July 1 – Postal – Postage Day!

nPostednon July 1, 2015

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Incouldn’t find the “why” postal workers and postage stamps arenbeing honored today, July 1, rather than some other day, but severalnsources claim that July 1 is both National Postal Worker Day AND U.S.nPostage Stamp Day.

nItnwould be a perfect time to recognize your postal carrier with a smallngift in your mailbox. It would also be a great time to discover thenfun of stamp collecting and the beauty of commemorative stamps.

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nInfound some commemorative stamps honoring poet Maya Angelou andnarchitect Robert Robinson Taylor, remembering the Civil War, andncelebrating gifts of friendship between Japan and the U.S. – plus more.

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nHerenare some facts about postal workers and postage stamps:

n Manyn postal carriers walk from four to eight miles a day – whilen carrying heavy bags of letters and packages – in all sorts ofn weather!

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nOfn course, some postal carriers deliver mail while driving mail trucks.n Or deliver mail in some other way, like mule train at the Grandn Canyon, in Arizona, or by boat in several places.

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nThen postal service moves mail using planes, trains, trucks, cars, boats,n ferries, helicopters, subways, float planes, hovercraft, mules,n bicycles, and of course feet!

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nThen longest rural delivery route is in Oklahoma; the carrier travelsn more than 187 miles a day!

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nThesen days a letter traveling across the country, from NYC to Sann Francisco, takes less than seven hours, but in 1900 it took four andn a half days, and in 1850 it took four weeks up to several month.

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Of course, in the 1800s, carrying mail across
the country was dangerous as well as time-consuming.
(Notice the man next to the driver – he’s using a rifle,
perhaps against a large animal, or attacking I

The Pony Express carried letters (not packages)
across the country in less than two weeks.

This service operated at a loss and only lasted
for 18 months.

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nThen U.S. Postal Service processes millions of letters per day! Like,n more than 500 million! (That’s almost 6,000 pieces of mail processedn per second!)

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nDidn you know that the U.S. Postal Service receives ZERO tax dollars forn its operations?

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nBeforen 1863, postage paid only for the delivery of mail from one Postn Office to another Post Office. People mailing letters and packagesn would take their mail to the nearest Post Office (as people often don today), and people also had to go to the Post Office to get theirn mail. Some people and businesses hired private delivery firms to getn their mail for them.

In 1863 the Postmaster General suggestedn free city delivery, which was being used in England, and Congressn agreed. By the next year, free city delivery had been established inn 65 cities across the country. By 1900, this service had beenn extended to 796 cities nationwide.

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nOriginallyn the postal carriers hand-delivered the mail to their customers –n if the person named on the envelope wasn’t home, the letter remainedn in the carrier’s bag, to be delivered later. But in the early 1900s,n people created letter slots and mail boxes. This helped make mailn delivery much, much more efficient, since hand-delivery meant thatn letter carriers had to wait an average of 30 minutes to an hour eachn and every day just standing at doors waiting to see if anybody wasn home!

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nInn the first half of the twentieth century (1900s), mail was deliveredn to homes twice a day in most towns and cities, and it was deliveredn to businesses up to four times a day! But in 1950 the secondn delivery to homes was ended in most places; the additionaln deliveries to businesses were also phased out over the next fewn decades.

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nInn the past, carriers used to walk 22 miles a day, carrying up to 50n pounds of mail at a time, working 9 to 11 hours a day six days an week (and sometimes part of Sunday as well). Now U.S. postaln carriers have a 40-hour workweek and may only carry up to 35 poundsn at a time.

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