Mail Clerk Position: The Key to Other Postal Positions

Grade: L-5

Salary Range: $29,496 - $41,224.00

Persons Eligible to Apply: Open to the general public

Examination Requirement: Must pass the 473 Battery Test

A mail clerk may be the jack-of-all-trades position in the U.S. Postal Service. If you score high on the 473 Battery Test and land a job with the Postal Service, you can become a manual distribution clerk.

When you have already seniority in the job, you may bid for other postal positions, such as window clerks, accounting clerks, and other positions. But generally, when you are hired by the U.S. Postal Service as a result of your 473 Battery Test exam, you’ll be known as a distribution clerk (Manual). Or you can become a mail carrier or letter carrier or a letter sorting machine operator also known as a distributon clerk, machine.

As a distribution clerk, you’ll work indoors and will handle sacks of mail weighing as heavy as 70 pounds. You’ll sort mail and distribute it by using a complicated scheme, which must be memorized. (See How to Score 95-100% on Scheme Tests.) You’ll place letters or flats (magazines and pieces of mail in big envelopes into the correct boxes or pigeonholes. If you make a mistake in reading addresses or numbers, the letter will go to the wrong box, thus causing a delay in delivery. Letters from different boxes in a “case” go to different carriers, who will distribute the mail door to door.

As a distribution clerk, you’ll also dump sacks of mail onto conveyors for culling and sorting; you’ll load and unload sacks and trays of mail on and off mail transporters, such as APCs (All-Purpose Containers) and BMCs (Bulk Mail Containers). As a clerk, you may also be assigned to a public counter or window, doing such jobs as selling stamps and weighing parcels, and you’ll be personally responsible for all money and stamps.

How Not to Unload Parcels

A friend of mine who works in a post office has told me this story:

While he was a flexible employee at the post office in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, he was assigned to unload parcels from a BMC. He had to work fast because there were several BMCs to be unloaded. While he was unloading a big parcel, the bottom of it suddenly gave way, and hundreds of nuts poured onto the floor! He was embarrassed and had a hard time picking up the nuts, and some of the other employees helped him. Then, on one side of the carton that had contained the nuts, my red-faced friend read a note: Glass—please handle with care.

As a distribution clerk, you will be responsible for sorting letters. You put letters of flats (magazines and pieces of mail in big envelopes) into the correct boxes or pigeonholes.

To Other Positions

From the distribution clerk position, you can also transfer to an accounting technician position, if you love working with figures, or to any other available position in the Postal Service. Some positions may require you to pass an “in-service” examinations or training; others do not. For instance, if you’re a letter sorting machine (LSM) operator and are already tired of hitting machine keys, you can move to a manual distribution clerk position. As a distribution clerk or any other kind of mail clerk, you can move from one job to another (moving forward, not backward, of course) by submitting a bid and winning the job on the basis of your seniority, education, and other qualifications.