When did the U.S. Postal Service completely transition from horse-drawn to motorized transport?
score:1
The United States Postal system began Rural Free Deliver (RFD) in the late 19th century. This program mandated to postal service deliver mail directly to rural families and greatly increased the cost and complexity of mail. Prior to this mail was mostly delivered to central locations and individuals were responsible for traveling and picking up their own mail. Some places individuals had to travel for days to collect their mail. RFD would begin to change that.
Wikipedia:Rural Free Delivery
The United States Post Office Department began experiments with Rural Free Delivery as early as 1890. However, it was not until 1893, when Georgia Congressman Thomas E. Watson pushed through legislation, that the practice was mandated.2 However, universal implementation was slow; RFD was not adopted generally in the United States Post Office until 1902.
This is pertinent to your question because RFD opened up the Postal service to hire tens of thousands of new postal carriers. These carriers were initially responsible for purchasing and maintaining their own transportation. Initially this meant horse and buggy and I came across many advertis*m*nts for specialized carriages catering to RFD mail carriers even as late as 1910. All these adds given be low mention RFD mail carriers and target them as potential customers.
Around 1905-1915 these advertis*m*nts began to show motorcycles and automobiles. A carrier on a motorized vehicle could deliver much longer routes faster than one on horse. Automobiles were quickly(over years) preferred.
I found many many adds from 1910-1915 for motorcycles and automobiles targeting R.F.D. carriers. It was kind of like a boom cycle for manufacturing.
By 1920 the postal service was providing the vehicles and the United States Postal Service had the largest civilian automobile fleet in the world.
Aragro
By 1920, the U.S. Post Office Department operated the world's largest civilian vehicular fleet.
So that would be my answer.. while the Postal Service has never actually entirely gotten away from horse / mule delivery (see be low); by 1920, after WWI they had mostly transferred primary delivery to automobiles and motorcycles. Prior to that 1905-1915 they were relying on postal workers to purchase cars for their own use. By 1920 the postal service was sold on the utility and the technology had become reliable enough that they were investing in their own fleet of automobiles.
.....................................................................
Some of the USPS mail is still delivered by horseback. In the year 2000 CBS news did a story on a USPS subcontractor named Charlie Chamberlain, who along with a dozen others delivers mail daily to an indian village at he bottom of the grand canyon.
CBS News January 30, 2009,
Charlie Chamberlain is still delivering mail by mule train, three hours one-way, every day, to a small Indian reservation 3,000 feet down on the floor of the canyon."This is the most reliable way to get the mail and these supplies down there. And we can do it for less money," Chamberlain told Geist. "And also, we can go in all types of weather."
"A helicopter can't always fly on these rims. This wind gets to blowing out here sometime. You can't fly in them high, high winds," he added.
Sources: CBS News: Mail by Mule Wikipedia: Rural Free Delivery
More post
- 📝 Did Bismarck have any influence on Hitler?
- 📝 Who ruled India when the Abbasid ruler Harun al-Rashid was the Caliph of Baghdad?
- 📝 What office or status did these individuals hold in Roman-Britain based on their attire?
- 📝 What form of home address did Romans use?
- 📝 In WWII, why did people not run away from executions?
- 📝 Why was there a reference to the Battle of Hastings in Harper Lee's novel?
- 📝 In what ways did the rise of a true middle class in Europe during the late 19th century become apparent?
- 📝 Is there evidence that Stalin stopped religious persecution during WW2?
- 📝 How did people count before Fibonacci published Liber Abbaci?
- 📝 How could ancient people determine the winter solstice was occurring?
- 📝 What are the historical reasons for religious and political negative attitudes towards h*m*sexuality?
- 📝 Regional Customs for Leaving a King's Presence
- 📝 Why didn't the Japanese develop air defenses after the bombing of Tokyo?
- 📝 Fulvia in Sallust's Catiline Conspiracy the same Fulvia as Mark Antony's wife?
- 📝 Who was the prime leader of the Maratha Confederation?
- 📝 Has history mistreated Nero?
- 📝 Underground Tunnels in New York City and Boston
- 📝 WWII - documents on turn around point in German Foreign strategy - "stop we are not going to pass Finland to USSR"
- 📝 Did marriage ever end a war?
- 📝 Did Thomas Aquinas's correspondent James of Tonengo become bishop of Vercelli?
- 📝 Why did classical works re-emerge during the Renaissance?
- 📝 Did American colonist soldiers learn guerrilla fighting tactics from the Native Americans?
- 📝 Who was the first foreigner to be naturalized as a Mexican citizen in Alta California?
- 📝 Help identifying an old bayonet
- 📝 Will someone help me understand the following quotation about Calvinism?
- 📝 Has any ideology ever had an internal war?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 3rd party (foreign nationality) forces active in Iran-Iraq war?
- 📝 Articles 3 & 5 of the Tripartite Pact are unclearly formulated. Was this standard for the period?
- 📝 Why did the welfare state succeed in Bismarck's Germany but lagged in 20th-century Britain?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 When did the U.S. Postal Service completely transition from horse-drawn to motorized transport?
- 📝 When Israel won the Six Day War, did they consider expelling all Arabs from the annexed territories?
- 📝 What route did the Hindenburg take when traveling from Germany to the U.S.?
- 📝 When did the last Terra Nullius vanish from the earth?
- 📝 When did the allies start evacuating from the Dunkirk mole during the Dunkirk evacuation?
- 📝 Why did the death rate increase in US cities in 1934, when it decreased in each year from 1929 to 1933
- 📝 When did England make a statute that barred foreigners from inheriting the throne?
- 📝 When and who did the Legislative Assembly banish from France during the French Revolution?
- 📝 When did the number of motor driven vehicles surpass the number of horse driven vehicles in Paris, London, Berlin?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- 📝 When did people decide that all caps means the writer is shouting?
- 📝 Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?
- 📝 When did the allies find out about the killing of Jews during WW2
- 📝 Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?
- 📝 Did Bill Gates steal the GUI concept from Steve Jobs?
- 📝 How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- 📝 Why did Britain and France not declare war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland in WW2?
- 📝 Why did Columbus cross the mid-Atlantic instead of exploring from Greenland?
- 📝 Did it take 3 minutes to reload a musket when the second amendment to the US constitution was ratified?
- 📝 When did humans develop the ability to sail any direction regardless of wind direction?
- 📝 Did Albert Einstein really receive this rejection letter from the University of Bern?
- 📝 When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- 📝 When did the Romans finally acknowledge that they were living in an empire?
- 📝 When did the Greeks stop calling themselves "Roman"?
- 📝 Where did Hitler get the funds to invest in economic development programs such as the autobahn when the German economy was in a depression?
- 📝 Did the leaflets from the US to Hiroshima/Nagasaki civilians on bombing cities reduce the civilian casualties of the two nuclear bombs in August 1945?
- 📝 When did "&" stop being taught alongside the alphabet?
- 📝 When did the Roman Empire fall according to contemporaries?
- 📝 When did the practice of formally "declaring war" cease and why?
- 📝 When did the U.S. Army start saying "oh-six-hundred" for "6 AM"?