As the United States Postal Service approaches its 250th anniversary, we’re looking back at one of the most transformative innovations in our history: rural free delivery. USPS Historian Steve Kochersperger joins our hosts to explore how this revolutionary service connected millions of Americans living in remote communities—long before phones, radios, or the internet. From delivering newspapers and mail-order catalogues to expanding access to information, rural free delivery reshaped the nation's social and economic landscape. Tune in for a fascinating look at how mail became a lifeline and how its legacy lives on today.
USPS Historian Steve Kochersperger joins us to discuss the origins and lasting impact of rural free delivery—an initiative that began in 1896 to bring mail directly to farm families across the U.S. Learn how this historic service helped bridge the gap between urban and rural communities, supported economic growth, and laid the groundwork for modern mail delivery.
Karla Kirby:
Hello and welcome to Mailin’ It, the official podcast of the United States Postal Service. I'm Karla Kirby.
Jonathan Castillo:
And I'm Jonathan Castello. This episode we're gonna talk about the important role the Postal Service has played in delivering essential services, commerce and connectivity to residents in America's rural communities. It began in the late 1800s as a revolutionary idea, bringing free mail delivery to families living on remote farms miles from the US’s urban centers. Now, as the Postal Service prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, rural free delivery stands out as one of the most powerful examples of our mission to ensure universal service.
Karla Kirby:
That's right, Jonathan. Rural free delivery was a significant step toward closing the information gap between urban and rural communities long before people had access to the technologies we rely on today - not just computers and smartphones, but radios and television. Here to talk with us about the evolution of rural free delivery and why it matters today is Steve Kochersperger, the Postal Service’s Historian and Corporate Information Services Manager. And Steve, please excuse me if I mispronounced your last name.
Steve Kochersperger:
Oh, you did. Perfect. Thank you.
Jonathan Castillo:
Given the topic we're gonna be talking about today, I'm sure that a lot of this episode will be filled with Did you know’s… But I did wanna kick things off with the fact that I found really interesting when preparing for this episode. Did you know that the number of post offices in the US peaked in 1901 at nearly 77,000? That's one year before rural free delivery became a permanent service. To give you some context, that peak is more than double the number of post offices we have today.
Steve Kochersperger:
Actually, Jonathan, I did know that. I think I told you!
Jonathan Castillo:
Why am I not surprised? And get this, the reason the number of post offices nationwide began to decline at the turn of the 20th century is closely related to the topic of this episode. So, Steve, what exactly was rural free delivery?
Steve Kochersperger:
Well, we can break it down into the three words: Delivery - We know that means getting mail to the customers. Free means we don't charge the customers for that service, and Rural means it's in the countryside as opposed to the city. The Postal Service authorized free mail delivery directly to the farm families who previously had the travel to the closest post office to get their mail. It was launched as an experimental service in 1896 and became permanent in 1902. Communities could have their mail delivered as long as there was enough rural households within a proposed route to justify the cost of delivery.
Karla Kirby:
So, given how convenient mail delivery is these days, it's hard to imagine a time when the only way to get your mail was to go to the post office. Why was rural free delivery such a big deal at that time?
Steve Kochersperger:
It was a big deal because before the turn of the 20th century, about 65% of the US population lived in rural areas, about 41 million people. And a time before the electronic age, the mail was the way they got information. If you wanted news from outside your community, you needed newspapers, magazines, or letters. It also meant that people no longer had to travel miles to get their mail to the nearest post office. So it saved them time. It was safer and more convenient. There was also a philosophical aspect to it. It was seen as a way of evening the playing field for people who lived in the countryside. They thought that people in the city had advantages they didn't have. This was a step towards equality, and it helped co close the communications gap. It changed rural economies for the better and helped rural Americans feel really included in the nation's progress.
Jonathan Castillo:
Steve, you know, the Postal Service has been around just as long as our country has, and I'm assuming that there's probably, you know, a variety of different reasons why this hadn't happened before the 1890s. What were the biggest challenges really to creating this rural free delivery?
Steve Kochersperger:
You're right about that, Jonathan. Free delivery started in the cities during the Civil War in the 1860s. And it was seen as an injustice that the people in the rural areas were paying just as much for their postage, but they didn't get the same level of service. But there were significant logistical problems delivering to rural areas that were not part of delivering in cities. Mainly, they needed good roads, transportation; to make this work the local communities had to provide upkeep and maintenance of the roads. It was not - and it's still not - a function of the federal government to provide your local streets. There was also an expense… Congress had to cough up the money for it, and it may be hard to believe, but there were budget hawks in Congress, even at that time always looking to cut costs.
In 1892, a bill was introduced to extend a free delivery system to rural communities. But the House Committee on Post Office and Post Roads thought the proposed $6 million price tag was too high. They negotiated an amendment, brought it down to $100,000. Even that was considered too expensive. They launched it in 1896 with $40,000 in funding on an experimental basis. The biggest expense was paying the salaries of the rural carriers. These were generally people who worked on farms, but if they want to make little extra income, they could deliver the mail. The postmasters in these rural offices really didn't make a lot of money. They were paid more or less a commission on their postage sales. So those offices could operate at practically no cost to the government. Whereas putting in a delivery service added a lot to the expense. The first experimental route was set up in West Virginia because the postmaster general was from West Virginia. He knew the area well. It was very successful. Within a year, 44 routes were created within 29 states nationwide.
Jonathan Castillo:
Is it true that some of the postmasters at that time used their homes as the post office?
Steve Kochersperger:
That's a fact. In the smallest offices, the fourth class offices, they were generally set up within a general store or another business that the postmaster owned, but in some cases, the business was part of their home as well.
Karla Kirby:
So people living outside of the cities must have felt pretty isolated from the rest of the country, especially with no phones or radios to communicate or other means to receive information. I can see why people would want rural delivery, but what made it so successful in such a short amount of time?
Steve Kochersperger:
I think the main thing is there was really no organized opposition to it. Everyone, everyone was in was in favor of the service. The biggest obstacle was getting Congress to provide the funding. But Congress, they like to please their constituents. If you can say that we provided rural delivery service to you, then you're likely to get their vote in the next election. But more than that, the carriers, the rural carriers did not just deliver the mail. They provided most of the services you could get at the post office. They sold stamps, they collected your outgoing mail. They even sold money orders. And over the years, provided a variety of other services. And even today, the rural carriers refer to themselves as a post office on wheels. Talking about congress, members of Congress, they took advantage of their Franking privilege, which meant they got to send mail at no cost.
This is a way of communicating with their constituents. So instead of the mail going to a post office and maybe their constituents seeing it once every week or two, they could see it on a daily basis. So it improved communications between the government and the citizens. Another big aspect was the emergence of mail order catalogs. We're all familiar with online shopping e-commerce. Well, the predecessor to that was the catalogs from companies like Sears and Roebuck, Montgomery Ward, where you could order anything you wanted and have it delivered. And the fact that these catalogs could come now to your home instead of picking 'em up at a post office boosted the economy and made life more convenient for people living in rural areas.
Jonathan Castillo:
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, really, you know, those Sears and Roebuck, you know catalogs, they were really, you know, the e-commerce of their time. And, you know, all of a sudden people had this access to all sorts of different kinds of, you know, products that they didn't use to have access to. Right. And for the most part like you said, they could be delivered right to their homes. If I'm not mistaken, the popularity of mail order catalogs did increase the demand for parcel deliveries, which really didn't exist at that time. How did the Postal Service address that?
Steve Kochersperger:
Well, it was interesting. Before 1913, you could order your merchandise through the mail, but if it was more than four pounds, it could not be delivered through the mail. There were private express companies that would make the delivery. Wells Fargo, Adams Express, companies like that. They had that business sewn up, and there was resistance to the postal office department getting into the mail order or the parcel post business. They saw it as government competition, whereas most of the world had parcel post service provided by the government. So in 1913, Congress changed the law and allowed the post office department started a parcel post service. This brought on a whole host of other challenges because instead of just carrying bundles of mail, they now had to carry packages. They needed larger vehicles. The post office buildings, in many cases, they outgrew those, the mail cars on trains where the mail was sorted and transported they had to be expanded.
And probably the biggest change was when the carriers switched from horses and buggies to motor vehicles in the 19, in the teens, rural carriers were first permitted to use automobiles. In 1915, the post office department was heavily invested in horses. We had a large number of horses that we used to transport mail. So it took a while before we converted completely to automobiles. I think the 1950s was the last of our horses were retired, but eventually rural residents had to buy and install mailboxes that met the post office specifications. And if you wanted your package to fit in the box, you needed a much larger mailbox. And you see these rural mailboxes are sometimes much larger than the ones you might have in front of your house.
Karla Kirby:
So, any advice for those people that are like, I'm moving out to the farm? What are considerations? If they're really heavy on package delivery?
Steve Kochersperger:
Put up the biggest mailbox you can get. If the carrier has to make a trip to your door every day to deliver a package or if he can't get to your house, say you live in such a place where, you know, if the local creek overflows, he can't get up your lane. You're gonna be going to the post office to pick up your packages. So if it can fit in the mailbox, you're gonna make everybody a lot happier.
Karla Kirby:
So the population dynamic has changed a lot, we could say, over the last century, we're agreed upon that. Now a lot more people are living in urban areas as opposed to rural, or the rural areas have become urban because they've been developed. How has that impacted the Postal Services approach to rural delivery?
Steve Kochersperger:
Rural delivery today is still a vital service, although it may not look all that rural. A lot of suburban areas, when mail delivery started there were farmlands like where we are in Northern Virginia places like Tyson's Corner that, you know, if you go back 50 years, it was fields. And now if you go there, you wouldn't recognize it as a rural delivery area. Even though the rural population has shrunk. In 2024, there were 51 and a half million rural delivery points, which is up from 47.1 in 2020. That's more than 30% of the country's total delivery points in 2024, even though the rural population is now less than 20%.
Jonathan Castillo:
So Steve, what are we doing today to reinforce that, that commitment to the rural areas?
Steve Kochersperger:
The Postal Services is as dedicated as it ever has been, to making sure all Americans can have their mail delivered no matter how isolated the place where they live.
Jonathan Castillo:
Any examples that you could think of from, you know, your experience, how we're serving the rural community.
Steve Kochersperger:
Customers who are perhaps elderly or disabled can't get to their mailbox, even though it's just across the street from their house. We will make hardship deliveries to those people if they can, you know, provide documentation. That's an example of how we provide service to people regardless of their situation.
Karla Kirby:
So what, I have to ask this question. So what is the differentiation between what would be considered rural delivery versus, like suburban delivery? 'Cause what I've seen in a lot of the new communities is they'll put a centralized mail drop where everybody has to kind of come and get their mail, as opposed to, you know, in the more rural where your mailbox may be along the street.
Steve Kochersperger:
The cluster boxes are used on rural and city routes. But in order for those to be practical, you have to have at least enough homes within walking distance of that cluster box. If you live in a rural area and your nearest neighbor is a mile away, there's no point in putting a cluster box. But if it's a new subdivision and you're gonna have a hundred homes, you can put up five or six cluster boxes and serve that whole community. Then the carrier saves time by not going and stopping at every home. They can make one stop, serve all those boxes, and then move on to their next deliveries.
Karla Kirby:
Okay. So space and housing, proximity…
Steve Kochersperger:
Logistics,
Karla Kirby:
Logistics. That word!
Jonathan Castillo:
Steve, is there anything else you know, this is such an interesting topic. Anything else that comes to mind that, you know, maybe we didn't cover already about rural free delivery, that stands out to you?
Steve Kochersperger:
Well, I was a postmaster in a rural delivery office for 25 years, so I'm quite familiar with the service. And the thing that surprises most people is that the rural carriers will often use their own vehicle. They won't be delivering from a postal truck, and that they don't wear a uniform. Another interesting thing I just thought of was addresses on rural routes. At, at one time, if you lived on a rural route, your mailing address was simply RFD or RD or RR and the number of the route, so you could be rural route number one was your address. And as the number of deliveries increased, then they would add box numbers. So you could be RD number one, box number 227. A big change happened in the 1990s when the E 9-1-1 system required people to have street addresses. So suddenly rural areas that had gotten along fine for 70 years with RD numbers, they had to switch over to now it's Locust Lane or something like that. So there was a big conversion and it’s a part of American life that maybe has been lost. People don't recognize what an RR or RD number is.
Karla Kirby:
So, you know, talk about fun facts, Steve, to the best of your knowledge, where is the longest rural route, like the furthest distance we're traveling to deliver mail and packages.
Steve Kochersperger:
There are some routes that are more than a hundred miles in length. The rural carriers you know, leave the post office travel for a hundred miles, and at the end of the day, they're back at the post office after delivering to, you know, 200 or 300 mailboxes. This would be in the Midwest.
Jonathan Castillo:
Hey Steve, I noticed you brought something with you today. What book is that?
Steve Kochersperger:
This is the United States Postal Service and American History. We call it Publication 100. It's the official history of the 250 years of the US Postal Service.
Jonathan Castillo:
And where can someone go to get that publication?
Steve Kochersperger:
You can download a free copy from our website, or if you visit the postal store, you can order a hard copy.
Jonathan Castillo:
Where can folks go to find more historical information on the Postal Service?
Steve Kochersperger:
Great question. We have a website on usps.com. Just go to about.usps.com and look for history. And we have fascinating articles and statistics and ways to find out more about the history of the Postal Service as we celebrate our 250th anniversary.
Karla Kirby:
Steve, as usual, great information. Very informational, and thank you for visiting with us today.
Jonathan Castillo:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for joining us, Steve. A lot of great information on rural free delivery. We appreciate you joining us.
Steve Kochersperger:
Thanks for having me. I'm always happy to talk about postal history.
Jonathan Castillo:
Karla, today's conversation with Steve helped shed some light on how free rural delivery really transformed daily life at the turn of the 20th century, bringing news, goods and connection to even the most remote corners of the country. I just think it's a powerful reminder of how the Postal Service has long helped knit the nation together.
Karla Kirby:
I think that's a great point, but I gotta tell you, one of the glaring things for me, $6 million at that turn of the century would be $191 million now. So imagine, you know, what that looks like in current date numbers, and it just gives you the scope of how, like you said, the Postal Service has been woven into just the fabric of creating information sharing and just continuing to do that and deliver for America. So definitely powerful information and informative.
Well, that's all for this episode of Mailin’ It. Don't forget to subscribe to mailing it wherever you get your podcast to make sure you don't miss the next episode and follow along on Instagram @USPostalService, X @usps, and on Facebook.