means that you are allowed by the council to put up a house, and in return you get hookups to all the amenities - sewerage, electricity, post, etc. In the US I get the impression that the system is much more relaxed, inasmuch as you can get a zoning permit to build housing on a tract of land in the middle of nowhere, and then phone up the local authority to tell them about your brand new suburb and demand they provide facilities. It can then take a while for USPS to assign a zipcode to the area, all the piping and so on to be fixed, etc. Hence you end up with a fair number of houses that have no zip code, hence no postal service. ---
**Author:** ![Dishfunctional](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/35a633/32.png) [@Dishfunctional](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dishfunctional)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/11 "2005-11-27T17:20:28Z")
> [@Clock](#): > > Don’t really understand why the USPS doesn’t deliver direct to your home. As an ex UK postman I can assure you that here EVERY home/business would receive mail direct to their home address no matter the location. > [@clairobscur](#): > > Even if they don’t deliver the mail at the OP’s door, there’s still something I don’t understand : why don’t they keep the mail sent to the non serviced adress at the post office where the OP usually retrieves it? Apart from that, except if you send a package through a private international delivery service, it will be passed by your national postal service to the other country’s national postal service which will dispose of it as it would do with any other mail. > [@Mangetout](#): > > Population density in many (most?) parts of the USA is considerably lower than it is in the UK. Here in Britain, there really isn’t a lot of remote wilderness. > [@GorillaMan](#): > > I’d be surprised if the proportion of the British population who live in ‘remote’ areas, as in particularly inaccessible for postal delivery, is much less than the proportion for America, discounting Alaska. Good morning, all. Good questions, ones we here in the mountains of Central Arizona frequently ask our federal government, who has a monopoly on door-to-door mail delivery in this country. Unfortunately, I have no good answers, other than the one-word reason that covers most such American problems: Bureaucracy. Our home is located about 25 miles (65 km) from a town of 13,000 people. The post office there delivers door-to-door to those who reside within the town limits, and maintains Post Office Boxes for those who do not. We drive into town to pick up our own mail, which is addressed to that Post Office Box number in that town, not to our street address where we actually live, 25 miles away. If mail comes in to the Post Office bearing our street address, it is summarily returned to sender stamped “Undeliverable As Addressed”. Why this occurs is a matter of “policy”. Since they have on file a list of the street addresses of every person who rents a Post Office Box, it has always baffled me why they couldn’t create a cross-reference of some sort that would allow them to simply look up the Post Office Box that corresponds to the name and street address on the package, place a parcel notification slip in the box and store the package until the next time the box holder comes in. Inquiries as to why this cannot be done are always met with the same response: “That’s not our policy.” **Mangetout** is quite correct in his assumption regarding the remoteness of our location here (see statistics below). And \*\* GorillaMan\*\*, you’d be surprised to see how much of the Western United States is uninhabited. It’s lovingly referred to as “Flyover Country” by the elites who live in the densely populated regions up and down the Eastern Seaboard and the Pacific Coast and in the Southern cities that ring the Gulf of Mexico. It may sound as if I’m complaining about or situation here, and to a certain extent, I am, but we are the lucky ones… Arizona is a large state with only four major cities, three of which are in the extreme southern part of the state near the Mexico border. Folks who live in the extreme northern regions of the state often have to spend the entire day traveling “into town” to do such mundane things as shopping, banking, picking up mail, etc. Some people who live in towns along Arizona’s state lines with California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico actually have their mail delivered to Post Office Boxes _in towns that are in those other states_ because it is a shorter drive! Anyway, thanks, again, to those who responded to the initial inquiry. I’m awaiting a response from the sender as to what they will do to make sure I get my book. And thanks, too, for the stimulating follow-up questions… it gave me the reason I lacked to avoid getting directly to the **work** I should be doing! Arizona population: 5,130,000 Land area: 113,642 sq mi or 294,331 sq km Population density: 45.2/sq mi or 117/sq km England population: 50,093,800 Land area: 50,031 sq mi or 130,281 sq km Popluation density: 148/sq mi or 383/sq km ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/12 "2005-11-27T17:44:11Z")
> [@Dishfunctional](#): > > Arizona population: 5,130,000 > Land area: 113,642 sq mi or 294,331 sq km > Population density: 45.2/sq mi or 117/sq km > > England population: 50,093,800 > Land area: 50,031 sq mi or 130,281 sq km > Popluation density: 148/sq mi or 383/sq km Lets play with statistics 😉 … Lewis & Harris, Scotland - population: 17,473 Land area: 2,137 sq km Population density: 8/sq km I think **slaphead** may be verging on the right answer…that it’s due to the historical backgrounds of the two systems. Here’s a bit of [Wikipedia history](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Post_Office_%28United_Kingdom%29) of the British mail system: > [@](#): > > The British General Post Office (GPO) was officially established as a monopoly in 1660 by Charles II…All post was transferred from the post office of origination to distribution points… and from there the post was then sent on for delivery to the receiver of the post. Initially it was the recipient of the post who paid the fee, and he had the right to refuse the accept the item if he did not wish to pay. … In 1840 the Penny Post was introduced, which incorporated the two key innovations of a uniform postal rate, which cut administrative costs and encouraged use of the system, and adhesive pre-paid stamps. I read that as saying the principle of delivering to anywhere in the country dates from 1660 (when things were a helluva lot less accessible than present-day Arizona!) ---
**Author:** ![Dishfunctional](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/35a633/32.png) [@Dishfunctional](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dishfunctional)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/13 "2005-11-27T17:56:38Z")
> [@slaphead](#): > > I think that has something to do with the way developments are put together in the different countries. In the UK you have to get planning permission and so forth, which basically means that you are allowed by the council to put up a house, and in return you get hookups to all the amenities - sewerage, electricity, post, etc. > In the US I get the impression that the system is much more relaxed, inasmuch as you can get a zoning permit to build housing on a tract of land in the middle of nowhere, and then phone up the local authority to tell them about your brand new suburb and demand they provide facilities. It can then take a while for USPS to assign a zipcode to the area, all the piping and so on to be fixed, etc. > Hence you end up with a fair number of houses that have no zip code, hence no postal service. Almost correct, **slaphead**. All areas, developed or not, do have assigned Zip Codes, it’s just that postal delivery is not considered a vital service, such as water, power, gas, etc., so there is no requirement to provide for such service when applying for a permit to build in remote areas. Developers of residential communities in remote areas are required to provide many things themselves, including essential services, at their own expense, e.g., establish access roads, put in local streets and curbs, dig wells and put in the delivery system to provide water, install a sewer system or provide for alternative septic systems, run electricity and/or natural gas lines in from the nearest available source. I’m sure there are other requirements, to include passing exhaustive and often prohibitive environmental impact requirements, but that should give you the general idea. In some of the most remote areas, developers are given the option to not provide any of these services, although this is becoming more rare, and the homes are offered to buyers with the understanding that they must provide their own services. These homes are referred to as “off the grid” and are quite self-sufficient, having their own individual wells and alternative sources of power, such as solar, geothermal and/or wind, all of which are in fairly abundant supply in this area. Some of the most remote communities are understandably inhabited by folks who live there because they are preparing for the end of civilization and don’t want to depend on any government for anything. These homes are usually built on very large parcels (acreage), often considered ranches or compounds, that provide considerable buffers between neighbors. In some parts of this country, if you can see your neighbor, he’s too close. It should be noted that, typically, in the United States one does not demand services of any kind from our various levels of government, except in those instances where services which are required by law (and there aren’t many) are being withheld for whatever reason. There are exceptions, of course, and more lately than in the past, with the upsurge of a new “entitlement class” of people who do just as you’ve described – they _demand_ things from government, which often gets provided at the expense of everyone else. But that’s venturing into the realm of opinion, so I’d better leave it at that. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/14 "2005-11-27T18:07:12Z")
To further the meandering of the thread - do telephone companies have any obligation to provide a service to particular areas? As with the postal system, British Telecom have a duty to provide a telephone line to any residence that requires it, which involves all sorts of radio/satellite/microwave links which no commerical company would willingly install. ---
**Author:** ![Dishfunctional](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/35a633/32.png) [@Dishfunctional](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dishfunctional)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/15 "2005-11-27T19:05:51Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > To further the meandering of the thread - do telephone companies have any obligation to provide a service to particular areas? As with the postal system, British Telecom have a duty to provide a telephone line to any residence that requires it, which involves all sorts of radio/satellite/microwave links which no commerical company would willingly install. In a word, no, and not just in these remote areas we’ve been discussing. All public telephone services in the United States are provided by private (non-governmental) companies. All of the infrastructure you describe exists in this country as well, but is installed and maintained by the companies that own them, with funding being provided strictly from subscribers to the service. In most areas where companies compete for subscribers, monthly fees are relatively low ($16 per month here, for example) and generally comparable from company to company. ---
**Author:** ![Dishfunctional](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/35a633/32.png) [@Dishfunctional](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dishfunctional)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/16 "2005-11-27T19:14:50Z")
Please note that my remarks above are a very broad, generalized description of the telephone industry in this country. There are myriad inter-company agreements (line leases, utility pole usage, governmental contracts, etc) and government-imposed restrictions and, of course, taxes that govern and shape these services, many so complex that it would take someone steeped in phone lore to explain, let alone understand. The bottom line, however, remains the same - there is no universal federal requirement _per se_ that telephone service be provided to anybody anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/17 "2005-11-27T20:52:03Z")
Further meandering , The _Times_ reported last week that four farmhouses , located in a remote valley in South Wales, were finally connected to the electricity grid. These are probably the last dwellings in the Principality not to be on mains power. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/18 "2005-11-27T21:17:06Z")
British Telecom can refuse to provide service in exceptional circumstances where the cost would far outweigh the potential revenue - usually things like islands off Scotland peopled by two men and a dog which would require a whole microwave link to themselves and which would never earn the money back in a gazillion years. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2005, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/19 "2005-11-27T21:24:21Z")
Not true, **Mk VII** , but those two men might have to pay towards the cost (something I didn’t realise before): > [@](#): > > If you want a phone service, BT and Kingston Communications must respond to any reasonable request, and with the same price for everybody. This is true no matter where you live, and that is particularly important if you’re in a remote area which, without the USO rules, the market may not want to serve. > > If your new line costs BT £3,400 or less to install, you pay a standard charge. If it costs them more than that figure, you must pay the extra costs (and pay BT’s standard connection charge). After our consultation, we believe that BT’s approach and the £3,400 level are sensible. > > We are also publishing guidelines on what a ‘reasonable’ request is. This will give BT flexibility to charge only the standard fee for particularly vulnerable customers, even if costs go over £3,400. [http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/uso/statement/usope/](http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/uso/statement/usope/) ---
**Author:** ![slaphead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@slaphead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slaphead)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2005, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828/20 "2005-11-29T09:17:08Z")
> [@Dishfunctional](#): > > Inquiries as to why this cannot be done are always met with the same response: “That’s not our policy.” And I bet if you ask “_Why_ is that not your policy?” you get a fish-eyed stare and a response along the lines of “Hnuh?”. Bureacracy - the universal constant of our times. > [@Dishfunctional](#): > > Almost correct, slaphead. All areas, developed or not, do have assigned Zip Codes, D’oh! :smack: I now remember reading a Google Maps discussion relating to some mysterious Zip code that turned out to cover a bunch of rivers and the Great Lakes, or something. Can’t believe I forgot that while remembering a several years old conversation with a colleague who lives outside Scottsdale, AZ. and has the exact same issue as you do. Anyhow, zip codes are a dark and mysterious art to people who have grown up with UK Postal Codes, which are assigned to a much finer level of detail - individual building blocks and even individual companies in multi-occupancy buildings, in some instances. Very handy for websites that can afford a Royal Mail subscription - punch in your postcode, they list the residences at that code and you pick your abode from the list. Also a boon to credit card companies and others that want to do address verification without wanting to introduce any human error. Did I mention that I like postcodes? 😃 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-royal-air-mail-uk-make-us-ground-deliveries-like-ups/332828.md?page=2)