POSTAL SERVICE
MANUAL
1971 – 1978

Contributed by Mike Ludeman

The new US Postal Service formally introduced the Postal Service Manual on October 1, 1970. It was basically a revised replacement for the instructional materials previous provided to postal employees through the Postal Manual.

In addition to the necessary cosmetic changes to reflect the change from the US Post Office Department to the US Postal Service, two major alterations were made. The first was to remove the previous Chapter 2 – International Mail from the new Postal Service Manual, and integrated them into what was previously distributed as the Directory of International Mails (USPOD Publication 42), and this new publication was now retitled simply as International Mail, which can be found here.

This change was not unexpected, as throughout the entire Postal Manual period (1954-1979), postmasters were encouraged to maintain their copy of Chapter 2: International Mail in close proximity to the Directory of International Mail, as the two publications were closely interconnected, and neither was sufficient to stand alone.

To maintain consistency, Chapter 8 - Organization and Administration, was then renumbered to Chapter 2.

A second change was the elimination of Chapter 4: Financial and Cost Controls from the new Postal Service Manual. The information in this chapter was generally not required by postmasters at fourth class post offices, and the original material was republished as a new handbook, Financial and Cost Controls, Series F-1. The previous Chapter 7 - Personnel, was renumbered to Chapter 4.

The resulting Postal Service Manual was now reduced to six chapters: (1) Post Office Services (Domestic), (2) Organization and Administration, (3) Post Office Procedures, (4) Personnel, (5) Transportation, and (6) Facilities.

This new Postal Service Manual also retained the previous loose-leaf format using a 6” by 9” page and special binder. All distributions of revisions and updates were provided to the holders of the Postal Service Manual in a format identified as the Transmittal Letter. All revisions and updates were provided in the form of replacement pages, that is, when any content on a page changed, a completely new page was provided. This eliminated the need for the postal clerk to “tip-in” or paste in changes onto pages of the publication.

All six chapters of the Postal Service Manual were released simultaneously on Oct 1, 1970, each as a separate Transmittal Letters. The volume of updates distributed via Transmittal Letters was reduced substantially from that seen with the previous Postal Manual, so that between 1970 and 1978, only a total of 120 Transmittal Letters were distributed for the Postal Service Manual. Another noticeable change was that with the exception of a second release of the full Chapter 5 - Transportation, on 6-25-71, all of the Transmittal Letters were simply revisions and updates.

Even with the fewer number of updates, presentation of these materials had the same difficulties as seen with the Postal Manual. The number of Transmittal Letters again made it impractical to create composite PDF files of each of these chapters for each version or even by year.

When organizing the Transmittal Letters, the decision was made to maintain each full chapter release as a separate PDF file, and then to create a supplementary file which would include all Transmittal Letter updates for that edition up to the next full release of the chapter. Discussions with the USPS Librarian formulated the approach in which these materials are presented.

Before attempting to use these compilations of the Transmittal Letters, the reader is encouraged to examine the descriptions provided in the drawer titled Introduction below.

The digital PDF files for the Postal Service Manual presented here on Stamp Smarter were created using a series of microfilms prepared by the US Postal Service Library, which were prepared from their reference file of publications distributed between 1944 and 1969. These publications, representing some 45 bound volumes, included a complete set of the 120 Transmittal Letters released between 1970 and 1978 for the Postal Service Manual.


History of Post Office
    Publications
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Guide to Using the Digital
    Postal Service Manual
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Postal Service Manual:
    General Transmittal Letters,
    1970-1977
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Postal Service Manual: Table
    of Contents & Consolidated
    Index, Edition of 10-1-70
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Postal Service Orders, 1971-
    1973
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Postal Service Manual:
    Chapter 1, Edition of 10-1-70
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Postal Service Manual:
    Chapter 1, Edition of 10-1-70,
    Updates 1971-1973
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Postal Service Manual:
    Chapter 1, Edition of 10-1-70,
    Updates 1974-1975
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Postal Service Manual:
    Chapter 1, Edition of 10-1-70,
    Updates 1976-1978
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 2, Edition of 10-1-70
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 2, Edition of 10-1-70,
    Updates 1971-1978
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 3, Edition of 10-1-70
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 3, Edition of 10-1-70,
    Updates 1971-1978
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 4, Edition of 10-1-70
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 4, Edition of 10-1-70,
    Updates 1971-1975
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 5, Edition of 10-1-70
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 5, Edition of 6-25-71
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 5, Edition of 6-25-71,
    Updates 1971-1977
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 6, Edition of 10-1-70
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Postal Service Manual,
    Chapter 6, Edition of 10-1-70,
    Updates 1971-1978

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The United States Postal Service Manual, 1944-1978, is used under license and with permission from the United States Postal Service.
All Rights Reserved.