Moving the U.S. mail as quickly and efficiently as possible has involved just about every manner of horsepower over the years, from the four-legged variety driving the Pony Express and stagecoaches to motorized conveyances of every stripe.
Beginning in the mid-1860s, railways led the way for rapid mail transport through the Railway Post Office (RPO) system. Postal clerks manned railcars outfitted to allow the pickup, sorting and dropoff of mail while en route. The RPO system quickly grew to include hundreds of routes across the country, reaching its peak in the 1920s and 1930s. It also provided untold revenues to the rail lines.
But transportation methods have a way of evolving, and other delivery options began to erode the railroads' key position. Airmail routes soon took away that portion of express delivery, while coast-to-coast road and highway systems experienced exponential expansion. By the late 1930s, railroad lines and RPO routes were in decline. Simultaneously, the U.S. population was quickly spreading out from major cities to decentralized, suburban and rural areas supported by increasingly upgraded roadways.
The U.S. Post Office needed a new plan, and the Highway Post Office (HPO) system was implemented. February 10, 1941, was the inaugural run of the Washington, D.C., to Harrisonburg, Virginia, bus route. Modeled after the RPO system, mail was again sorted en route, but a bus could quickly service many smaller post offices no longer served by trains. With their ability to stop and go as needed, buses could detour around obstacles that would leave a mail train sidetracked.
HPO routes were generally set up to be approximately 150 miles each way (one tankful of fuel), with a typical route serving 25 or more post offices on its daily round. At the end of each day, the bus returned to its home base for servicing and was readied for the next day's run.
A typical HPO-outfitted bus resides in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Transportation. Their exhibit, manufactured by The White Motor Company of Cleveland, Ohio, is a Model 789 with a Model 24A, 210hp, 12-cylinder, horizontally opposed engine. Built in the early 1940s, it saw service into the 1950s.
Shortly after that well-received first route, WWII put the program on hold. In 1946, a second route was established; the program grew steadily to include approximately 130 routes through the mid-1960s, replacing discontinued RPO routes.
Although generally hailed as a success, the HPO was soon made obsolete by the same factors that crippled the original RPO system: greatly increasing quantities of mail and an ever-expanding (and increasingly widely distributed) population base. This population pattern called for yet another approach.
In the 1960s, the country was divided into regions, each served by a sectional center, where mail, processed by high-speed sorting machines, was trucked or flown to area and local post offices.
Both the RPO and HPO systems ran their last routes in the mid-1970s. Oddly enough, the last train route continued for several years after the final bus run.
This article originally appeared in the July, 2007 issue of Hemmings Motor News.
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