Description
Prepare incoming and outgoing mail for distribution for the United States Postal Service (USPS). Examine, sort, and route mail. Load, operate, and occasionally adjust and repair mail processing, sorting, and canceling machinery. Keep records of shipments, pouches, and sacks, and perform other duties related to mail handling within the postal service. Includes postal service mail sorters and processors employed by USPS contractors.
- • Direct items according to established routing schemes, using computer-controlled keyboards or voice-recognition equipment.
- • Bundle, label, and route sorted mail to designated areas, depending on destinations and according to established procedures and deadlines.
- • Train new workers.
- • Distribute incoming mail into the correct boxes or pigeonholes.
- • Operate various types of equipment, such as computer scanning equipment, addressographs, mimeographs, optical character readers, and bar-code sorters.
- • Search directories to find correct addresses for redirected mail.
- • Clear jams in sorting equipment.
- • Check items to ensure that addresses are legible and correct, that sufficient postage has been paid or the appropriate documentation is attached, and that items are in a suitable condition for processing.
- • Open and label mail containers.
- • Rewrap soiled or broken parcels.
- • Move containers of mail, using equipment, such as forklifts and automated "trains".
- • Sort odd-sized mail by hand, sort mail that other workers have been unable to sort, and segregate items requiring special handling.
- • Load and unload mail trucks, sometimes lifting containers of mail onto equipment that transports items to sorting stations.
- • Cancel letter or parcel post stamps by hand.
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Public Service & Safety
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Tasks & skills:
O*NET occupational data (work activities, skills, knowledge).
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Last reviewed: Jan 2026
