In this episode, we'll dive into the pivotal role the Postal Service has played in shaping the history of transportation in the United States. From its inception, the Postal Service has been at the forefront of adopting and adapting to new forms of transportation, contributing significantly to the development and improvement of mail services across the nation. Get ready for an insightful conversation that will unveil the hidden gems of transportation history!
This week on Mailin' It, we discuss the pivotal role the Postal Service has played in shaping the history of transportation in the United States. What's truly fascinating is that the Postal Service wasn't just a passive observer in this journey of transportation evolution. It actively provided support to help transform these transportation innovations into thriving industries that would serve the American people. To shed light on this aspect of postal history, we’re joined by expert Dr. William (Bill) DeWitt, who has dedicated decades to the study and teaching of transportation. Get ready for an insightful conversation that will unveil the hidden gems of transportation history!
Karla Kirby
Hi everybody, and welcome to Mailin’ It, the official podcast of the United States Postal Service. And I'm Karla Kirby.
Jonathan Castillo
And I'm Jonathan Castillo. We've got a great episode lined up today about the important role the Postal Service played in shaping the history of transportation in the U.S.. Think about it. The postal Service was there from the very beginning. And as new forms of transportation were invented, we took full advantage of them to expand and improve mail service.
Jonathan Castillo
But what I find most interesting is that the Postal Service wasn't just this passive observer element from horse drawn carriages to steam powered railroads and ships to airplanes and automobiles.
Karla Kirby
That's a great point, Jonathan. As transportation has evolved in the U.S., the Postal Service offered incentives to help turn these inventions into successful industries. Here to tell us more about the Postal Service's influence on how we get around in this country is Dr. William DeWitt. Bill has been studying and teaching about transportation for decades. Most recently, he was the director and professor of the practice of Transportation at the University of Denver's Transport Station Institute.
Karla Kirby
He is also an avid fill out a list. Bill is joining us from West Chester, Pennsylvania. Bill welcomes the mail in it.
Bill DeWitt
Well, hello, everyone. I'm delighted to talk about the post office's role using transportation and its evolution to shape American history.
Jonathan Castillo
Bill, we've talked a lot on this podcast about how the Postal Service grew over time. And, you know, out of necessity, as the country grew, new territory was being added. People started moving west and the Postal Service had to move with them to make sure they could get their mail. Your research into mail transportation goes all the way back to late 1700s, and I'm sure that Carl and I have a ton of questions about, you know, the history of mail, transportation and how the Postal service, you know, had its influence there.
Jonathan Castillo
But before we get into all that, can I ask a question? How did you get into transportation? You know, develop that that passion for logistics? Just curious.
Bill DeWitt
Well, I've always been fortunate to be able to work for railroads. And I started out with the South Shore line and then ended up at Burlington Northern Railroad. I actually started in 1972 when the railroad was starting and finished in 1995. Having been in the transportation business and all the associated ships and trains and trucks. I went back, got a Ph.D. in transportation and logistics, and had the opportunity for 20 years to teach it.
Bill DeWitt
So it's been a wonderful opportunity for my career.
Jonathan Castillo
That's amazing. That's incredible. Absolutely incredible.
Karla Kirby
So all that being said, it sounds like you have a very extensive background in transportation. Could you tell us from your perspective, why was important for the Postal Service to be able to grow with the territories back then?
Bill DeWitt
Well, we need to understand that mail has always been important for U.S. citizens. The population was on the east side of the Appalachians and in the first half of the 1800s, the population started migrating west. With the Erie Canal going through the Appalachian Mountains and then national roads went across the Appalachian Mountains. But as people moved west, they wanted their mail.
Bill DeWitt
They wanted to know what happened to people they left behind. They wanted to stay connected with friends and family. And the mail also gave them the opportunity to receive money, legal papers and newspapers. Newspapers were very much of a high importance to the population. They were far less cost to mail, and they weighed much more than letters. And the population that was migrating wanted to keep up with those on the East Coast.
Bill DeWitt
So they demanded that Congress establish mail capability to support their migration. And that's where the post office stepped up to make sure that the mail got through.
Karla Kirby
It's interesting that you mention the news because newspapers were a big part of the mail at the time. They were the best and in most cases, the only way for people to find out that what was happening across the country. Newspapers were also the best way for Congress to reach voters. In those early days, I imagine horses were the only way to move the mail.
Bill DeWitt
Well, you're correct. Horses and horseback work was the initial way that mail was moved, and it very quickly became too heavy for the postman. Were then they were postman then to carry that much mail on a horse. So they developed wagons and stagecoaches to meet the mail distribution needs at the time. But we have to remember that it took almost 20 days for a stagecoach to get to California from the East Coast.
Bill DeWitt
The problem with horses and stagecoaches were their limits. They could only travel so fast they averaged around 4 to 6 miles an hour. And then the horses had to be changed. You couldn't take the horses very far before you had to put a new set of horses on the stagecoach. And they were limited in terms of the weight.
Bill DeWitt
That sounds maybe a little strange now, but newspaper papers were very bulky and very heavy, and they could sometimes weigh out Stagecoach at £600. And so the newspapers got left along side because the people that were traveling on the stagecoach raised a fuss and they wanted to be there first. And of course, weather and roads were a problem.
Bill DeWitt
Roads were nonexistent. They were mud tracks, particularly after it rained paving and macadam lot. Asphalt didn't become regular till after World War One. And so there were when there were no routes established, the Postal Service offered star route contracts and that was stagecoach operators moving mail from one post office to another. Remember that back then the post offices were in the local general store, sometimes in the front parlor of the house, and people had to go pick up their own mail.
Bill DeWitt
Can you imagine going to the post office to pick up your mail today?
Jonathan Castillo
I certainly can.
Karla Kirby
Yeah. It's a low post office box.
Jonathan Castillo
I love it. But, Bill, let me ask you this. For someone that maybe not might not know what a star route contract is like, what would why do they call it that? I mean, I have a couple ideas on my end, but what is the star route contract?
Bill DeWitt
Well, star routes were developed in the post office system to indicate conformity to efficiency and consistency. And because they always marked the contract Act with a star, with the line pencil, with a little cross. Those aspects became known as the star routes, and the star roles were basically a post office to post office. Remember, they are not the post office as we think of today.
Bill DeWitt
They are local general stores. They are homes. And the people that were running them like that because everyone had to come pick up their mail there. So the star route was basically a post office to post office capability. And we'll talk about later the shift to rural free delivery.
Karla Kirby
So, Bill, just for clarity, if I'm operating a star route, does that mean I only transported the mail or does that include people or anybody else who was going in the same direction?
The contract rules called for just mail to be delivered, and they went from big post offices in urban areas to little post offices and general stores. And so the post office asked the star route carriers to carry just mail. When we had stagecoaches in the earlier days, stagecoaches carried not only mail until they wait out as well as people.
Bill DeWitt
And sometimes there were as many as 6 to 10 people on the stagecoach.
Jonathan Castillo
Got it. So now if we're talking about, you know, you had mentioned sometimes the weather and roads could be potentially a problem for, you know, some of these contracts. And there are limitations to, you know, the horse and carriage, you know, solution. If speed, distance and capacity were the main problems. It seems that railroads would be the solution.
Jonathan Castillo
So when do they come into the picture?
Bill DeWitt
Well, the railroads entered the conversation about the 1830s out of the Baltimore area, and in 1838, Congress designated all the railroads to be post roads. So whether it was built or not, no matter where it went, it was designated a post road, which meant the post office could use it. But trains were much higher capacity. Weight carrying, they operated all weather.
Bill DeWitt
And so your muddy roads and wagons, the stagecoaches up to the axles were illuminated by the railroads capability. Then they expanded the rail system and laid tracks to connect urban roads, urban hubs and rural cities. The system reached its peak in 1916. So the post office looked at the system and said, Hey, we can move mail large quantities of mail, including newspapers over long distances from terminal to terminal.
Bill DeWitt
However, the railroads didn't go to the local town, the local village, and so they connected in these major terminals with horses and stagecoaches and the star routes to move out to the rural post offices. And those, as we talked about, were really found in the local general store and the local business, which added to the impetus for the postmaster to be postmaster, as well as doing commercial business.
Jonathan Castillo
I'm curious, earlier you had mentioned that, you know, the previous transportation model of stagecoaches was only able to carry about £600. Just by comparison, how many pounds do you think we could carry using the railroad system?
Bill DeWitt
Well, when you start talking about the railroad system, we're talking about tons that the initially wooden railroad post offices and then still had the capacity to carry large amounts of and large weights. And if they exceeded the weight in a particular train, they would then run the second train. So the weight limitation on the railroads was almost nonexistent.
Bill DeWitt
And at the terminal, at the destination, you would then transfer it over to the stagecoach. Infrequently was horseback used because horseback was the idea or the image of a horseman carrying sacks of mail is not very viable.
Karla Kirby
Let's think about that. So, you know, with no weight limit, with the train, but you still had to be offloaded. So, yeah, there still may have been some issues. So when we think about, I guess, moving the mail at that volume and then the land masses. What about using the waterways? So boats and ships have been a way of transportation for centuries.
Karla Kirby
So what about using those for moving mail long distances? When did the waterways come into play?
Bill DeWitt
Well, steamboats came in about the same time as locomotives, steam locomotives. So you had a conversion from horse to steam powered and steamboats were used, starting with Fulton on the Hudson River in the 1800s. But there was a limitation. Most of the interior waterways in the United States flow north and south. Now the Hudson River, the Mississippi River.
Bill DeWitt
And so they did not reach a large set of the population. And so where they function, where they had water and rivers, they worked very well. But for the rest of the country and remember that the migration was westward. It was an east west migration. And so the waterways didn't reach those people. Congress did in 1823, designate all the navigable waters as post roads.
Bill DeWitt
That meant the post office could use them. But there was very limited number of places that the waterways worked. If you think about the U.S. and you think about the Mississippi River, you're talking about Saint Paul to Memphis, to Natchez, on down to New Orleans, not terribly large populations and the populations were east and west of the river.
Bill DeWitt
And so the assumption was the steamboats carried mail down around the Gulf of Mexico on what we all want in New Orleans. And they also went down to the isthmus of Panama. And of course, they had a tremendous challenge getting across the Isthmus because of all the disease and going on there. They went to the Pacific Ocean about 25, 30 miles and picked up steamboats that went up the Pacific Rim to California and the Oregon territory.
Bill DeWitt
So the steamboats were viable because steam power changed the ability for boats to go upstream from about the 1840s until about the Civil War. And and then the railroads became more prevalent as they went east west and reached the migrations.
Jonathan Castillo
Yeah, it really sounds like the steamboats might have been a little bit inefficient there. Would you characterize it that way?
Bill DeWitt
Well, I think that the to be fair, the symbols were efficient. They had steam powered capability to move the boats. The problem with this, when you talk about efficiency is they could not reach the East-West migration. Once you hit the Mississippi River, there's very few rivers, a couple Missouri and etc. that reached westward. But most of the population that was moving and migrating didn't settled near the rivers.
Bill DeWitt
And so riverboats, the steamboats were efficient for the territory they covered, but they could not reach the population. That was demanding mail.
Jonathan Castillo
Right. And it seems like the Postal Service's ability to use, you know, faster, better ways to move mail really did help the country grow in those early formative years. So, you know, we're talking about, you know, the steamboat wasn't able to, you know, assist in that east west migration. But, you know, so what did actually happen when, you know, settlers reached the West Coast?
Jonathan Castillo
How was the Postal Service able to deliver mail? Thousands of miles? Coast to coast?
Bill DeWitt
That's a good question. The post office was challenged by getting the mail to California, to the Oregon territory, which was a territory, then another state. They did move stagecoaches. They took about 20 days to get to California. And the first one, of course, was the Butterfield on the southern route. But they then went to the central route in the stagecoach until the railroads came in.
Bill DeWitt
It was about a 20 day trip. I'd be remiss not to mention the experiment with the Pony Express. It only lasted 18 months from 1860 and 1861, and the Telegraph was being built alongside it and replaced it. And the Telegraph, of course, could send messages very quickly and get messages to the West Coast much quicker than the Pony Express.
Bill DeWitt
And that was basically the downside for the Pony Express was the telegraph.
Jonathan Castillo
Hmm.
Karla Kirby
I would I would expect that the Telegraph is going to get there quicker than the man on the horse.
Jonathan Castillo
Yeah.
Karla Kirby
Just my thought.
Jonathan Castillo
Yeah, just a little bit faster, I think. And then also the Pony Express, I think was rather expensive for that time as well. Right.
Karla Kirby
And I would think they would have a limited capacity too.
Bill DeWitt
So all of that's true. But if you had high value documents, for example, Lincoln's advice to the country from his inauguration, if you had funds going across the country, all of that was worth the cost of the Pony Express. And remember, it could get across in ten days. Telegraph was a little hard to send money, although you could use a money express from the various banks that were out there.
Jonathan Castillo
And it also sounds like the Postal Service, you know, as they took advantage of that, you know, transcontinental Railroad. Now, they were, I think, were, you know, kind of headed down this road, able to move thousands of miles. Forget about 20 days, forget about ten days in a matter of days. Right.
Bill DeWitt
Well, and that's the case, of course, the transcontinental railroad, as we call it, from the Mississippi River or the Missouri to the West Coast, was done in 1869. And it wasn't long after that that the mail expanded across the country. The railroads built a tremendous amount of rail miles, route miles. And those peaked in the 1916 timeframe. So at that point, you're right, the mail could be moved instead of days and months, could now be moved in a matter of hours.
Bill DeWitt
And you could get to the West Coast in two or three days.
Karla Kirby
So that's interesting how much of an impact that the trains had on us being able to move the mail more efficiently. But it seems like the trains then would have an issue with being able to reach places. So how did the Postal service, I guess, utilize the trains and then get to new communities that maybe didn't have railways yet?
Karla Kirby
How did that connect at the local level?
Bill DeWitt
Well, remember that the postal system had the star routes in place and those took mail from post office to post office. Some of the post offices were very small in very remote rural areas, and the trains could only go to the major terminals. And at that point they loaded on to the star routes, to the stagecoaches, etc. and got it out to the post offices.
Bill DeWitt
Now, people in the cities got free city delivery in about 1860s. Outside of the city, the rural people started to complain and said, Wait a minute, if they have free delivery in the cities, we want free delivery out in the country. And so rural free delivery RFD was established in the late 1890 and became widespread in the early 1900s.
Bill DeWitt
Horses and carriages remained the primary way to get mail out. But with RFD, rural free delivery, we ended up with the mail being delivered direct to a house, and that then cut down tremendously on the star route. No longer were you having to go to a post office where you had to show up and pick up your mail.
Bill DeWitt
They now delivered it to the house, as is done across the country. And you continue to have the postal system evolve with a combination of rail that lasted until the mid 1900s, a little bit of the star route, some of the RFD as the post office sorted out the best and most efficient process to get mail delivered.
Jonathan Castillo
And it sounds like with all that population growth and to get the mail to people living in cities out in the country, it really sounds like there's a there was a new mode of transportation that was needed at this point now.
Bill DeWitt
Well, absolutely. We had moved from horses to steam with the steamboats and the locomotives and then we went to the internal combustion engine. And that's where automobiles and trucks come into play. Post office evaluated gas powered and electric vehicles at the turn of the 20th century, but ultimately gas powered vehicles prevailed in the marketplace, and that's the direction the Postal Service went at the time.
Bill DeWitt
World War One had trucks pretty well standardized. They no longer were just a wagon with a motor thrown on it, and they emerged as a way trucks did to move a large amount of cargo faster than ever before. The railroads had peaked in 1916. They'd gone about as far as they could and trucks went places, railroads could not.
Karla Kirby
So, of course, another major breakthrough in transportation was emerging at that time. When we look at the US Air mail service officially beginning in 1918, of course, there weren't any commercial airplanes at the time or airlines or airports. That meant the postal office department had to build airfields and supply its own pilots, planes and mechanics. So all that being said, how big was our influence on aviation?
Bill DeWitt
Well, the post office and it was the post office department wanted to get air moving. I remember that the people, the recipients of the mail wanted to have the mail move at the same speed that they could. And so if you had people climbing on airliners to move, they wanted the Air postal to be able to move at the same speed.
Bill DeWitt
And so what the post office did, and we're talking about after World War One, the that was the first time that airplanes had been used to any extent. And they started flying mail. In fact, Charles Lindbergh, who's known for his solo trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, was one of the first airmail pilots. And the post office didn't have a system to work against.
Bill DeWitt
They did not have the rail network. And so they started encouraging the airlines to take on mail as well as passengers. And they for a while actually used the military to move some of that, but then found that they wanted to go on the private sector. And so they set up airmail contracts. They merged passenger and mail service and they actively promoted airlines to begin carrying mail.
Bill DeWitt
Now, today, after 1977, you can no longer airmail a domestic letter. So the airmail was a time where the post office was trying to get speed and distance to match the people, the public that was out there. And today, if you go to a post office and ask for airmail stamp for a domestic movement, you can't purchase it and it doesn't move that way.
Bill DeWitt
It may move by air, but we don't recognize that and we don't see it. We don't pay a separate fee for it.
Jonathan Castillo
That's very interesting, Bill. Today, trucks are a major emphasis of the Postal Service's delivery network and a big part of the postmaster general is delivering for America ten year plan. For us, logistics is less about new forms of transportation and I think more about being as as efficient as possible with the vehicles that we do have. How has that strategy reflected larger trends in the transportation industry?
Bill DeWitt
Well, I think the Postal Service is once again taking the lead that the change in transportation techniques or mechanisms has pretty well slowed down. Trucks are definitely the range of the future. But what has been brought in and I think the post office is doing a good job with this is the digital communications and the digital coordination that is going on.
Bill DeWitt
Logistics. During my time referred to ships and containers and trains and containers and trucks, but now as the individual piece of mail or package. And so the focus is on individual shipments. You can use information to make sure you're filling the trucks with mail, but you have to make sure that the mail is going to the right place as efficiently as possible.
Jonathan Castillo
Wow. Lot of great information there. Thank you so much, Bill. It was a pleasure having you on the call.
Karla Kirby
Yes, Bill, thank you. I have absolutely learned something today. It's always great to pick up some new nuggets and each podcast, but we definitely appreciate you joining us today.
Jonathan Castillo
Yes, I learned a lot.
Bill DeWitt
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Karla Kirby
So now we're ready for another. Did you know our segment that reveals some lesser known facts about the Postal Service? Jonathan, do you want to start us off?
Jonathan Castillo
Sure thing. Did you know that during one decade in the 1800s, there were two post office departments headed by two different postmaster general who?
Karla Kirby
I have a feeling this is about the Civil War.
Jonathan Castillo
That's right. From 1861 to 1865, the Confederate States of America, or CSA, operated its own post office department. Even though the CSA formed its post office department, even before the Civil War started, it took a little while to get things going. For one thing, they had no supplies. The Confederate postmaster general recruited Southerners and sympathizers from the U.S. Post Office department in Washington who brought their own maps, reports, forms and plans with them.
Jonathan Castillo
They also started out doing business with U.S. or union money in stamps. Because most printers that could handle that work were in the north.
Karla Kirby
Well, I'm sure their supplies didn't last very long.
Jonathan Castillo
Right. Those stamps ran out pretty quickly and local postmasters in the south were forced to create provisional stamps or just write paid by hand on envelopes. Eventually, in October of 1861, the Confederate Post Office Department got its own stamps. Some of them featured founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. After the war, federal mail service was gradually restored as the union took back territories.
Jonathan Castillo
But it took a while. In fact, by November of 1866, a year and a half after the war ended, service had been restored at only about 36% of post offices that had operated in the South prior to the war. So what do you have for us, Karla?
Karla Kirby
For mine. I'd like to shift to the present day and call out some of the things that the Postal Service is doing to become more sustainable.
Jonathan Castillo
Okay, let's hear it.
Karla Kirby
Okay. Did you know that our Los Angeles mail processing facility has a solar powered generation system consisting of more than 25,000 solar panels? That is currently our largest solar generator at 8.8 megawatts of electricity. Other facilities have since taken advantage of solar power in fiscal 2020. We added to our onsite renewable energy production with a solar installation in New Jersey.
Karla Kirby
Our Belmar, New Jersey processing and distribution center includes more than 13,000 solar panels with a capacity to generate 4.26 megawatts. That installation is expected to generate over 7000 megawatt hours annually, which is enough electricity to power 986 homes each year.
Jonathan Castillo
That's a lot of megawatt hours.
Karla Kirby
It absolutely is. And that wraps up this episode of. Did you know So, you know, great episode today. I learned more about transportation than I ever anticipated. But it was very interesting to hear about how the postal Service has driven transportation from stagecoaches to the railroads to using steam boats doing air mail. What did you take away from today's episode?
Jonathan Castillo
Yeah, it was absolutely incredible to learn about how throughout the course of history in our country, the Postal Service has really been front and center in driving that kind of expansion. We were moving out west, making sure that we get the people their mail and using whatever technology is most advanced at that time. You know, we still continue to do that to this day.
Jonathan Castillo
So it's really for me, that was the big takeaway.
Karla Kirby
I think one of the most polarizing things is to hear how we went from picking up your mail at a storefront to now delivering to 160 363 million homes on almost a daily basis. Definitely polarizing difference.
Jonathan Castillo
Absolutely.
Karla Kirby
That's all for this episode of Mailing it. Don't forget to subscribe to mailing it wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you don't miss any episodes. And follow along on Instagram @USPostalService, X - formerly known as Twitter @USPS, and on Facebook.
Jonathan Castillo
And we just want to thank Bill one more time for being our guest along with our listeners. Thank you so much for joining us.