IT’S NOT ONLY THE PRICE OF PAPER MAILERS HAVE TO CONSIDER WHEN SELECTING A STOCK’S WEIGHT; they also need to make sure the printed piece won’t weigh more than 3.3 oz. so it qualifies as a Standard Mail flat.
Gifts cataloger Ross-Simons’ letter-size books are mailed under 3 oz., which necessitated that “we sacrifice paper weight in order to get maximum pages per piece mailed,” says vice president of marketing Larry Davis. The mailer currently uses 36-lb. paper for the catalog body pages and a 50-lb. to 60-lb. stock for the cover.
Standard Mail that weighs 3.3 oz. or less is charged only a per-piece rate by the U.S. Postal Service, while Standard Mail pieces weighing more than 3.3 oz. are charged a per-piece and per-pound rate.
If the Postal Service relaxed the 3.3 oz. weight limit for Standard Mail, what would Ross-Simons do? “We would absolutely go back to a higher weight of paper if the USPS would relax the weight restrictions, without a parallel increase in postage costs,” Davis says.