I’m just preparing my tax payments to mail in, and I’m struck by the huge PO box numbers for both the federal and California payments. The address for the federal payment is PO Box 802501, Cincinnati, OH 45280, and the address for California payment is PO Box 942867, Sacramento, CA 94267. I’m pretty sure that neither the Cincinnati post office nor the Sacramento post office has anywhere close to a million PO boxes, so why do they use these ridiculous 6-digit numbers? Since these are probably among the highest volume addresses in the country, imagine how much time would be saved and misaddressed mail would be prevented if the addresses were something like PO Box 1. There must be some reason for the long numbers though, right?
That Sacramento PO Box number sounds like the ZIP Code with an 8 inserted in the middle. Was that perhaps deliberate?
The full zip+4 for the Cincinnati address is 45280-2501. Note that the P.O. Box number matches the last six digits of the zip+4 code exactly.
My suspicion is that this is not a real P.O. Box at all. Just a signal to make sure the letter gets to the correct zip+4 location. The zip+4 by itself has all the address information needed, in this case.
ETA: This way, the address contains the zip+4 even if the sender didn’t include it.
There’s probably information encoded in the number. The first three digits might be a prefix to help with routing somehow.
I’m sure it is not a real PO Box. The Post Office probably has special handling facilities for the millions of returns it gets - or it used to be millions, I don’t know how much the volume has fallen with e-filing.
My father-in-law used to live near the headquarters of one of the home shopping channels. They basically had their own post office, the volume was so great.
Almost every credit card company has the same thing. If you look closely, the POB number has the same last 4 or 5 digits as the 9-digit zip code.
As said, the PO just treats that 9-digit address as a big truckload to be filled.
It’s not uncommon for business post office boxes have the zip+4 code embedded in them. Check your credit card bills.
Cincinnati also has 802502 (estimated tax payments) and 802503 (extensions) with a similar ZIP. I doubt they are in exactly separate ZIP+4 locations. Charlotte and Louisville addresses also have a similar pattern, but Austin, KCMO, etc. don’t use PO boxes.
Since the longer the number the more likely it will be mistyped, I would check to see if there is a penalty for late payment.
When I was in college in Iowa City, ACT Testing was headquartered there, and it actually had its own ZIP Code, literally.
Lotta folks don’t quite get how detailed a 9-digit zipcode gets.
I live in a tall building. Each floor has about 40 apartments. The 9-digit zip code for my apartment is shared with only 6 other apartments along my segment of hallway. This building alone has 7 9-digit zip codes per floor and well over 100 9-digit zip codes total. For one single physical building with one physical street address.
As an experiment I went to ZIP Code™ Lookup - by City & State | USPS and entered my 'burb of roughly 100K population. The results came back with 16 5-digit zips. Of which five of the 5-digit zips were labeled “used for a specific PO box”. And two more of which were labeled “used for a specific company or organization”. So 7 of the 16 are special purpose and 9 of the 16 are plain old geographical areas like we’re all used to thinking of. So in this plain vanilla suburban location, nearly half of all 5-digit zip codes are special purpose.
The real punchline there is that for one of those zip codes labeled “for a specific PO box” or “for a specific company/organization”, those last 4 digits don’t mean anything to the post office. All the mail for that 5-digit zip code goes to the exact same place.
But whoever gets all that mail can have it presorted and pre-separated by the last 4 digits into whatever organization makes sense for their processing. e.g. On time payments are 0001, late payments are 0002, payment plans are 0003, change of address is 0004, general correspondence is 0005, etc.
To factors : One, When the US added the “+4” system to the ZIP codes to narrow down delivery, PO Boxes got extended 6- or 7-digit numberings so that the box number became part of the ZIP+4 code. Thus for example PO Box 999, San Juan PR 00929 became PO Box 9290999, San Juan PR 00929-0999. But since in some locations the +4 numbers and preexisting box numbers overlapped, you’ll some times get slightly different combinations or sequences to avoid duplication.
As mentioned earlier, these “Boxes” in government mailing centers are really routing codes within the agency to the specific divisions and departments.
In the uk we have Postcodes which work the same as Zips. My home postcode covers only seven houses on my side of the street.
Organsitions that get a lot of post have their own unique codes. The BBC at Broadcasting House is: London W1A 1AA. Buckingham Palace is: London SW1A 1AA.
All post is sorted by machines and they depend on the postcode to send mail to the correct place. The only person who looks at the name and address is the postman or woman who delivers it through our letterboxes.
According to postcodebase.com, that’s true for Puerto Rico but not elsewhere. For example: our old PO Box in Illinois, last used by us in 1979, still has the same three digits.
Almost any business with large mailings has its own zip code. Back in Gondwanaland when I worked for the Post Office (not the Postal Service), millions of people sent in slides and other materials to Kodak every year. Kodak developed them and sent truckloads to the main post office. They not only had their own zip code but a separate section just to fill mailbags, with the states lumped into a dozen or so bags. You stood at the focal point (if that’s the right term; if not, consider it a pun) beside a semicircle of bags and literally tossed the slide boxes into them. If one got in the wrong bag, oops, but you didn’t stop to look for it. You’re welcome, Kodak customers.
More recently when Netflix shipped DVDs, they had their own zip and sections too. I don’t think they even cared what the zip said on the envelope. It just went to the nearest Netflix distribution center.
Of course there’s a penalty for late payment, it’s the IRS after all. BUT, if it’s postmarked in time, there is no penalty. So even if the wrong zip temporarily sends it astray, there should be no penalty.
As others have said, it’s a combination of the zip code and the box number and mail to those type numbers go right into a hamper or container, not a physical box in the lobby. Usually picked up in bulk by a “business caller” courier service or the agency itself.
Full disclosure, I did 36 years for the PO, 6 months a clerk, and 35 1/2 years as an HVAC tech in a lot of buildings and pretty much saw all of the operations. Retired now for 15 years.
There are lots of reasons these days to look for conspiracies but this ain’t one of them.
General Electric’s main plan in Schenectady (much of which has been returned to highly toxic empty fields over the years) has zip code 12345. Thought it was a type or a prank first time I saw it.