Frequently Asked Questions

1. Online at www.publicsurplus.com.
2. At our garage sales held the second Friday morning of each month.
3. At our annual vehicle and equipment auction, usually held in September.

• State agencies: Once interunit payment is received, we will send the title to your agency.
• Montana residents: Once payment is received and title work information has been provided, we will send the title to your county courthouse motor vehicle department.
• Out-of-State residents: Once payment is received and title work information has been provided, we will send your title to the address you provide. Temporary registration permits (40 days) are available for titled items.

We provide preflight, print, finishing, mail (incoming, outgoing and interagency) and scanning services.

State Print & Mail determines whether to produce jobs internally or procure commercially based on many factors including complexity, delivery and cost. We print and mail as much as we can in-house, but typically utilize vendors to print signs, banners, large print runs and on specialty substrates.

Please talk to us early on. We can help you set up a brand new project or answer questions you have about an existing project. We can advise about areas where you can reduce costs, recommended paper types/sizes and how to adjust your project to print more efficiently.

Artwork Files:

• Convert/export to PDF
• Include bleed (0.125")
• High resolution (300 dpi)
• Single pages not spreads
• Package design files

Address Files:

• Delimtted data (.csv, .xls, .xlsx., .txt)
• Please do not send pre-merged files unless they have first been reviewed by preflight and/or automation to ensure they are configured correctly.

Yes, we provide a proof with every job, unless otherwise requested. We can provide a digital (via email) and/or a hard-copy proof depending on the complexity and timeline of your project.

It is your responsibility to review your proof thoroughly. Proofs are furnished to you for two reasons: (1) to review for typographical, spelling and grammatical errors or mistakes in layout and (2) to ensure your publication complies with copyright and other applicable intellectual property laws. If the publication needs to be seen by more than one person in a department, it is the responsibility of the person requesting the publication to route the proof to the appropriate people. If an error is missed during the proofing process that should have been caught within the department requesting the publication and a publication must be reprinted, the department that requested the publication will be responsible for the cost of reprinting and any other related costs.

Per 18-7-306, MCA, cost disclosures are required to be printed on all publicly distributed printed materials, excluding personalized items such as business cards, letterheads, envelopes, etc.

Cost disclosures must be printed on the exterior cover, the same size type as the body copy of the publication and boxed in a one-point rule. It is a requirement, so if you check “no” on the order form and choose to not print it, you are taking the risk upon your department.

____ copies of this public document were published at an estimated cost of $______ per copy, for a total cost of $______, which includes $_____ for printing and $_____ for distribution.

This document was produced by ____ department and was printed at state expense. Information on the cost of this publication can be obtained by contacting ____ name, phone, email, address.

An ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) statement is a disclosure stating how and where to locate alternative, accessible formats on printed materials. Typically an additional PDF, HTML, Word, Text or RTF file is available that can be accessed by everyone, regardless of physical abilities. ADA statements are required under both the employment and public access provisions for documents intended for the public use and may be enforced per agency.

Examples of ADA statements:

• Alternative accessible formats of this document will be provided upon request. Please contact ____ name, phone, email, address, to request this document in a different format.
• The ____ office/department/bureau is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If a disability-related accommodation, an alternate format of a document is needed, or if there are questions concerning accommodations, please contact ____ name, phone, email, address.
• The ____ office/department/bureau is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities upon request. You may contact ____ at (phone number, address, email) to request an alternate, accessible format of this document.
• If you are a person with a disability and require an alternate, accessible format of this document, please contact (phone number, address, email).

• * Automated mail processing machines read addresses on mailpieces from the bottom up and will first look for a city, state, and ZIP code. Then the machines look for a delivery address. If the machines can’t find either line, then your mailpiece could be delayed or misrouted. Any information below the delivery address line (a logo, a slogan, or an attention line) could confuse the machines and misdirect your mail.
• * Always put the attention line on top -- never below the city and state or in the bottom corner of your mailpiece.
• * If you can’t fit the suite or apartment number on the same line as the delivery address, put it on the line ABOVE the delivery address, NOT on the line below.
• * Words like “east” and “west” are called directionals and they are VERY important. A missing or a bad directional can prevent your mail from being delivered correctly.
• * Abbreviate directionals to N, S, E, W, NE, NW, SE, SW.
• * If you have long address fields, you can use abbreviations to shorten words like APARTMENT to APT. Please follow the USPS abbreviation guide.
• * When a First-Class Mail letter is square, rigid or meets one or more of the nonmachinable characteristics it will be subject to a nonmachinable surcharge.
• * Fancy type fonts such as those used on wedding invitations do not read well on mail processing equipment. Fancy fonts look great on your envelopes, but also may slow down your mail.
• * Almost 25% of all mail pieces have something wrong with the address -- for instance, a missing apartment number or a wrong ZIP code. Can some of those mailpieces get delivered, in spite of the incorrect address? Yes. But it costs the Postal Service time and money to do that.
  • Maximum 5 lines per address
  • Maximum 35 characters per line
  • Maximum 2 address lines
  • Minimum 10 pt universal font
  • All capital letters
  • No punctuation
  • Left justified
  • One space between city and state
  • Two spaces between state and ZIP Code
  • Address and the postage must be on the same side of mailpiece
  • Address should be parallel to the longest side
  • Black ink on white or light paper (no reverse type - white printing on a black background)

For all mailings your excel file will be reduced down to plain data in the format of a .csv. Then we check to make sure the headers and columns match up correctly. For example if the city, state and zip code are all in the same cell, we break each category out into it’s own column. We also convert all address related fields to all caps and remove any unnecessary punctuation. All apartments, suites, buildings, trailers, etc. are combined with the main address if they are in a separate column. The final part is to check for character count and abbreviate as needed. These steps are completed unless specifically requested to leave the files as is for legal reasons.

In order to give you a discounted postage rate, we use a program called Satori to verify addresses and presort mailings. We use this software for all address merges over 1000 (unless otherwise requested) and by request for smaller mailings (minimum of 100.) Satori does a more in depth clean up using the USPS based CASS (Coding Accuracy Support System) to standardize and correct abbreviations, spelling and city names, as well as add the ZIP+4 code. The program also checks against the NCOA (National Change of Address) database for people and businesses that have moved and updates the address file with their new address. You can also, by request only, have your address file deduplicated.

Based on weight and thickness, Satori generates postage rates, barcodes and a presort report for the USPS for a more efficient mailing Another service we offer through Satori is a deliverability report. We can send you quantities and exports of the “good” deliverable and “bad” undeliverable addresses you have in your mailing. This can be a huge cost saver for postage. Instead of paying for postage on addresses that more than likely will not get delivered to, we can generate reports with error codes and explanations of undeliverability. Included in the deliverable report are the “move updates” or the people who have filed an change of address with the USPS. You can use these reports to update your database/records.

Inkjet jobs are a little bit different in that we don’t need to generate a barcode, but we can still run your addresses through Satori if you want cleaner addresses for a better deliverability rate. The discount on inkjetted jobs is applied via the NetSort, where each address is read by multiple scanners and then sorted by zip code prior to delivery to the post office.