Page 10 - Demo
P. 10
1941 trip on the east coast, the last Highway Post Office in the United States made its final run over the Cincinnati-Cleveland, OH route. These cancellations were all due to the fact that, during the mid-1960s, there was a major reorganization within the Post Office Department, which resulted in huge volumes of mail being sent to a central location via semi trucks, and processed by highspeed computerized sorting machines. To keep it from being sold off for scrap after its retirement, a postal worker hid the very first HPO bus in a succession of Post Office Department garages. Eventually, its importance was recognized, and it was purchased by members of the United Federation of Postal Clerks, who donated it to the Smithsonian Institution and underwrote the cost of restoring it. That bus is now part of the National Postal Museum collection.Ironically, while the Highway Post Offices were introduced to replace the RPOs, the Railway Mail Service hung on until it had a last run in 1977%u2014five years after the final run of an HPO.Highway Post Office Number One during restoration.