The invention relates to a mail transport cart for use in a postal sorting facility as currently operated by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
The USPS carries out mail sorting operations using automated sorting machines which include DBCS and MLOCR machines. These sorters include a feeder which feeds letters one at a time into a pinch belt conveyor system which transports each mail piece past a scanner or image lift camera that scans one or both faces of the mail piece for destination indicia, i.e. a printed bar code or address which can be read using optical character recognition (OCR). The mail is sorted automatically into pockets of a stacker, which are manually swept by postal workers, the contents being put into trays. The trays are then put onto carts for the next stage of postal processing. The cart currently used for this purpose, known as the 1226, is described further below.
Another commonly used cart in postal facilities for transport of mail in trays is the APC (all purpose container) comprises a pair of barred cages open at the front in which mail trays are stacked, often in an irregular manner. The bottom cage is mounted on wheels. It is approximately six feet high, two feet wide, and three and a half feet long. It weighs over 200 pounds empty and may carry over 800 pounds of mail. The APC has an upper and lower compartment. There is at least one reported case of an injury involving an APC, see, Ronald D. PRIOR, v. UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE, 985 F.2d 440. That accidents can happen is not surprising considering the weight of the unit, its design and the amount of mail it can contain.
The size of the APC also limits or prevents its use sweepside, that is, next to a stacker where human workers are sweeping mail. For this purpose a smaller cart called the 1226 is used. The 1226 is likewise a steel frame, six level cart. The top and bottom shelves are open. The four intermediate levels are each provided with a row of pull out shelves or slides. These take up considerable space, so the number of levels is limited to six total, with six shelves per row, limiting the middle levels of the cart to 24 trays of the plasticEMM type.
While a great variety of carts have been the subject of patents, none are well adapted to take the place of the 1226 in postal sweeping operations and for later transportation and unloading. The present invention addresses this deficiency.
A postal cart according to the invention comprises a base and suitable means mounted on the base for rollingly supporting the base for horizontal movement; (wheels casters or the like). A support frame is mounted on the base extending upwardly therefrom. An upper shelf and a lower shelf are mounted at the top and bottom of the frame and accessible from a front side of the cart. A series of rectangular compartments are likewise accessible from the front side of the cart, each compartment having a rectangular shape configured for storage of one postal tray filled with mail, but insufficiently wide to store more than one such postal tray side by side in the same compartment, the compartments arranged in rows and columns. A number of pull out sliding shelves are mounted along the bottom of no more than about half of the compartments, the remaining compartments being free of the sliding shelves. The compartments are configured to fit one tray in each, and the vertical density of the compartments is greater than would be possible if a sliding shelf were disposed in all of the compartments. “Vertical density” in the context of the present invention means the number of shelves per unit of height, and is greater in the present invention than in the prior art 1226 cart.
The invention further provides a method of sorting mail using an automated postal sorting machine than includes a mail feeder, a pinch belt conveyor that receives singulated mail pieces from the feeder, a scanner that scans address information from the mail pieces transported by the pinch belt conveyor, and a stacker. Such a method includes steps of:
(a) deploying a row of the carts described above sweepside of a stacker in positions that facilitate manual sweeping of mail and placement of mail onto the carts;
(b) extending one of the extendable shelves from a first compartment;
(c) placing a first empty postal tray on the extended shelf;
(d) sweeping mail from a stacker pocket into the tray on the extended shelf;
(e) when the first tray is full, moving the first tray to a second compartment lacking an extendable shelf, which second compartment is associated with the first compartment as containing mail swept from the same stacker pocket;
(f) placing a second empty tray on the extended shelf;
(g) sweeping mail from the stacker pocket into the second tray on the extended shelf; and
(h) pushing in the extended shelf in order to store the second tray containing swept mail in the first compartment.
Such steps are repeated for additional stacker pockets until the cart is full or the sorting pass is completed. Thereafter the cart may be moved away for transport to a delivery unit or for unloading at a feeder, if the mail is to be sorted in a second pass.
A feeder for purposes of the present invention has its art-recognized meaning, namely a mechanism which takes mail pieces from a stack one at a time and feeds them into a pinch belt conveyor system which is part of the sorting machine. Likewise a stacker for purposes of the present invention has its art-recognized meaning, namely a section of a sorting machine that receives a stream of singulated mail pieces moving along a pinch belt conveyor system and diverts such mail pieces to pockets according to sort scheme criteria. It is to be understood that terms used in the present invention should be given their meanings recognized in the postal sorting art, if applicable, not more general definitions found in dictionaries.
In a two pass sort of a kind known in the art, the mail is re-fed into the sorting machine after the first pass for sorting in the second pass. The present invention facilitates keeping groups of mail from sorting pockets together for purposes of later sorting or delivery. These and other aspects of the invention are discussed in the detailed description that follows.
In the accompanying drawings, where like numerals denote like elements and letters denote multiples of a component:
Referring to
A top shelf 26 is available for tray storage above mid-section 20, and a lower shelf 28 (which could be formed by base 12) provides a lower compartment below mid-section 20. The lower compartment preferably has about twice the height (vertical dimension) of the compartments 18 in mid section 20. Compartments 18 may be divided from one another by spaced partitions which are part of the frame 21, but it is generally sufficient to configure them precisely to the dimensions of the postal trays 16 so that the trays 16 fit side by side in a row as shown. When a pullout 22 is present, the tray 16 fits exactly on it.
The number of compartments provided with pull out shelves is no more than half the total number of compartments, and as shown it is preferred that all the compartments 18 in a row 19 either have (19A) or do not have (19B) pull out shelves. It is not essential to alternate rows 19A and 19B, but a dual tier arrangement wherein such rows 19A 19B are easily paired by a human worker is preferred.
In the embodiment shown in
Over-under/dual tier static shelves sized for postal trays visually associate with adjacent or nearby pull-out shelves to facilitate tray sequencing. For example, the compartment 18 in row 19A can be visually associated with the compartment 18 in the same column in a row 19B either two levels above or below. The compartments 18 of the dual tiers can be labeled or color coded so that the operator can see which compartments form a dual tier pair. During pocket sweeping, as the first tray becomes full with mail, it is withdrawn and placed on the assigned static shelf compartment 18 to provide twice the tray buffer of a standard 1226. Empty and overflow trays can be stored in the lower compartment or the top most shelf 26.
When the first tray 16 is filled, it is placed in the associated compartment 18 of a row 19B having a static shelf to keep the first and second trays 16 used for sweeping that pocket associated. The second tray remains in the compartment 18 of row 19A. It can be stored there on the pullout shelf 22 by pushing the shelf 22 in. If a pocket requires more than two trays (overflow), then overflow trays are staged on the bottom shelf 28 in the lower compartment.
At the end of the first pass, filled carts 10 are rolled away and staged by the feeder 38 to begin the second pass. The queue of empty carts 10 in the second row 34 are moved by stackers 33 forming a new first row 32. As carts 10 are emptied by the feeder operator, they are rolled to the empties queue (row 34 along the walk aisle 36). Second pass mail is swept from the pockets into carts 10 in first row 32.
At the end of the second pass, carts 10 can be rolled directly to a dock area, loaded onto trucks and shipped to the postal Delivery Unit (DU). After unloading at the DU, the carts 10 are returned by truck or other transport to the processing center for further use. Since carts 10 taken outdoors may be briefly exposed to the elements, a cover 40 is mounted at the top of frame 21 to be pulled over the otherwise open top shelf 26. Cover 40 can be a loose hood of plastic or canvas, or a lid pivotally or slidingly mounted along the back of frame 21 at the top. If a loose cover is provided, it can take the form of a rectangular sack that can be pulled down over the entire length of cart 10 above wheels 14. Eyelets provided along the edges of four downwardly depending flaps can be used to secure the resulting hood at the four corners of cart 10 with rope or the like.
To perform all of the foregoing functions as successfully as possible in a postal facility, the cart 10 must be configured to fit within the available space.
Although several embodiments of the present invention have been described in the foregoing detailed description and illustrated in the accompanying drawings, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that the invention is not limited to the embodiments disclosed but is capable of numerous rearrangements, substitutions and modifications without departing from the spirit of the invention. Such modifications are within the scope of the invention as expressed in the appended claims.
This application claims priority of U.S. provisional application No. 60/992,181 filed Dec. 4, 2007.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60992181 | Dec 2007 | US |