At boot camp, the honest advice is to send a letter and nothing else. A deployment is the opposite. Packages are welcome, your service member has somewhere to put things, and a box from home is one of the few pieces of normal life that reaches them.
The rules are different too, and they are stricter than most families expect. A package to an APO or FPO address leaves the United States, which means a customs declaration, a short list of things that are illegal to mail at all, and a longer list that depends on the country your service member is sitting in.
Here is how to get a box there without it being opened, delayed or thrown away.
Where this comes from: the Department of Defense's Military OneSource guidance on sending a care package, three Postal Service rules as published in the Federal Register, and 18 U.S.C. 1716, the federal nonmailable matter statute. The Postal Service's own site carries the holiday send-by dates and the restriction list for each destination ZIP code, and those two things change every year, so we point you to them rather than printing a number that may be stale by the time you read this.
The Short Answer
Send shelf-stable food, toiletries, socks, entertainment and photos, packed in a Priority Mail box with every liquid sealed in a bag. Fill out a customs form, which is now required on every package to a military address. Do not send alcohol, vapes, loose batteries or anything perishable.
Postage is the part that surprises people in a good way. Military OneSource says you use standard domestic postage on mail to an APO or FPO address, so a box to a service member overseas costs what the same box would cost inside the United States.
How to Address It
An APO, FPO or DPO address is a United States address that happens to be served overseas. APO is Army Post Office, FPO is Fleet Post Office, and DPO is Diplomatic Post Office. You address it like a domestic package, not an international one.
Military OneSource says to include your service member's unit, their last and first name, their title, the DPO, FPO or APO designation, and the full ZIP code. Two details matter more than they look:
- Use their real full name. Not a nickname, and not the name you call them. The mail clerk is matching a name to a roster.
- Do not write the country. The ZIP code routes the package through the military postal system. Adding a country name can push it into the international mail stream instead, where it costs more and moves slower.
Ask your service member to send you their address exactly as they want it written, and then copy it character for character. Units move, and the address they gave you before they left is not always the one that works six weeks later.
The Customs Form Is No Longer Optional
This is the rule most families have not heard about. The Postal Service published a rule in the Federal Register on June 21, 2024, titled "Customs Declaration Exceptions," which took effect on September 29, 2024. It deleted the customs declaration exceptions that used to exist for mail to, from and between overseas military and diplomatic post offices.
What the rule now says:
- Priority Mail Express to or from an APO, FPO or DPO location "must bear a properly completed" computer generated PS Form 2976-B, "regardless of weight, value, or contents."
- All other packages to or from those addresses carry a PS Form 2976, the short customs declaration, or a PS Form 2976-A if the sender prefers.
The same rule requires items needing a customs form to be handed to an employee at a retail counter rather than dropped in a collection box, and says improperly presented items are returned to the sender. In practice that means your care package is a trip to the post office, not a trip to the blue box on the corner.
Fill the form in honestly and specifically. "Gift" is not a description. List what is actually in the box, item by item, with quantities. A vague declaration is the most common reason a package gets opened.
What You Cannot Mail
Three categories are settled federal law or postal rule, and no amount of careful packing gets around them.
| Item | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Alcohol | Nonmailable. The statute covers "all spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented, or other intoxicating liquors of any kind" | 18 U.S.C. 1716(f) |
| Vapes and e-cigarettes | Generally nonmailable. The rule states the statutory exceptions are not available for mail to or from overseas U.S. military addresses | Postal Service rule, Oct. 21, 2021, implementing the PACT Act |
| Loose lithium batteries | Only cells and batteries "properly installed in the equipment" may go to an APO, FPO or DPO. Batteries packed with equipment or sent separately are prohibited | Postal Service rule, Nov. 15, 2012 |
| Damaged or recalled batteries | Prohibited, and "may not be mailed internationally under any circumstances" | Postal Service rule, Nov. 15, 2012 |
| Explosives, poisons, inflammable materials | Nonmailable | 18 U.S.C. 1716(a) |
The battery rule catches more families than any of the others, because the obvious gift for someone living out of a tent is a power bank. Read it carefully before you buy one. Under the 2012 rule, installed lithium ion batteries are limited to four cells or two batteries per shipment, with each cell at or under 20 watt hours and each battery at or under 100 watt hours. A 2017 revision added that a single consignment is limited to two mailpieces containing lithium batteries. A headlamp with its battery in it is fine. A bag of spare cells is not.
Then there is the category we cannot write a table for: restrictions set by the country your service member is in. Pork, alcohol, religious materials and certain publications are restricted at some destinations and not at others, and the list is keyed to the destination ZIP code rather than the branch or the unit. The Postal Service publishes those restrictions by ZIP, and Military OneSource tells families to check its prohibited items list before shipping. Do that once, for your service member's specific ZIP, before the first box. It takes a minute and it is the difference between a box that arrives and a box that does not.
What to Put in the Box
Military OneSource's own suggested list is a good spine: toiletries for skin, hair and dental care, shelf-stable snacks, nonperishable homemade food, basic medical items, clothing such as socks, games, stationery, photos or children's artwork, seasonal items for a birthday or holiday, and relaxation items such as a blank journal or a novel.
A few things that list does not say out loud, from how deployments actually run. Send consumables, not keepsakes. Your service member is going to pack everything they own into a duffel at the end, and anything sentimental becomes something they have to protect or carry. Military OneSource makes the same point from the other direction: do not send valuables or irreplaceable items, because packages do sometimes get lost.
Send for the group, not just for them. A box of snacks gets shared within about four minutes of being opened, and that is part of what makes it worth sending.
1. Shelf-stable protein, in individual packs
Survives the transit, gets shared, never melts
Jerky, tuna packets, nut butter squeezes. Individually wrapped portions beat one large bag, because they travel better and they can be handed out or thrown in a pocket before a shift. Avoid chocolate and anything with a coating, which will not survive a hot warehouse.
Shop on Amazon →2. Electrolyte and drink mix packets
Flat, light, and the water tastes like the water
Single serve powder packets weigh almost nothing, fill the gaps in a flat rate box, and fix the one complaint that comes up on every deployment in a hot climate. Send a variety rather than a case of one flavor.
Shop on Amazon →3. A deck of cards or a small game
No batteries, no power, no customs questions
Downtime on a deployment is long and unscheduled, and anything that works for four people with no electricity gets used until it falls apart. Cards, dice, a compact travel board game. This is also the safest possible item to declare on a customs form.
Shop on Amazon →4. Printed photos, not a photo frame
Fits in a plate carrier pocket or taped to a wall locker
A set of printed four by six photos, or a cheap soft cover photo book, goes on the inside of a locker door and comes home at the end. Glass frames break and heavy frames get left behind. Children's artwork belongs in this category and is on Military OneSource's suggested list for a reason.
Shop on Amazon →If you are putting a first box together before they leave rather than after, our deployment packing list covers the gear side, and deliberately does not repeat these picks.
How to Pack It
Military OneSource's packing advice is short and worth following exactly. Seal items individually in zip lock bags where you can, both to protect them from the elements and to stop a leak from reaching everything else. Use sturdy packaging.
The Postal Service offers a free Military Care Kit, which Military OneSource describes as including Priority Mail boxes, tape and address labels. The packaging is free. The postage is not. You order it from the Postal Service rather than picking it up at a counter.
Two more habits worth building:
- Pack it full. A half empty box collapses. Fill the gaps with drink packets, socks or newspaper.
- Put a letter on top. It is the first thing they see when the box opens, and it is the part they keep. The same thing that makes a letter matter at boot camp, which we wrote about in writing letters to boot camp, makes it matter at month five of a deployment.
Timing, and the Holidays
Military OneSource says delivery to a deployed service member typically takes about two weeks, and that you should allow about five weeks around the holidays. It also notes that a deployment or an operation can delay your service member actually receiving the package even after it has reached the destination.
Work backward from that. For a birthday, mail three weeks out. For Christmas, five weeks out means mailing in the back half of November at the latest, and earlier is better because the military mail system is moving everyone else's boxes at the same time.
The Postal Service publishes recommended send by dates for military addresses every year, broken out by destination ZIP code group and by mail service, on its holiday shipping page. Those dates move each year and the earliest of them lands well before Thanksgiving, so look them up for the current year rather than assuming last year's date still holds.
One last piece of timing advice that has nothing to do with the mail. Packages taper off after the first two months, which is exactly when a deployment starts feeling long. A plain box in month four lands harder than an elaborate one in week three.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Bottom Line
Unlike boot camp, where the right answer is almost always a letter, a deployment care package is genuinely welcome and worth the effort. The two things that decide whether it arrives are the address, copied exactly as your service member gave it to you, and the customs form, filled in item by item at a post office counter.
Leave out the alcohol, the vapes and the loose batteries, check the restrictions for their specific ZIP code once, and then send something ordinary more often rather than something elaborate once. If you want more of the parent side of a deployment, our guide to military homecoming after deployment covers the other end of it, and the rest of our writing for families is collected on the parents page.