When an address is not legible, mail distribution centers around the country capture images of the hard-to-read addresses and electronically send them to the U.S. Postal Service Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ian Lee reports.

Salt Lake City

The United States Postal Service processes around 3 million letters each day, but some addresses are too difficult for machines to read due to poor penmanship. When this occurs, local distribution facilities attempt to interpret the address, but if unsuccessful, images of the mail are sent to the Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City. There, hundreds of experts review and decode addresses, handling about 1 billion pieces of mail annually. If the address remains undecipherable after this process, the mail undergoes a final hands-on inspection to try to determine its destination before considering returning it to the sender.

What happens when the USPS can't decipher an address?

Saturday is the 250th anniversary of the United States Post Office. A core millennium of getting the mail from one place to another. But as Ian Lee reports, it's not always so easy. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night can stop the mail. But poor penmanship, that is a challenge. It's around 3 million letters that go through our machines every day. When an address is not legible, the local distribution facility first tries to figure it out. Steve Hilton is Utah's senior manager. How many letters are hard to decipher? We're having to rerun about 75,000 pieces through there. If all else fails, mail distribution centers around the country capture images of the hard-to-read addresses and electronically send them here, to the Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City. Just in the last year, we processed about 1 billion pieces of mail in the center alone. Manager Ryan Bullock oversees hundreds of experts in chicken scratch. Every hour, somebody's going to do about 900 pieces on average. Amy Hugely has been deciphering addresses for more than 20 years. Has this job made you better at reading your doctor's handwriting? Yes, actually, it has. As a keyer, Hugely reviews images of letters to quickly determine their destinations. Is that an M, Mills? It's actually Delta Airlines. Oh, Delta Airlines. Wow, I was way off. If a keyer can't decode the addresses from the image, the post office has only one option. A hands-on inspection. Somebody over at the plant will have to physically get that piece of mail and look at it. And hope they can read it. Right, yeah. So it won't be returned to sender. Address unknown.

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