Jagosaurus wrote:What triggers a MM package to be inspected? Not trying to cheat the system, just curious if someone is required to check "x" percentage of all MM packages before they go out. What step in the process does this happen?
Honestly no clue as far as I know my facility doesn't check them I believe it's mostly the office that receives it and the one that delivers it that check it if they feel like it. While I was a carrier clerks would occasionally shake a box and see if it sounded like a book but really I don't remember ever seeing them actually bothering to open and inspect them aside from the occasional obvious issues like idiots trying to use free priority boxes improperly.
I guess the clerks who sort the stuff to the individual offices in my area could be picking a few off the conveyor belt but I haven't noticed it if they do and really they are sorting hundreds of thousands if not a million plus packages a night so I doubt they take the time to do much if anything.
Really media mail can be opened by a clerk at any office so it's really up to chance whether it gets inspected or not.
Jagosaurus wrote:Also, how else would they get scanned other than manually
The packages we receive from the offices in our region come in wire cages on rollers or mixed up with the rest of the mail in 5 gallon mail tubs. We sort those into more cages separating out large(16+ inches) or heavy(20+ Pounds) thing as well as anything that goes to another region. Anything small and "light" gets put into a wire cage, rolling cage, or giant metal box that looks like a dumpster it is then rolled into another area and dumped onto a conveyor belt where a team of 5-10+ clerks put it on a belt that scans it it (or if it's untracked they manually input the zipcode it's going to they loathe e-packets from China obviously
) from there the machine throws it into the proper hamper for the office it's going to. Anything that comes from another state shows up in a OTR(Think giant dumpster on wheels) in a bunch of sacks sealed up. The sacks are then emptied by hand back into an OTR with any larger items being removed and then it's dumped on a sorting belt.
To give you an idea of how many packages go through our facility here are what the cages, OTRs, and "wires" look like.
Cages we get about 500+ of these on an average day.
OTR(Over The Road) Container we get probably 50+ of these a night full to the brim with packages.
"Wire" Couldn't find a good picture of these by themselves but here is a picture with all three containers in another postal facility that I found on google. The wire is in the middle. We only get say 30 or so of those a night with mixed mail most places don't send those thankfully since they take up a lot more space in trucks since they aren't that tall.
There are also hampers.
Here are some pics of package sorting machine setups similar to ours.
Package containers are dumped onto a belt.
From there it goes through clerks which separate it so it can be scanned by the machine which sends it down a belt thats probably a tenth of a mile long lined with hampers for each office..
Closer look at the dumpers to give you an idea of what a small-medium packages go through
.
I'd say this is what the belt normally looks like for most of the night.
