USPS stands for the United States Postal Service, the country’s backbone for the mail services, including letters and other envelope-sized mail, as well as going up to packages of different sizes and shapes. Your USPS mail gets delivered right to your doorstep all throughout the year. USPS tracking is a way to track packages you’ve either sent through the US Postal Service or are expecting to be delivered to you, be it a purchase or a person-to-person package.

So, what is the information contained on your package’s label, and how does this barcode help you know more about the status of your package? The package’s final destination and the address it is to be delivered to, including the all-important zip code, is the primary information that is available. Alongside this, the USPS uses the barcode to track the package’s movement across cities, which is to say, is trajectory from its starting point (where it was collected from your home by your local mailman and then taken to the local post office to be scanned and sent on its way, or else whichever post office you went in and sent it from), to the different cities and/or states it must travel through before it makes it to the final destination. You can add additional services, some for a fee, to the free tracking that comes with sending a package using the USPS, including return receipt, domestic insurance, collect on delivery, restricted delivery, registered mail, and special handling. Some of the different kinds of services available to send your packages include First Class Package Service, Parcel Select Ground, Priority Mail, and Priority Mail Express, to name some.