TDPortCarrier Vetting
The checks

USPS address validation

Is the carrier’s stated address real and deliverable?

What this checks

The USPS check confirms that the carrier's stated principal address — the one filed with FMCSA on their MCS-150 — is a real, deliverable US address according to the United States Postal Service. It returns the USPS-canonical standardized form of the address, the ZIP+4, and (where USPS exposes it) the address type: residential, business, or PO box.

The check exists because addresses on MCS-150 filings vary in quality. Some are real. Some are typos. Some are mail drops. Some are residential homes belonging to owner-operators whose actual operations happen out of a yard somewhere else. Each of those patterns is informative; the USPS check is the cheapest way to get the data.

Where the data comes from

The USPS Web Tools API. USPS publishes the canonical address-validation service used by nearly every shipping integration in the country. The API is free, requires a one-time key registration, and is effectively unlimited at TDPort's volume.

The workbench calls the API live at vetting time. The response is captured into the result with a USPS-pulled-at timestamp and included in the sealed cert.

What you'll see

  • Validates / doesn't validate. USPS confirms the address is real and deliverable, or returns an error indicating it cannot be matched to a delivery point.
  • Canonical form. The USPS-standardized version of the address: corrected street suffix, city, state, ZIP+4. This is the form a shipper or invoicing system should be using.
  • Address type, where exposed. Residential, business, or PO box. USPS does not always disclose this — when they do, it's a useful tell.
  • Match score against the FMCSA-submitted form. A clean match is uninteresting. A USPS canonical form that differs substantially from the FMCSA filing (different ZIP, different street) is worth a second look — typically a typo or stale filing, occasionally an indicator the carrier is operating from a different location than they claim.

Statuses:

  • Clean — address validates, the canonical form is consistent with the FMCSA filing.
  • Flag — address validates but the canonical form differs enough that human review is warranted, or USPS reports it as a PO box or residential when business operations are expected.
  • Alert — USPS could not validate the address as deliverable.

What this does NOT tell you

  • It does not identify what business operates at the address. USPS validates the address as a delivery point, not the occupant.
  • It does not flag commercial mail-receiving agencies (CMRAs) as such. USPS knows which addresses are CMRAs but does not expose that signal through Web Tools. A CMRA address will validate cleanly. A future check (Maps / physical verification) is the path to surfacing mail-drop chains.
  • It does not verify any specific person receives mail at the address. The USPS API has no person-level component for validation.
  • It does not check whether the address is consistent with the carrier's operations. A 200-truck carrier with a residential USPS address is a flag a human should look at; the check surfaces the residential designation but doesn't draw the conclusion.
  • It does not verify that the address is currently the carrier's address. USPS only confirms it is a valid delivery point. If the carrier moved and never updated MCS-150, USPS will happily validate an address they haven't used in two years.

What to do with the result

Things people commonly weigh:

  • An address that won't validate is unusual. Real businesses almost always have addresses USPS knows about. A non-validating address usually means a typo on the MCS-150 — but it occasionally means the carrier is operating from somewhere USPS doesn't deliver to, which is itself informative.
  • A residential address on a multi-truck carrier may be normal for a small owner-operator running out of a home office. It is less normal for a carrier with twenty power units.
  • A PO box principal address is allowed by FMCSA but means the carrier has no public physical-address-of-record. For broker risk-management, that's a known pattern.
  • A USPS canonical form that materially differs from the FMCSA filing is often an old MCS-150. Worth checking the MCS-150 filing date in the FMCSA result.

USPS is the gate that lets the more expensive geographic checks (Module 3, currently on hold) avoid burning quota on bad addresses. It's a deliberately cheap first cut.

References