By Sabine Lenz
Crumpled on the side, one corner completely torn off, the poor thing arrived at my doorstep a few days ago. Was it the loser in a feral cat fight? No, just an innocent postcard that got caught in an ill-fated traffic accident.
Now, we all get a solid number of direct mail pieces each day, but what made this one so special was the fact that it actually looked much worse for the wear than most and … wait for it … was mailed by a printing organization. Not that it was their fault as such … it’s just that funny irony thing again … especially given that the “Paper Queen” ended up as an eyewitness.
Bulking Up for Protection
It was a large postcard, a very large postcard. At 6 x 11 inches, it offered a lot of marketing real estate. But was there any connection to the overall size and its tattered condition? Was it the weight of the paper or perhaps the thickness of the paper that left this card in a vulnerable spot?
“The weight and size of the paper probably had little to do with the problem,” said George Heinrich, a.k.a. the Postal Professor. “However the minimum thickness for a piece 6” x 11” is 9 point, so this piece was printed on paper with the absolute minimum acceptable thickness.”
After examining our postcard, Donald Stuhler, Mailpiece Design Analyst for the U.S. Postal Service, agreed, “If you construct a mail piece this size, you should use a paper stock that is at least a 10 point as some papers mic less than others.”
This is exactly the point I’ve been making for years. When thickness is important, as in mailing and packaging, you should spec a sheet that is produced to caliper rather than weight. A 10 pt. or 12 pt. paper would have given this postcard not only more oomph from a design perspective, but also more stability in the postal process.
The USPS allows cards 4.25” x 6” to be on 7 pt. stock. Although this is the regulation, the Postal Professor recommends that mailers begin to transition to 9 pt. for this size of card. “If the card is any larger, then I recommend a minimum of 10 pt., but 11 or 12 is even better to maintain the integrity of the mail piece. I know this affects the cost, but the look and feel of the piece when it gets in the addressee’s hands can make or break the “sale,” says Heinrich.
A Speeding Postcard
All letter-size pieces, and our postcard in question, are processed on equipment that runs at 36,000 pieces per hour.
For those of us mathematically challenged, that is 10 pieces per second. Faster than many web presses, faster than you and I can type “postcard.”
Add to this that the each mail piece also makes numerous twists and turns during this sorting process. Each of which could possibly lead to damage.
But wait, there’s more. The postcard in question was also sorted to what’s known as a “mixed tray,” meaning it was processed through this twisting and turning, speeding equipment up to eight times before it was delivered to me. Ample opportunities for damage.
The Accident Report
One option to explain the torn off edge and general damage to our postcard is that it might have had a miniscule tear in the lead edge. This tear likely got caught on one of the “gates” in our super-fast, twisting-and-turning postal equipment and just ripped off the top corner. Ouch!
“Now, says the Postal Professor, “this is what I think happened. Your piece was trailing another mail piece that jammed in the equipment during processing. Because the machine is running so fast, it can’t stop quickly enough and trailing pieces run into the jammed piece and become damaged. If the machine takes one second to stop, it means that 10 pieces could have possibly jammed behind the leading piece. I once asked a postal supervisor how many pieces usually get damaged if one piece jams in the machine. He responded by saying, based on the age of the equipment and the location of the jam, between 10 and 25 pieces.”
So our damaged piece of direct mail was, like a freeway pile-up, not a common occurrence thank goodness and likely not the only “victim.” At least no insurance reports had to be filed.
If you want to see one of these super fast, twisting-and-turning machines in action, and I think it’s worth your while to do so, check out the video below. Keep the volume on your computer to medium though 
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Seeing designers worldwide struggle to stay current with new papers and paper trends inspired Sabine Lenz to create PaperSpecs, an independent and comprehensive Web-based paper selection tool and weekly e-newsletter. Growing up in Germany, she started her design career in Frankfurt, before moving on to Australia and the United States. Lenz worked on design projects ranging from corporate identities to major road shows and product launches. From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, her list of clients included Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Deutsche Bank, IBM and KPMG. Lenz is a noted speaker and author on paper issues and educational topics related to the paper industry.
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I received the exact same postcard. It also had been mangled — and someone (in the USPS?) had actually “repaired” it by applying a couple pieces of clear mailing tape.