LetterAgent
Mail physical letters by just asking your AI assistant.
Mail sorting works in stages: machines read the address on each piece, print a barcode that encodes the destination, and route the piece from a regional processing plant toward the delivery office that serves the destination street, where a final sort puts it in walk order for the carrier.
Collection boxes and post office counters feed into a processing plant, usually in the evening. The first pass faces each piece the same way, cancels the postage so it cannot be reused, and photographs the front of the envelope. That image is what the reading equipment works from. Pieces that are too thick, rigid, or oddly shaped leave the machine line here and get handled by hand, which is one reason a standard flat letter moves faster than a lumpy one.
In the United States, this work is done by the Postal Service; in Canada, by Canada Post. The equipment differs in detail, but the logic is the same: read the destination, mark the piece, and push it toward the right outbound stream. A letter mailed across town may still travel to a regional plant and back, because sorting is organized around plants, not around straight-line distance.
Optical character recognition software looks for the delivery address, usually in the lower portion of the envelope, and tries to match it against an address database. Clean block printing reads best. Cursive, faint ink, and addresses crowded against the edge of the envelope read worst. When the software cannot decide, the image goes to a person at a remote encoding station who keys in the address by hand. That human step still happens every day, and it is a common cause of a one-day delay on an otherwise ordinary letter.
Printed addresses avoid most of this. A typed or printed label in a standard font, with the street number, street name, city, and postal code on separate lines, gives the reader exactly what it expects. This is also why printed mail from a service like LetterAgent tends to sort cleanly: the address is machine-printed in a fixed position rather than handwritten at an angle.
Once the destination is confirmed, the machine sprays or prints a barcode on the envelope. Later machines do not need to read the address again; they just scan the barcode, which is faster and far more reliable than reading handwriting a second time. In the US, this is the Intelligent Mail barcode; in Canada, a similar routing barcode serves the same purpose. If you have ever noticed a faint barcode printed along the bottom or back of an envelope you received, that mark was added during sorting, not by the sender.
The barcode also feeds tracking. For services with tracking, each scan at a plant or delivery unit creates a tracking event. A plain letter with no tracking service still gets barcoded for sorting, but its scans are not shown to the sender.
Sorting machines expect the delivery address in a specific zone: centered, in the lower half of the envelope, parallel to the long edge. The return address belongs in the upper left corner, and postage in the upper right. When those positions swap or drift, the reader can pick up the wrong block of text. A return address printed where the delivery address should be is a classic cause of a letter going back to the sender.
Other placement traps are smaller but real. Stickers, bold logos, or a second address printed near the delivery address can pull the reader off target. So can an address written vertically, or a suite number squeezed onto the same line as the street name in a way that reads as part of it. Keep the delivery address alone in its zone, with nothing else competing for attention on that part of the envelope.
| Sorting stage | What happens | What slows it down |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelling and facing | Pieces are oriented one way and postage is cancelled | Thick, rigid, or lumpy envelopes |
| Address reading | Software reads the address and matches it to a database | Cursive, faint ink, crowded layout |
| Barcode printing | A routing barcode is added to the envelope | A damaged or covered barcode area |
| Outbound sort | Pieces are grouped by destination plant or region | A wrong or incomplete postal code |
| Delivery-office sort | Pieces are put in carrier walk order | A missing apartment or suite number |
The last sort happens at the local delivery unit, the office that owns the route. There, mail is sequenced into the order the carrier walks or drives it. Much of this sequencing is now machine-done too, so the carrier receives bundles already in route order. A missing apartment number hurts most at this stage: the street and building may be right, but without the unit, the piece cannot be sequenced to a specific box and may be held or returned.
Use a printed address, keep it in the standard zone, include the full postal code or ZIP code, and add the apartment or suite number on its own line or clearly after the street address. Avoid handwriting when you can, and never tape over the lower edge of the envelope where the barcode will be printed. None of this guarantees speed, but each step removes a reason for your letter to drop out of the machine line into manual handling.
If you mail through LetterAgent, printing and formatting are handled for you: the letter is printed single-sided and placed in a double-window envelope, with the recipient address in one window and the sender address in the other. You approve the exact quoted price before anything is sent.
Ready to mail it? Send your letter with LetterAgent: describe it to your AI assistant, approve the exact quoted price, and it is printed and mailed.
LetterAgent is a working name. Prices include print, postage, and our service fee. US prices in USD, Canadian prices in CAD (Canadian prices exclude applicable sales tax, added at checkout). Currently in private testing.
Need help? Ask your assistant: it can check a job's status any time. If it ever can't handle something: hello@getletteragent.com