Electronic Indicators for the Mailing of Hazardous and Perishable Materials
| Published date | 06 August 2020 |
| Citation | 85 FR 47720 |
| Record Number | 2020-15773 |
| Section | Proposed rules |
| Court | Postal Service |
Federal Register, Volume 85 Issue 152 (Thursday, August 6, 2020)
[Federal Register Volume 85, Number 152 (Thursday, August 6, 2020)]
[Proposed Rules]
[Pages 47720-47723]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2020-15773]
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POSTAL SERVICE
39 CFR Part 113
Electronic Indicators for the Mailing of Hazardous and Perishable
Materials
AGENCY: Postal ServiceTM.
ACTION: Proposed revision for special standards; request for comment.
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SUMMARY: The Postal Service proposes to amend the Publication 52,
Hazardous, Restricted, and Perishable Mail (PUB 52) to provide unique
electronic indicators and to standardize the Extra Services options for
shipments of hazardous materials and perishable items.
DATES: Submit comments on or before September 8, 2020.
ADDRESSES: Mail or deliver written comments to the Manager, 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
[email protected], with a subject line of ``Electronic
Indicators''. Faxed comments will not be 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[supreg] Headquarters Library, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, 11th
Floor North, Washington, DC 20260. These records are available for
review Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., by calling 202-268-
2906.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mary Collins at (202) 251-2291, Kevin
Gunther at (202) 268-7208 or Dale Kennedy (202) 268-6592.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Postal Service is proposing to amend PUB
52 with the provisions below and, once adopted, will incorporate the
revised PUB 52 by reference into part 113, as well as make necessary
edits to the Domestic Mail Manual. You may view the text of the
proposed edits to PUB 52 at: https://pe.usps.com/.
1. Require Electronic Verification System (eVS) and ePostage
mailers to transmit a Shipping Services File (SSF) to the Postal
Service before, or concurrent with the tendering of hazardous materials
shipments.
2. Specify three unique Service Type Codes (STC), each to
correspond to hazardous materials outbound shipments via Priority
Mail[supreg], First-Class Package Service[supreg], Parcel
Select[supreg], Parcel Select Lightweight[supreg], and USPS Retail
Ground[supreg].
3. Specify that insurance will be the only Extra Service available
with shipments of hazardous materials. The Postal Service intends to
provide a unique STC for each product without an Extra Service (which
would include basic USPS tracking provided as a built-in feature of
these products), purchases of insurance less than or equal to $500, and
purchases of insurance over $500.
4. Specify four unique STCs for Priority Mail Express[supreg]
shipments to identify those shipments where the mailer is requesting a
waived signature, requiring a signature, purchasing insurance less than
or equal to $500, or purchasing insurance over $500.
5. Specify three unique STCs to correspond with hazardous materials
return services via Parcel Return Service (PRS) Full Network,
traditional PRS, Priority Mail Return Service[supreg], First-Class
Package Return Service[supreg], and Ground Return Service[supreg],
where each
[[Page 47721]]
STC will correspond to the product and any of the Extra Service options
described above for outbound shipments. The Postal Service also
proposes to specify unique STCs to explicitly identify Division 6.2,
Infectious Substances returned through Postal Service Networks using
each of these return services.
6. Provide unique Extra Service Codes (ESC) intended to identify
categories of hazardous materials with specific relevance to
segregation, handling and identification in Postal Service networks.
7. Specify unique STCs and ESCs to identify and categorize
shipments of live bees, and day-old poultry to include Extra Services
or additional fees for these content types.
8. Provide for the optional use of hazardous and perishable
materials electronic indicators before the end of the 2020 calendar
year and to require their use at a later date.
Overview
Due to the rapid expansion of eCommerce, the United States Postal
Service[supreg] has encountered a significant increase in the number of
hazardous material shipments going through the mail. Materials such as
lithium batteries, flammable gases, non-flammable compressed gases, and
corrosive cleaning solutions that were typically purchased through
brick and mortar establishments are now routinely being purchased
online and shipped to their destination. Additionally, with the
outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, there is a new
emphasis on the transportation of infectious substances. This increase
in hazardous material volume has brought with it a proportional
increase in instances of improper labelling and packaging, use of
ineligible shipping services, and an increase in safety related
incidents in Postal Service facilities. These incidents have placed our
employees, customers, and business partners in higher risks and
resulted in millions of dollars in losses.
The Postal Service heavily relies on commercial cargo and passenger
aircraft to transport mail in circumstances where the use of ground
transportation is insufficient to meet its service standards or are
otherwise operationally or financially impracticable. With regard to
the transportation of hazardous materials, these commercial air
carriers are subject to regulation by the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA), and the International Civil Aviation Organization
(ICAO).
In accordance with FAA regulations, commercial air carriers are
required to develop and maintain a Safety Management System (SMS). In
applying the safety risk management concept of their SMS, air carriers
conduct a systemic analysis to identify hazards and then develop and
maintain processes to analyze the safety risks associated with the
hazards identified. This process requires air carriers to acquire data
with respect to its operations, products, and services to monitor the
safety performance of their operations and conduct and update their
risk assessments. The Postal Service tenders mail, including packages
containing both non-hazardous and hazardous materials to its contracted
air carriers in sacks. Due to the ``sacking'' of hazardous materials
from the Postal Service, air carriers are often unaware of the specific
hazardous materials they are accepting and transporting. Subsequently,
without this information, air carriers are unable to accurately define
and address the risks associated with the mail.
Proposal
To enhance its ability to make knowledgeable decisions regarding
the handling and disposition of hazardous materials shipments in its
networks and better leverage the use of its mechanized and automated
systems to properly segregate and tender these items, the Postal
Service proposes to require mailers to identify and categorize their
hazardous materials shipments through the use of specified electronic
indicators.
The Postal Service expects to use these indicators to provide
details on the categories, volume and weight of the hazardous materials
contained in packages tendered to its contracted transportation
providers, and handle these packages in a safe and operationally
efficient manner.
The Postal Service has enhanced its operational capability to
provide piece-level tracking and visibility through the use of
Intelligent Mail Package Barcodes (IMpb[supreg]). These barcodes are
able to be scanned by automated processing equipment and Intelligent
Mail scanning devices. Today, mailers are required to encode certain
information into the barcode structure of the IMpb through the use of
STCs and to encode additional information into a USPS-Approved SSF
through the use of ESCs. As part of its package strategy, mailers
tendering packages to the Postal Service are currently required to
accurately encode their IMpb barcodes for each package and to supply a
complete SSF concurrent with entering their packages into Postal
Service Networks.
Restriction of Extra Services
The Postal Service proposes to restrict the Extra Service options
available for shipments of regulated hazardous materials to include
only insurance over and under $500 for most mail classes or products,
and insurance over and under $500 in addition to waiver of signature
for Priority Mail Express. The Postal Service is proposing this
restriction in order to reduce the complexity for mailers complying
with the new requirements, and to limit the number of STCs needed to
identify hazardous materials in the Postal Service systems. The Postal
Service has a fairly large number of ESCs available for use for the
purposes of these new requirements, but is very limited in the
availability of STCs. This limitation in the number of available STCs
is a primary concern in the proposed restriction for Extra Services
available for use with hazardous materials shipments. The Postal
Service expects the demand for the variety of Extra Services covered
under this proposed restriction to be low enough for shippers of
hazardous materials to generally be of minor concern.
eVS and ePostage Users
The generation of the flight-specific air carrier manifests and the
other operational enhancements proposed in this Federal Register Notice
will be possible only when the information is included in a mailer's
SSF, and is made available to all Postal Service systems in a timely
fashion. It is for this reason that the Postal Service is proposing to
require all impacted mailers to transmit an approved SSF before, or
concurrent with, the physical tendering of regulated hazardous
materials shipments to the Postal Service regardless of the postage
payment method used. In addition to the other postage payment methods,
this requirement would extend to mailers using electronic verification
system (eVS).
Postal Meter and Legacy Barcode Users
To ensure electronic information for all hazardous materials
shipments are available and concurrent with their induction into its
networks, the Postal Service proposes to restrict shipments of
hazardous materials from mailers using postage meters not capable of
electronically transmitting transactional data to the Postal Service,
and any other mailers who may still be using legacy package barcodes.
These mailers are urged to transition to newer systems or to bring
their hazardous materials to a Postal Service retail unit for
induction.
[[Page 47722]]
Service Type Codes and Extra Service Codes for Hazardous Materials
The Postal Service proposes to specify three unique STCs, each to
correspond to hazardous materials outbound shipments via Priority Mail,
First-Class Package Service, Parcel Select, Parcel Select Lightweight,
and USPS Retail Ground, and to provide a unique STC for each product
without an Extra Service, requests for insurance less than or equal to
$500, and requests for insurance over $500. The Postal Service also
proposes to specify three unique STCs to correspond to hazardous
materials return services shipments via the Parcel Return Service (PRS)
Full Network, traditional PRS, Priority Mail Return Service, First-
Class Package Return Service, and Ground Return Service, where each STC
will correspond to the Extra Service options described above for
outbound shipments, and to specify unique STCs to explicitly identify
Division 6.2, Infectious Substances returned through Postal Service
Networks using each of these return services. The Postal Service
proposes unique STCs to identify Division 6.2 Infectious Substances
because it believes this category of material is the most commonly
shipped hazardous material in Postal Service Networks via a return
service and the additional visibility into these shipments is
beneficial to Postal Operations.
The Postal Service proposes to provide unique ESCs to identify
specified categories of hazardous materials with specific relevance to
segregation, handling and identification in Postal Service networks.
The Postal Service plans to specify approximately 20 ESCs, each to
identify a category of hazardous material that is associated with
specific quantity restrictions, packaging and markings requirements,
and for some ESCs, restrictions in air transportation. Included among
the proposed categories to be assigned with a specific ESC, and
intended for air transportation are:
ID8000 Consumer Commodity
Air-eligible Ethanol
Excepted Quantity
Division 5.1 Oxidizer
Division 5.2 Organic Peroxide
Division 6.1 Packaging Instruction 6B Toxic Material
Class 8 Corrosive
Class 8 Nonspillable battery
Class 9 Dry Ice
Class 9 Magnetized Material
Class 9 Lithium Battery (marked)
Class 9 Lithium Battery (unmarked)
The Postal Service has also specified proposed ESCs to correspond
with categories of hazardous materials shipments intended for ground
transportation, but will not specifically list them in this notice.
The Postal Service expects to have these STCs and ESCs available
for optional use by mailers before the end of the 2020 calendar year.
The Postal Service will work with the mailing industry to determine
when the majority of mailers will be able to prepare their systems for
the new requirements, and will announce a mandatory use date later this
year.
STCs and ESCs for Perishable Materials Specifically Live Animals
In addition to the electronic indicators specific to hazardous
materials, the Postal Service is also proposing new STCs and ESCs
applicable to shipments of live animals. These indicators are intended
to identify and categorize mailable live animal shipments, and provide
necessary package-level details for perishable materials shipments when
they include special pricing assessments. These required indicators
will be leveraged within the new Package Platform initiative, enabling
Postal Service permit systems to identify the shipments, and to ensure
proper and accurate automated postage assessments and payment. These
perishable materials indicators will specify additional charges
applicable to live animals, such as the live animal transportation fee
charged by airlines when specific types of live animals are shipped via
air transportation, or Special Handling-Fragile fees when required by
standards or when optionally requested by the mailer. Once fully
implemented, use of these STCs and ESCs will be required for all
mailings of live animals under the categories specified.
International Shipments
Most international packages do not include an IMpb, and will not
have a STC associated with the package. However, during the postage
payment process for most international packages, a SSF is generated and
transmitted to the Postal Service. The Postal Service proposes to
require mailers to include the hazardous materials ESCs applicable to
the category of material being shipped. In accordance with Mailing
Standards of the United States Postal Service, International Mail
Manual (IMM[supreg]) part 135, only four categories of hazardous
materials are permitted in international mail. Hazardous materials
permitted in international mail are restricted to:
Division 6.2, Infectious Substances (permitted only by
authorization from Product Classification, USPS[supreg] Headquarters)
Class 7, Radioactive Materials
Class 9, Magnetic Materials
Class 9,Lithium Batteries installed in equipment (unmarked)
The Postal Service expects to provide access to the STCs applicable
to these hazardous materials categories for use with international
mail.
Systems Enhancements
To provide greater visibility into the quantities, weights, and
categories of hazardous materials being tendered to its contracted air
carriers, the Postal Service plans to provide an electronic and
hardcopy (if needed) manifest to the pilot of each flight carrying
hazardous materials in the mail. The Postal Service expects to supply
this manifest, similar to a commercial air waybill, prior to physically
tendering the mail to the air carrier. The manifest will supply the
details on the categories of hazardous materials offered for
transportation on each flight. The information will be provided from
the electronic indicators supplied by mailers under these proposed
requirements, and will be detailed under each of the hazardous
materials categories specified for air transportation as previously
specified in the notice. The Postal Service believes these detailed
manifests will result in greater confidence in the safety of the pilot,
crew, and the public traveling on passenger aircraft that also carry
mail. The manifests will also supply hazardous materials content
information sufficient to enable air carriers to better analyze their
safety risks associated with the mail in the development of their SMS.
These electronic indicators will also provide the ability of Postal
Operations to identify packages containing hazardous materials and the
categories under which they fall. This additional information will
allow the separation or consolidation of hazardous materials packages
as necessary to meet operational requirements and allow Operations to
affix the applicable markings when necessary to the container. If this
proposal is adopted, Postal Operations will review its systems and
processes and will investigate the feasibility of adopting enhancements
using the hazardous materials data provided by these proposed
requirements.
If this proposal is adopted, the revisions to postage payment
platforms may enable the Postal Service to build in safeguards to
notify its mailers when they attempt to combine a product that
[[Page 47723]]
is incompatible with the selected category of hazardous material. For
example, the Postal Service may be able to warn (or lock out) a mailer
during the postage payment process, when the mailer attempts to combine
an air-eligible product (e.g., First-Class Package Service or Priority
Mail) with a category of hazardous material restricted to ground
transportation only (e.g. limited quantity ground material or flammable
solid). If this proposal is adopted, the Postal Service plans to review
its systems to determine if such an enhancement is possible and
practical.
Enforcement
If this proposal is adopted, the United States Postal Inspection
Service[supreg] (USPIS[supreg]) expects universal compliance by mailers
following a reasonable period of time to communicate the new
requirements to mailers and postage payment providers, and for them to
make the necessary changes to their systems. Following the
implementation period, the USPIS intends to enforce these new
requirements using its civil penalty authority under 39 U.S.C. 3018.
Brittany Johnson,
Attorney, Federal Compliance.
[FR Doc. 2020-15773 Filed 8-5-20; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE P
