New Mailing Standards for Domestic Mailing Services Products

POSTAL SERVICE <CFR>39 CFR Part 111</CFR> <SUBJECT>New Mailing Standards for Domestic Mailing Services Products</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Postal Service. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> On April 9, 2025, the Postal Service (USPS®) filed a notice of mailing services price adjustments with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), effective July 13, 2025. This proposed rule contains the revisions to <E T="03">Mailing Standards of the United States Postal Service,</E> Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®) that we would adopt to implement the changes coincident with the price adjustments. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Submit comments on or before June 2, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Mail or deliver written comments to the Director, Product Classification, U.S. Postal Service, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Room 4446, Washington, DC 20260-5015. If sending comments by email, include the name and address of the commenter and send to <E T="03">PCFederalRegister@usps.gov,</E> with a subject line of “July 2025 Domestic Mailing Services Proposal.” Faxed comments are not accepted. All submitted comments and attachments are part of the public record and subject to disclosure. Do not enclose any material in your comments that you consider to be confidential or inappropriate for public disclosure. You may inspect and photocopy all written comments, by appointment only, at USPS® Headquarters Library, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, 11th Floor North, Washington, DC 20260. These records are available for review on Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., by calling 202-268-2906. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Steven Mills at (202) 268-7433 or Doriane Harley at (202) 268-2537. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> Proposed prices will be available under Docket No. R2025-1 on the Postal Regulatory Commission's website at <E T="03">www.prc.gov.</E> The Postal Service's proposed rule includes: changes to prices, mail classification updates, product simplification efforts, and revisions to the DMM. <HD SOURCE="HD1">SCF Pallet Discount for First Class Mail</HD> Currently, the Postal Service offers SCF pallet discounts for USPS Marketing Mail. The Postal Service is proposing to extend this discount to First-Class card, letter, and flat-shaped mail on Sectional Center Facilities (SCF) or finer pallets. The discount will be a containerization discount for SCF, 5-Digit and/or 3-Digit Scheme pallets for First-Class Mail. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Elimination of Bundling in First-Class Mail Flat Trays</HD> Currently, First-Class Mail flats can be entered with mixed priced bundles in flat trays which requires additional sortation of discounted mail once in processing. The Postal Service is proposing to eliminate the bundling requirement for First Class Mail flats in flat tubs. Customers would continue to prepare each tub with mail sorted to the 5-digit, 3-digit, and scheme price levels without having to bundle the mail. This change would eliminate the additional processes required to sort and open bundles. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Elimination of Marketing Mail Commercial & Nonprofit Automation Basic CR Letters</HD> Currently, automation Basic Carrier Route letters are priced higher than 5-Digit letters. The Postal Service is proposing the elimination of this rate category as it offers no cost savings for the Postal Service beyond 5-Digit presort and incurs additional costs to process and deliver. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Elimination of Bound Printed Matter and Adjustment of USPS Marketing Mail Rate Structure</HD> On December 20, 2024, the Postal Service filed Docket No. MC2025-948 Request to Remove Bound Printed Matter from the Market-Dominant Product List and MC2025-958 Updates to the Maximum Weight Limit for Marketing Mail. With the filing of Docket No. R2025-1, the Postal Service is proposing alternate rates that would take effect if the elimination of Bound Printed Matter flats and parcels and the increase in the maximum weights for USPS Marketing Mail flats is approved. The details of the proposed rate structure include: • An increase to the maximum weight limit for USPS Marketing Mail flat-shaped pieces to 20 ounces (24 ounces for carrier route flats). • Addition of a nonpresorted rate category for USPS Marketing Mail regular and nonprofit flats. • Introduction of a sub-category of USPS Marketing Mail Parcels named Heavy Printed Matter (HPM) for heavy advertising materials like catalogs that weigh up to 15 pounds. Heavy Printed Matter would include rates for regular and nonprofit presorted, carrier route, and nonpresorted parcels. • A 5-Digit/Direct Delivery Sort Container discount for Carrier Route Heavy Printed Matter, and SCF Pallet Discounts for Presorted and Carrier Route Heavy Printed Matter. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Elimination of Media and Library Mail Presort Prices</HD> Currently, Media and Library Mail presort price options are underutilized product offerings. The Postal Service is proposing the elimination of presort options in an effort to simplify the product. As proposed, the 5-digit and Basic rate options would be eliminated and single-piece would remain as the available rate category. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Nonprofit Machinable and Nonprofit Irregular Priced Parcels Dimensions</HD> The Postal Service recently revised DMM 201.8.4.2 (PB 22648 4/18/24) to add Nonprofit Machinable Parcels and Nonprofit Irregular Parcels dimensions for consistency with the Mail Classification Schedule. The Postal Service is updating the dimensions of 108 inches in length and girth for consistency with the pricing of the product, machinable parcels. The Postal Service will revise the dimensions to be 22 inches in length, 18 inches in width, and 15 inches in height. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Combine Plus One and Detached Marketing Labels (DML) Products</HD> Currently, Plus One and Detached Marketing Labels are two separate products in Marketing Mail. Detached Marketing Labels (DML) are cards sent with flats that are used for the address which allows the mailpiece to be used for advertising messaging. The Plus One is a separate card allowed to be mailed with a USPS Marketing Mail saturation letter mailpiece. The Postal Service is proposing to merge these two products into one Plus One product which will allow usage with either marriage mail saturation letters or saturations flats. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Eliminate DNDC Entry Discount for USPS Marketing Mail, Periodicals, and Bound Printed Matter</HD> Currently, the Postal Service offers mailers a DNDC entry discount for certain mail classes when the destination addresses of the prepared mail within the container encompasses zip codes served by a specific NDC. Applicable mail classes include USPS Marketing Mail, Periodicals and Bound Printed Matter. As part of the Delivering for America (DFA) plan, the Postal Service is transforming its processing and transportation network to be more efficient, reliable, logical and cost-effective. One of the key elements of the network transformation is the elimination of NDCs and the associated NDC transportation network. As part of this transformation, NDC entry of mail will be eliminated along with elimination of the DNDC entry discount. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Alaska Bypass Nomenclature Update</HD> Alaska Bypass is no longer priced by zone therefore, the Postal Service is removing all references to zone pricing. <HD SOURCE="HD1">2026 Promotions</HD> The Postal Service has been incenting mailers to integrate mobile technology and use innovative print techniques in commercial mail since 2012. These promotions have become an integral way for industry to try new things and innovate their mail campaigns. A 2026 Promotions Calendar is planned with opportunities for mailers to receive a postage discount by applying treatments or integrating technology in their mail campaigns. In addition to the slated 2026 promotions, the Postal Service is introducing a new promotion incentive “Catalog Insights” which will provide a 10 percent discount for mailers who mail qualifying catalogs, which must be at least twelve pages, bound, and include a list of products or services offered and allow an order to be placed. Qualifying USPS Marketing Mail Letters, Flats, and Parcels will be eligible for the discount, which will run from October 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026. At the same time, the Postal Service is setting the existing Catalog Incentive to $0 so that both catalog discounts are not available at the same time. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Mail Growth Incentives Continuation in Calendar Year 2026</HD> For calendar year 2024, the Postal Service introduced two new incentives designed to promote the growth of First-Class Mail® (the “First-Class Mail Growth Incentive”) and USPS Marketing Mail® (the “Marketing Mail Growth Incentive”). The Postal Service is proposing to continue both incentives for calendar year 2026 and beyond. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Marriage Mail Incentive Extension to High Density Plus Letters and Flats</HD> Currently, the Postal Service offers marriage mailers an incentive price on Saturation USPS Marketing Mail letters and flats (including EDDM-Commercial) that weigh 2 ounces or less, if they meet certain requirements. The Postal Service is proposing to extend this incentive price to include High Density Plus USPS Marketing Mail letters and flats that meet the incentive requirements. Among the requirements to be eligible to claim the incentive price is that qualifying Marriage Mail pieces must include at least 4 advertisers and must be mailed at minimum 10 times every 12 months (by the mail owner, starting with the month of first claiming the incentive price). Information on the requirements to claim the Marriage Mail Incentive price will be posted on PostalPro at <E T="03"> ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 189k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━