Page 3 - Demo

The brightly colored red, white, and blue buses of the Highway Post Office (HPO) were common sights on highways in the United States in the 1950s and %u201860s. As they rolled down the road, between designated towns, clerks were busy inside canceling and sorting mail. The first official Highway Post Office route connected Washington, DC and Harrisonburg, VA on February 10, 1941. Just a few months later, on May 3, 1941, the second Highway Post Office route was inaugurated in Indiana between Indianapolis and South Bend. A third route ran in California on August 4. All three were considered experimental but, because they were popular and successful, they ran for an average of 20 years.The Highway Post Offices had precursors in a few short-lived trial mail routes at the end of the 19thcentury using horses and motorized vehicles, but the true forebears were Railway Post Offices. Postal WagonsIn 1896 a %u201cCollection and Distribution Service%u201d was started in Washington DC, with another in New York. This system used a vehicle similar to a street car and was drawn by two horses. An onboard clerk would collect mail from city letter boxes, stamp it with a special postmark, sort it, then deliver it to mail trains or the main Post Office. Because this system saved as much as 24-hours in delivery time%u2014which businesses liked a lot%u2014the service was soon overwhelmed with mail. So much so, that the New York wagon made sixteen trips a day over its 3-mile route. But the service was discontinued after a year when New York inaugurated an even faster Highway Post Office vehicle Number One.