improbable.com— Some amazing experiments testing the delivery standards of the United States Postal Service. Everything from balloons to $20 bills in clear envelopes.
Jan 5, 2007View in Crawl 4
My grandfather worked for the postal service for 30 years. He made one of those tennis ball dangling things for your garage [hits your window when you are far enough in] and sent it to my mom. He was apparently confident in the USPS ability to deliver so he did not wrap it and simply attached the address and postage to the string.Got there just fine.
Well honestly, mail does usually take 2-3 days, but you should allow up to 10(business) days because sometimes your address my not match their systems(if sender doesn't know what they're doing, or the automated systems don't read it and somebody actually has to sort it by hand) and usually if you don't like your mail service, it's a local issue.
Pretty much, if it's anything remotely against the regulations, the airlines just take it and trash it.I've been to Japan twice on solar racing trips (solar bicycles), and boy was that a fun time. 2 boxes of lead acid batteries (very small boxes, weigh about 60 lbs each), large, light boxes of carbon fiber and solar cells (polycrystalline solar cells reflect things in the x-ray machines, and baggage handlers freak out), and then even larger boxes filled with multiple tools, bicycles, saws, sharp implements, lighters, wadded up coils of wire, etc. Every single one of our boxes was opened, they tried to drill our batteries, and since butane lighters are not allowed on planes (pressure and whatnot in the cargo hold), they rummaged through several large boxes of unorganized tools to simply remove a single lighter and place a flyer saying something along the lines of "hey you can't have this stuff, we took your lighter." The battery boxes came back with approximatley an extra 1/4 inch thick of tape, from the amount of opening and closing of the boxes they did.
I worked for a company that runs summer camps all over the country. One of the things that the staffs of various camps will do is send mail for encouragement: good job, hang in there etc. One popular way to do this is to send a big ol' ball like you see in wal-mart in those PVC cages that go to the ceiling there like two or three feet in diameter but if you put enough stamps on em' they go through. I imagine it would really suck to have to carry that though...
@t3hX,ROFL...But seriously, I wouldn't do that if I were you. I REALLY wouldn't! There's a chance that somebody might figure it was a biohazard, do some detective work, and trace it back to you even without the return address. You might be hauled in and booked as a terrorist suspect.
The USPS has lost $2500 worth of packages (retail) addressed to me in the past three months. 80% of the wholesale orders I've placed since Election Day have been lost.f**k the USPS.
Closed AccountJan 5, 2007
My grandfather worked for the postal service for 30 years. He made one of those tennis ball dangling things for your garage [hits your window when you are far enough in] and sent it to my mom. He was apparently confident in the USPS ability to deliver so he did not wrap it and simply attached the address and postage to the string.Got there just fine.
Closed AccountJan 5, 2007
i wish mail would run on sundays.i like mail.
drshortyJan 6, 2007
Well honestly, mail does usually take 2-3 days, but you should allow up to 10(business) days because sometimes your address my not match their systems(if sender doesn't know what they're doing, or the automated systems don't read it and somebody actually has to sort it by hand) and usually if you don't like your mail service, it's a local issue.
1randomnumberJan 6, 2007
Pretty much, if it's anything remotely against the regulations, the airlines just take it and trash it.I've been to Japan twice on solar racing trips (solar bicycles), and boy was that a fun time. 2 boxes of lead acid batteries (very small boxes, weigh about 60 lbs each), large, light boxes of carbon fiber and solar cells (polycrystalline solar cells reflect things in the x-ray machines, and baggage handlers freak out), and then even larger boxes filled with multiple tools, bicycles, saws, sharp implements, lighters, wadded up coils of wire, etc. Every single one of our boxes was opened, they tried to drill our batteries, and since butane lighters are not allowed on planes (pressure and whatnot in the cargo hold), they rummaged through several large boxes of unorganized tools to simply remove a single lighter and place a flyer saying something along the lines of "hey you can't have this stuff, we took your lighter." The battery boxes came back with approximatley an extra 1/4 inch thick of tape, from the amount of opening and closing of the boxes they did.
micahJan 6, 2007
I worked for a company that runs summer camps all over the country. One of the things that the staffs of various camps will do is send mail for encouragement: good job, hang in there etc. One popular way to do this is to send a big ol' ball like you see in wal-mart in those PVC cages that go to the ceiling there like two or three feet in diameter but if you put enough stamps on em' they go through. I imagine it would really suck to have to carry that though...
bigkittyJan 6, 2007
@t3hX,ROFL...But seriously, I wouldn't do that if I were you. I REALLY wouldn't! There's a chance that somebody might figure it was a biohazard, do some detective work, and trace it back to you even without the return address. You might be hauled in and booked as a terrorist suspect.
rocktopotomusJan 7, 2007
i remember this experiment, perhaps on a different site, from at least 4 years ago. it was awesome then, just like now.
macseriesJan 21, 2009
The USPS has lost $2500 worth of packages (retail) addressed to me in the past three months. 80% of the wholesale orders I've placed since Election Day have been lost.f**k the USPS.