20 Things You Never Knew About the Post Office

It’s a federal crime to vandalize a mailbox.

Violators face fines of up to $250,000, or up to three years in prison. 

The Postal Service is self-funded.

USPS is an independent government agency that generally does not receive tax dollars to support its operating expenses. Instead, it relies on selling postage, products and services to fund its operations.

It sells mail carrier costumes for kids.

You can buy them online for $25 to $30. It also sells post office mailbox and postal truck costumes for toddlers. There’s even an Instagram-worthy mail carrier dog costume for $18.

It has a department dedicated to deciphering poor penmanship.

What happens to mail with addresses that can’t be read by the Postal Service’s automated processing equipment? Images are taken and sent to the Remote Encoding Center, a nondescript building on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. There, employees — called “digital detectives” by the post office — review them and manually type in the address information. If it matches a valid address, the detectives send the information back to the local office, where a corresponding barcode is printed and affixed to the envelope. The facility, which operates around the clock, receives around 2.3 million address images per day.

You can ship bricks in the mail without packaging.

You can also send potatoes, coconuts and rocks without boxing them. (Postage costs are determined by weight, making heavy spuds costly to mail.) You can even mail inflated balloons — though there’s no guarantee they’ll arrive at their destination without popping first. 

Celebrities and historical icons were post office workers.

Future presidents Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, abolitionist John Brown and novelist William Faulkner served as postmasters. Actors Steve Carell, Rock Hudson and Morgan Freeman worked as letter carriers before making it big in Hollywood. You can see a list of famous postal employees here.  

There are more than 257,000 Postal Service vehicles.

It’s one of the largest civilian fleets in the world.

Some postal workers still deliver mail by bicycle.

The USPS delivers mail by bike on 50 routes in Arizona and Florida. One post office, in Sun City,  Arizona, has specially equipped bicycles with baskets designed to distribute and balance the mail load evenly when the carrier dismounts, protecting fragile packages.

There’s a Postal Service museum in Washington, D.C.

The National Postal Museum, opened by the Smithsonian in 1993, houses approximately 6 million artifacts, including postal stationery, greeting cards, letters, mailboxes, postal vehicles, mail carrier uniforms and — of course — stamps. Admission is free.

It stores new stamps in a limestone cave 150 feet below ground.

The underground facility, located in Kansas City, Missouri, provides consistent temperatures and humidity levels year-round, which helps maintain the stamps in mint condition.

The Postal Service delivers mail to Santa.

Every year, thousands of children send letters with their holiday wishes to Santa Claus through the USPS Operation Santa program. His mailing address is 123 Elf Road, North Pole, 88888. The holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street features the program in a courtroom scene. The Postal Service shares some of the heartfelt letters online.

Smokey Bear has his own zip code

In 1964, the Postal Service gave the U.S. Forest Service’s advertising icon a personal ZIP code: 20252. It was decommissioned in 1994 but reinstated in 2014 to mark Smokey’s 70th birthday. 

The postmaster general used to be eighth in the line of succession for the president...

Until 1970, the postmaster general was a cabinet-level position.

...and he’s one of the highest-paid federal employees today.

David Steiner, the 76th postmaster general, made nearly $240,000 in 2025.