How to distinguish UPS Mail Innovations from USPS tracking number

Question

I'm struggling to identify the shipping carrier by the tracking number provided, if this is a UPS Mail Innovations number. I"m writing a small C# library to complete this task and the best resource I've ever found is a Ruby based one called tracking_number , but it does not handle UPS MI. It gets decoded as USPS according all possible validations I've tried. For example, the tracking number "92748999955488513006484872" is decoded as USPS, while it is UPS MI number (it could be tracked via UPS MI site www.ups-mi.net ).

QUESTION: What are the rules to distinguish UPS Mail Innovations from USPS tracking number?

Answer 1

Background

UPS Mail Innovations uses several different types of tracking numbers .

The longer number above is indeed a US Postal Service (USPS) "Intelligent Mail® Package Barcode" (IMpb) number. (In this case, it is 26 digits long, but there are other valid lengths.)

The prefix 92 identifies it (for most practical purposes) as a postal tracking number. (`92' is the GS1 Application Identifier for " Company internal information "; when used in tracking numbers/barcodes, USPS refers^ to this as a "Channel Application Identifier".)

As of 2021, the Service Type Code /STC (not to be confused with a Service Type ID /STID - those are used for letter mail only) of 748 in your tracking number would indicate "Parcel Select Lightweight: USPS Tracking".

Possible solutions

To answer the question, you might try one of two things to identify this type of mailing. (You should of course prepare to deal with both false positives and false negatives.)

1. Identify the 6 or 9-digit Mailer ID(s) used by the mailer (this should be visible in your data after a small number of shipments) ; in this case the mailer ID for UPS Mail Innovations (UPS MI) may be 999955 488 .
2. Query both the UPS and USPS tracking APIs and compare the results. If the package has shipped but USPS shows no tracking events, it may be a UPS MI package that has yet to be delivered to the destination sorting facility or post office.

A package delivered by UPS MI should normally be delivered to the customer as part of their normal daily mail delivery by a postal carrier, but in extreme circumstances (for example, if the local post office is backlogged and is not accepting package dropoffs -- this happened in early 2021) a UPS employee may make the final customer delivery.

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Notes:

Note: A barcode encoding this tracking number will have extra digits. It will start with the GS1 AI of 420 , which USPS calls the "Postal Routing Code Application Identifier", followed by a 5 or 9 digit ZIP postal code. (See the specification for further details.)

^ Per the IMpb Implementation Guide , section 2.5.1.1:

Valid Channel Application Identifiers are “91”, “92”, “93”, “94”, and “95”

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Analysis of example provided in original question:

Example tracking number:  92748999955488513006484872
                         |                          |
                         0         1         2     2|
              26 digits: 012345678901234567890123456|

Breakdown of data structure in example tracking number:

R-AI*  ZIP Code*   |  AI  STC   MailerID     Serial        Check digit
---    ----- ----  |  --  ---   ------ ---   -----------   -
420    nnnnn-nnnn  |  92  748   999955 488   51300648487   2

| ----- * ----- |
        * Suppressed in printed tracking number; 
         (only present encoded in barcode data)

Fields:
       R-AI = Postal Routing Code Application Identifier
   ZIP Code = 5-digit or 9-digit postal code of destination (or next hop)
        STC = Service Type Code
         AI = Channel Application Identifier
  Mailer ID = 6 or 9 digit mailer ID (assigned by USPS)
     Serial = this must be unique for at least 6 months for each mailer
Check digit = Mod10 check digit

Answer 2

According to United Parcel Service (UPS) customer support, UPS Mail Innovation tracking numbers are the same format as USPS tracking number and they can't be distinguished. Once the package arrives to USPS it could be tracked there.