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
- π Could the Russian fleet go via northern route to Port Arthur instead of via Cape of Good Hope?
- π What solar event caused massive aurora borealis in the mid 1960's?
- π Why was Tsesarevich Alexei's hemophilia a state secret?
- π What paramilitary group was Nikola JorgiΔ in?
- π Legacy of the May 1968 Paris riots
- π Did Averroes really try to bury light in an attempt to create gold, or was that invented by Victor Hugo?
- π Did the Ancient Egyptians understand the importance of the brain?
- π Why was John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry treason?
- π How much of Nazi iconography came from Hitler?
- π Were the Vikings descendents of the Tribe of Dan?
- π Did the French violate the Washington Naval ConferenceTreaty limitations?
- π Who was the earliest historian of the Greco-Roman world to write something substantial about China?
- π Why did China begin persecuting Falun Gong after tolerating the movement for nearly a decade?
- π How would you accurately use older British currencies when writing a story?
- π In the first half of 20th century, how was gold inspected for authenticity?
- π Those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It?
- π What was Yugoslavia doing in the Angolan Civil War?
- π Newton a plagiarist?
- π The Overwhelming Success of Greeks
- π What was the role of Nikita Khrushchev during the battle of Stalingrad?
- π How did Poland fare under "personal unions?"
- π Why have so few paleo-Indian skeletons been found?
- π What were the population demographics in the South during the Hayes/Tilden election?
- π Did Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Finance Minister of Louis XIV, sanction mass executions for reasons of economic policies?
- π Who is this, probably royal, teenager?
- π Escape attempts from Elmira POW Camp (Civil War)
- π What is the last historical mention of people worshipping the Roman gods?
- π Were ancient Egyptians secretly monotheistic?
- π Does the HMHS Britannic wreck still have a grand staircase or any staterooms?
- π What is an open city?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- π When did the U.S. Postal Service completely transition from horse-drawn to motorized transport?
- π When Israel won the Six Day War, did they consider expelling all Arabs from the annexed territories?
- π What route did the Hindenburg take when traveling from Germany to the U.S.?
- π When did the last Terra Nullius vanish from the earth?
- π When did the allies start evacuating from the Dunkirk mole during the Dunkirk evacuation?
- π Why did the death rate increase in US cities in 1934, when it decreased in each year from 1929 to 1933
- π When did England make a statute that barred foreigners from inheriting the throne?
- π When and who did the Legislative Assembly banish from France during the French Revolution?
- π When did the number of motor driven vehicles surpass the number of horse driven vehicles in Paris, London, Berlin?
- π Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- π When did people decide that all caps means the writer is shouting?
- π Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?
- π When did the allies find out about the killing of Jews during WW2
- π Why did archery not make a comeback when armor was phased out in the 18th century?
- π Did Bill Gates steal the GUI concept from Steve Jobs?
- π How and when did the word "nuclear" replace the word "atomic"?
- π Why did Britain and France not declare war against the Soviet Union when it invaded Poland in WW2?
- π Why did Columbus cross the mid-Atlantic instead of exploring from Greenland?
- π Did it take 3 minutes to reload a musket when the second amendment to the US constitution was ratified?
- π When did humans develop the ability to sail any direction regardless of wind direction?
- π Did Albert Einstein really receive this rejection letter from the University of Bern?
- π When and how did the USA and the UK become allies?
- π When did the Romans finally acknowledge that they were living in an empire?
- π When did the Greeks stop calling themselves "Roman"?
- π Where did Hitler get the funds to invest in economic development programs such as the autobahn when the German economy was in a depression?
- π 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?
- π When did "&" stop being taught alongside the alphabet?
- π When did the Roman Empire fall according to contemporaries?
- π When did the practice of formally "declaring war" cease and why?
- π When did the U.S. Army start saying "oh-six-hundred" for "6 AM"?