Package tracking
process of localizing shipping containers, mail and parcel post at different points of time
Package tracking or package logging is the process of localizing shipping containers, mail and parcel post at different points of time during sorting, warehousing, and package delivery to verify their provenance and to predict and aid delivery.
Package tracking developed historically because it provided customers information about the route of a package and the anticipated date and time of delivery. This was important because mail delivery often included multiple carriers in varying environmental circumstances, which made it possible for a mail to get lost.
Identification
Mail tracking is made possible through certified mail and registered mail, additional postal services that require the identity of a piece of mail to be recorded during various points of delivery, so that the sender can obtain a proof of delivery and the receiver can predict the time of delivery.
The service is provided for an additional charge but recently free service has been introduced as the cost of the associated technology has been decreasing.
Initially, a piece of mail was identified by the sending date and the addresses of the sender and the recipient; later tracking numbers came to be used for identification. Traceability has been improved even further by barcoding: by non-specific 1D linear barcodes and 2D matrix barcodes and specialized augmented postal codes such as Postal Alpha Numeric Encoding Technique (PLANET), Postal Numeric Encoding Technique (POSTNET) and Intelligent Mail barcode, and other electronic product codes (EPC-s).
Methods
To identify the location of the mail, two methods have been used. One approach involves reporting the arrival or departure of the package and recording the identity of the package, the location, the time, and the status. This approach has been used for package tracking provided by the delivery companies, such as Deutsche Post, United Parcel Service, AirRoad, or FedEx.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Package tracking” as process of localizing shipping containers, mail and parcel post at different points of time. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as process of localizing shipping containers, mail and parcel post at different points of time. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7122894. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Package tracking” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.