10 Geeky Ways to Deliver Mail: U.S. Postal Service Technology

• transportation
• U.S.
• United States Postal Service
• communication

Animals have always played a major role in delivery services—from the Pony Express to horse-drawn carriages—but only one beast is still hauling mail today. A handful of donkeys and deliverymen still embark on a six- to eight-hour journey through the Grand Canyon five days a week to deliver mail and other supplies to residents of Supai, Arizona. This is the last route being serviced by mules.


New York, Boston, St. Louis, Chicago and Philadelphia all relied on an underground system of pneumatic tubes to move mail during the early 20th century. The two-foot long canisters held 600 letters as they moved through the tubes at speeds up to 35 mph. There were about 27 miles of pneumatic tubes running through New York City, including routes stretched across the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Manhattan with Brooklyn. The proliferation of delivery trucks and expanding urban centers contributed to the demise of this system. Private contractors leased the pneumatic tubes to the USPS, and by 1934 rates were as high as $19,000 per mile per year. Today, many of the tubes remain intact under city streets.


Though this vehicle was never officially part of the USPS fleet, a handful of carriers relied on the Model-T Snowbird attachment kit to plod along snowy routes, providing an alternative to horse-and-sleigh. Snowmobiles are still used in places like Minnesota, Wisconsin and Alaska for winter deliveries.


This post office on wheels was inspired by railroad service and designed to reduce lag time by allowing postal workers to sort parcels while in transit. The first batch of buses, built by the White Motor Company, came equipped with distributing tables, letter cases and enough space to hold 150 mail sacks. Advances in automated sorting and a major restructuring of the postal system eliminated the need for on-the-go organization. In the early 1970s the decision was made that mail would be sent to a central location where high-speed sorters would route it.


In order to keep correspondences flowing between soldiers and the home front without sacrificing precious cargo space, the postal service introduced stationery that was shrunken into microfilm before being shipped. Upon arrival, the letters were enlarged to a fraction of their original size, sorted and delivered. A single sack of V-Mail was the equivalent of 37 sacks of regular mail, although letters were limited to 700 words.

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