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Shipping internationally from the United States

Letter-size printing, customs forms, APO/FPO, and addressing for outbound US parcels.

By Alex Carter Published

Most shipping advice is written for people receiving parcels in the United States. This is for the other direction: a US seller putting a parcel on a plane.

Almost every shipping label template online is sized for A4, which is 210 × 297 mm. US printers hold Letter, which is 216 × 279 mm. It is 6 mm wider and 18 mm shorter, and that second number is the one that causes trouble.

Two A6 labels stacked are 296 mm tall. That fits inside A4’s 297 mm with a millimetre to spare, and does not fit Letter’s 279 mm. Print an A4 four-up sheet on Letter and the bottom row runs off the page, usually without any warning.

If you are printing on plain paper and taping labels to boxes, use a layout that knows which sheet you are holding. Two 4 × 6 labels fit a Letter sheet comfortably; four A6 labels do not.

For volume, a 4 × 6 inch thermal printer is the standard and costs less than a year of wasted paper.

When you need a customs form

Any parcel leaving the United States needs a customs declaration. The only question is which one.

Below roughly 300 SDR in value, that is a CN22, small enough to sit on the label itself. Above that, a CN23 on its own sheet. SDR is an international unit worth somewhere near $330, though it moves.

The declaration is not optional and it is not a formality. See the CN22 guide for what goes in each box and the three entries that get parcels opened.

APO, FPO and DPO addresses

This is the US-specific case worth knowing, because everything about it looks domestic and none of it is.

Military and diplomatic addresses carry ordinary US ZIP codes. Software reads them as domestic parcels, which means no customs form, which means the parcel is refused. USPS requires a declaration on every APO, FPO and DPO parcel regardless of weight or value.

The address itself has rules of its own:

  • APO, FPO or DPO goes in the city field. Not the name of the base, not the town it sits near.
  • The state is AE for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, AP for the Pacific, AA for the Americas.
  • Never write the foreign city or country. Adding “Baghdad, Iraq” or “Ramstein, Germany” pushes the parcel out of the military postal system and into a foreign network, where it is slow at best and lost at worst.
  • Only USPS serves these addresses. UPS and FedEx cannot deliver to them.

A correct one looks like this:

SSGT JANE DOE
PSC 3 BOX 4120
APO AE 09021

No country line. That is not an omission.

Writing the destination address

Two things change the moment a parcel leaves the country.

The destination country goes on the last line, in English capitals. Not the local-language name. GERMANY, not Deutschland. This is a Universal Postal Union convention and it exists so the exporting post office can sort the parcel without reading the destination’s script.

Everything above that line should be in the destination’s format, not the US one. The US puts the city, state and ZIP on one line in that order. Most of Europe puts the postal code before the city. Japan reverses the whole order when written in Japanese. Getting this wrong rarely stops a parcel outright, but it slows it at the delivery end, where a local sorter has to work out what you meant.

A few that differ most from US habits:

  • Germany: house number after the street name, no comma between postal code and city.
  • United Kingdom: postcode alone on the final line, in capitals, with a space in the middle.
  • Netherlands: the two letters are part of the postcode: 1012 AB, never 1012AB.
  • Japan: seven-digit code as 104-0061, and in Latin script the address runs smallest unit to largest.

Include a phone number

US domestic delivery rarely needs one. International delivery often does, particularly for couriers in countries where addresses are less precise or where customs may need to reach the recipient. It costs nothing and prevents a return.

What this site does and does not do

Labelbench prints the address and handling label, formats the address the way the destination expects, and adds the customs block when the route needs one.

It does not buy postage or issue a tracking number. Only a carrier can do that, against an account held with them. The intended workflow is to print this label, tape it to the parcel, and add the carrier’s own label beside it when you drop it off.

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