FedExpress and other carriers will not deliver to street address on reservations I know. People must pick up their packages at the post office.
Red:
It's not that the carriers
won't deliver to a street address on reservations, it's that when there is no street address for a recipient on a reservation and FedEx/UPS (others) drivers don't know where the building to which the package/letter is supposed to go, they can't get the item delivered to the recipient.
Fictional street addresses are used for some reservation locations, and somehow FedEx and UPS know where certain ones of them, like schools and other institutions, are. Since the drivers/local offices know where the buildings are, they deliver to them.
Since UPS and FedEx will not ship to a P.O. Box address and there are no street names on the reservation, each school and organization has a fictional street address. Those fictional street addresses are accepted by UPS and FedEx since they won’t ship to a post office box and, but the UPS and FedEx drivers on the reservation know where all of the organizations are physically located so all of the boxes get delivered with no problem.
Source
A small shipment, but one with a lot of heart surrounding it. We received a request from Mimi Gallagher in Maple Grove, MN asking for FedEx to help ship blankets to an Indian Reservation in Manderson, SD. Her 12 year old daughter, Rose, had seen a special on the extreme poverty. She rallied her friends to make 170 blankets for a special delivery before the Christmas holiday break for the local school children. Mimi sent a local news link on how the project became a reality. The blankets shipped out of Maple Grove on Friday, December 11th. We were indeed honored to make this special delivery in time for Christmas.
Source
There are, however, limits to what the carriers are willing to deliver on the basis of the driver's personal knowledge of where to deliver the item. That said, if one works somewhere on the reservation that the carriers know and recognize, one can have packages shipped to and from there. If one wants packages delivered to one's private home or apartment building, one may or may not be able to have parcels/letters delivered there. It just depends....
The short: If a private carrier has a way to deliver to an on-reservation location, they'll do so. If they don't know where the location is, they'll deliver to a PO box provided the package is addressed to one.
UPS will only accept shipments to a valid street address. We do not deliver to P.O. Boxes. If a shipper should use a P.O. Box address, the recipient´s telephone number must be included on the label. Your package that is addressed to a P.O. Box may be delayed, will not be covered by any UPS Service Guarantee, and will require an address correction charge. Additionally, Army Post Office (APO) and Fleet Post Office (FPO) addresses are not accepted.
Most FedEx services do not deliver to PO Boxes for addresses in the United States. However, FedEx SmartPost, which uses the USPS system in the last leg of delivery, will deliver to domestic P.O. boxes.
Also, FedEx Express can ship to a P.O. box in some international destinations, including Puerto Rico, but you are required to provide a valid telephone, fax, or telex number.
"Back in the day," FedEx and UPS absolutely did not deliver to PO boxes. That changed when the USPS, FedEx and UPS began collaborating and using each other's planes and trucks in order to get packages/letters delivered more rapidly, particularly during the Christmas season. It turned out that by doing so, they all were able to collect more total fees and generate better customer goodwill than they could by limiting themselves exclusively to their own transportation facilities, networks, planes, trucks, etc.
