Package delivery is very careful nowadays. When they get a package marked "Fragile," they throw it underhand……Milton Berle
Last week we received the dreaded e-mail from Amazon, “We’re Sorry, Your Package Has Been Delayed”. That’s when the fun tracking the now nomadic item being delivered by the USPS begins. We check the timeline on the Amazon Orders menu. It begins with our order. Yes, they got it. Then there is an animated little blue line that shows progress. The little blue line moves left to right from order placed to order shipped. Then the blue line stops moving between shipped and “out for delivery”. If the ghost of Benjamin Franklin, founder of the Post Office smiles on you, the little blue line will move to “out for delivery”. Oh, no. You’re not out of the woods (and neither is your package) yet. Out for delivery time changes to “your package will arrive by 8 p.m.” Then, either your package will arrive or, you get the dreaded empty mailbox syndrome and the “We’re sorry, your package has been delayed”. Following the empty mailbox option, you once again track package and what a tangled web that can be. Yes, it was shipped. But to where? The email * from Amazon got us thinking about the occasionally circuitous route some of our Amazon packages “delivered” by US Mail, as well as mail and package deliveries services in general, and how we got to this point in time. We’ll keep you updated on the odyssey of a particular package as we go on.
According to D.J. MacLennan writing on the website, Mental Floss, in 2015, a French woman in her 80s received a letter intended for her great grandfather. The punctuality-deficient correspondence arrived at the home of one Thérèse Pailla a mere 138 years after the sender originally mailed it in 1877. It was sent from Sains-du-Nord to Trélon, a whopping six miles away. The letter was in regard to an order of yarn from Mrs. Pailla’s great grandfather’s spinning mill.
“The luxuries of one generation, become the necessities of the next. “Charles F. Jenkins, The Farm Journal, 1911.
The word mail is Middle English circa 1100 (in the sense ‘traveling bag’): from Old French male ‘wallet’, and of West Germanic origin notes the Oxford English Dictionary. Originally, mail was carried in a relay system on horseback by riders who were “posted” at set intervals along the roads which are, surprise! called, “post roads”. This “post” is not, in this context a pole stuck in the ground. It comes from the Latin ponere, meaning “to place,” and referred to the placing or “posting” of the riders along the route as we shall see.
The very first traces of mail can be found in Ancient Egypt around 2400 B.C. This postal service was exclusive to the pharaohs who used couriers to send out directives throughout the empire’s territory. “Ramses II wants a beef, goat, mutton, perch, catfish, mullet, pigeon, duck, heron, crane Happy Meal to go.” requires a servant or, the order to “attack the Nubians on Tuesday” is disseminated. The earliest surviving piece of mail is Egyptian, dating back to 255 BC and recovered from the Oxyrhynchus papyri cache. Our research cannot find the content of that oldest piece of mail but it may have had something to do with Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Then, circa 550-330 BC, the Persians, probably beginning under the leadership of Cyrus the Great, would deliver through a system of couriers (known as pirradaziš in Old Persian) on horseback. They used the Royal Road, from Susa, the ancient capital of Persia, across Anatolia to Sardis and Smyrna on the Aegean Sea, a distance of more than 1,500 miles. Thus, a message asking for sardines from Sardis could be sent from Susa to Sardis in between seven and nine days. Like Ancient Egypt, mail in the Persian Empire was only for the king and influential leaders such as Croesus. This system inspired the famous quote by Greek historian, Herodotus, who wrote in 500 BC: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." It is now the unofficial US Postal Service motto. The Persian system was a network that was known as Chapar Khaneh or courier houses. A rider would ride quickly from one courier house to the next and swap horses when he arrived so he could continue to the next one just as fast. Sounds like………………….flash forward 2,500 years to the famous Pony Express which we will examine in due course. However, we still have a ways to go before “delivering” that description. Mail also traveled throughthe Maurya Empire in India around 322 BC which had a similar system of couriers. They rode in specialized chariots which would deliver messages such as “we’re going to war with the Seleucids and your taxes are going up”. Then came the Romans. Their system was known as the Cursus Publicus, or the public way. Emperor Augustus modified the system so a single courier could deliver the message from start to finish. This was developed so that the recipient of the message, aka the emperor, could ask the messenger further questions, (does the boiled gladiator come with fries?” or “Agrippa, yes, you should take the navy and attack Marc Antony and Cleopatra at Actium”), which wasn’t possible if the message was constantly handed off.
All these systems were for the elite. The average person would have neither the ability to read, nor write. They didn’t have the expensive tools needed to write, nor did they have anyone to write to, as everyone they knew probably lived in their village. The sending of mail by the common people would have to wait for a millennium. Amazon Post Office Delivery Update – 9:38 (our) Package arrived Carrier Facility Scranton Pa.
The first step towards a modern postal system took place in 1653 in France. Jean-Jacques Renouard de Villayer created a private system in Paris. He generated elements of modern postal delivery that may sound familiar. De Villayer set up boxes around Paris where letters could be left and delivered. Any letter would be conveyed if you used one of his pre-paid envelopes or attached a receipt to the letter showing that delivery had been paid. He guaranteed same-day delivery within the city of Paris. Unfortunately, this groundbreaking and innovative service quickly went out of business as people began putting mice inside his mailboxes, and the public became hesitant to use them. We wonder why. The physical act of sending a letter was still very difficult. Thank Englishman Sir Rowland Hill for some major changes. In January 1837 Hill published his riveting and scintillating pamphlet Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability. He changed the procedure so that the sender would pay for postage, not the recipient. Then, he removed all distance delivery charges throughout the entire United Kingdom. There would be one price regardless of where it was sent. Third, he got rid of charging for the number of pieces of paper being sent and instead charged by weight. The new cost of sending a letter anywhere in the UK was 1 penny for ½ ounce or 142 grams. However, it could take weeks or months for a letter to arrive, and you might never know if you actually ever made it……just like today. Unfortunately, there were massive loopholes in the system. Members of parliament had the ability to send mail free of charge. If you happened to know a member, they could mail it for you for free. There were 658 seats in parliament, yet in the 1830s, members of Parliament managed to send 7 million pieces of mail annually. That is over 10,000 letters per member per year. Hill also created a small adhesive piece of paper that could be placed on the envelope to prove payment had been made, the first postage stamp. That first stamp was known as the Penny Black, and it was an image of Queen Victoria in profile. There were over 68,000,000 Penny Black stamps that were printed, and they aren’t that hard to find today. You can even find originals on eBay. Monty Python’s John Cleese notes that “The Postal service created a series of commemorative stamps commemorating lawyers, but they had to withdraw them within a couple of weeks because people couldn't figure out which side of the stamp to spit on.
Package Delivery Update -10:39 (our) Package left Carrier Facility Scranton. 11:48 Package arrived Carrier Facility Montpellier, Vt.
In 1874, the Treaty of Bern was signed, which established the Universal Postal Union. Prior to the UPU, every country had to establish bilateral treaties with every other country for the delivery of international mail. Meanwhile in America, the first Post Office had been established in a tavern in Boston in 1639. On November 6, 1639, the Massachusetts General Court named Fairbanks’ Tavern as a post office for letters coming into or going out of the colony to overseas posts. Yes, our postal service originated in a bar. The United States Post Office (USPO) was ordered by the Second Continental Congress on July 26, 1775. Benjamin Franklin oversaw its creation as head of the department for a short while. In 1789, George Washington appointed Samuel Osgood of Andover, Mass. as first American Postmaster General. which used to be a cabinet post. Do people even know what a Postmaster General is? Do people even know we have a Postmaster General? Osgood held the job for two years. At the time, there were 75 official post offices and more than 2,000 miles of post roads. The Post Office Department hired post riders who would take terrible roads that were even worse than moonscape of our Pa. 447 hundreds of miles through treacherous conditions, just like the current I 95, from Washington D.C to Petersburg, VA, (a journey fraught with peril), to deliver the mail to the various post offices. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the recently ratified United States Constitution empowered Congress to establish Post Offices and Roads under the supervision of the executive branch. Initially there were those 75 post offices, but 40 years later there were more than 8,000. The first official Congressionally recognized Post Office Department opened in the United States in 1792. The central hub was Philadelphia. In the early 19th century, post offices were called post houses. By 1863, mail had been divided into three classes:
• letters, called First-Class Mail;
• newspapers and other periodicals, called second-class mail; and
• all other mailable matter, called third-class mail.
52,624,000,000 pieces of first class mail were delivered by the USPS in 2020 and…..they get 98% of it right. “Abstract anger is great for rhetorical carrying on. You can go on endlessly about the post office, but it doesn't mean you're mad at your mailman.”……P. J. O'Rourke
Package Delivery Update – 6:45 a.m. (our) Package left Carrier Facility Montpellier, Vt. 11:48 Package arrived Carrier Facility Texarkana, Tx. & Ak.
Of course, the mail should be delivered to something and before the 1850s, mailboxes were non-existent. They became necessary after the invention and widespread use of postage stamps, which allowed people more freedom in sending letters. With stamps, it was no longer necessary to purchase postage from the local post office. Mailboxes became a necessity in 1863, when citizens began enjoying Free City Delivery. Note that Rural Free Delivery is RFD. Letter carriers hand-delivered people’s mail directly to their doorstep without any charge. Although the residential mailbox was already useful, it wasn’t until 1923 when it became mandatory in the U.S for each household to have a mailbox or at least a letter slot. This ensured that people received their letters and letter carriers performed their jobs. To ensure some form of uniformity when it came to the common mailbox, the U.S. Postal Service required that mailboxes for homes were big enough to make room for letter envelopes and magazines and be sturdy enough to withstand the weather and regular wear and tear. Alas, they did not anticipate the advent of snowplow operators with the goal of obliterating as many mailboxes as possible after a storm. Also, the mailbox should also have a signaling device like that little “flag” at the side to alert someone that there is a letter inside the box (hopefully not a mouse -see Paris 1653) for the recipient or that a package had arrived. The most common type of mailbox used for residences is the tunnel style. It was designed in 1915 by Roy J. Joroleman. an employee of the Post Office.
If it was good enough for the Persians, it was good enough for us and so we ride off to examine America’s legendary Pony (pony sounded faster than horse) Express. The service reduced the time for messages between the America’s east and west coasts to about ten days and inspired hundreds of books, movies and television westerns, as riders on horses would gallop between stations at a rapid pace, probably fleeing for their lives from robbers, hostile Indians**, rampaging buffalo herds, rabid prairie dogs, mountain lions, male elk in rutting mode, rain, snow, and the exigencies of a diet consisting solely of baked beans. The Pony Express delivered the inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln to San Francisco in 1861 in 7 days, 17 hours. The most famous of the Express riders was Buffalo Bill Cody who claimed in his autobiography that he was 15 when he became a rider. Alas, the Pony Express and Buffalo Bill lived a lot longer on film and literature than in actuality thanks to the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line in October 1861. Since the Pony Express was no longer express, it disappeared before you could say, Edsel, Evian Water Bra, New Coke and Google Glasses. The Pony Express commenced operations on April 3, 1960, and it went out of business on October 26,1861 having lost $200,000 ……but only one mailbag.
I wrote you a love letter, and I sent it snail mail. Love is forever, and that’s about how long it’ll take to get to you.”
― Jarod Kintz
Speeding delivery of mail has always been a priority so some bright mind thought of air mail and the first air mail transportation can be traced back to 1870, when letters were carried out of a then besieged Paris – it was the Franco-Prussian War - by balloons, sent into the air and left to the unpredictable caprice of the wind. The first flight was made on September 23, 1870, and carried 500 pounds of mail. Needless to say, things did not go well as the balloons could not be controlled and were just as liable as not to land in enemy (Prussian) territory as in the proper destination. Some of them were carried by the winds many miles from Paris and some of them were never heard of after leaving Paris, sort of like our missing Amazon package. The first air mail service in the United States was conducted at an aviation meeting at Nassau Boulevard on Long Island, N. Y., during the week of September 23 to 30, 1911. Earle L. Ovington, with his Queen monoplane, was selected as the air mail carrier and covered a set route between the temporary post office established at Nassau Boulevard and the post office at Mineola, both on Long Island, a distance of 2.5 miles, dropping the pouches for the postmaster to pick up. The Post Office Department began scheduled airmail service between New York and Washington, D.C., on May 15, 1918, during WW I. The USPS history reminds us that pilots flew in open cockpits in all kinds of weather. There was no radar or flying aid and so they used landmarks on the ground to guide themselves. If it was foggy and they couldn’t see, oy vey! “Say, what’s that mountain goat doing up here in a fog bank?”……..Gary Larson cartoon………..A helpful 1918 article titled Practical Hints on Flying advised pilots “never forget that the engine may stop, and at all times keep this in mind.”.
Package Delivery Update – 1:23 p.m. (our) Package left Carrier Facility Texarkana, Tx. & Ak. 9:58 p.m. Package arrived Carrier Facility West Omaha, Neb.
Why are shipping jokes so funny? It’s all in the delivery.
Of course, the Postal Service is not alone in the package delivery world, there were 456,508 Couriers & Local Delivery Services businesses in the US alone as of 2023, but it was among the first. We have Parcel Post which began service on January 1, 1913. And begin it did. At the stroke of midnight Postmaster Edward M. Morgan in New York City and Postmaster General Frank H. Hitchcock dropped packages addressed to each other into the mail, racing to be the first to use the service. The first package to be delivered was 11 pounds of apples sent to New Jersey governor (and President-Elect) Woodrow Wilson. The Woodrow Wilson Club of Princeton deposited the apples at a local post office at precisely 12:01 a.m. By prearrangement, the carrier assigned to normally deliver the governor’s mail, Postmaster, David Gransom, received the parcel “before the cancelling ink was dry” and delivered the apples to the waiting Wilson at 12:04 a.m. Wilson met Gransom at the door, signed for the package, and presented the carrier with the pencil he used. Some tip, Gransom whined. Wilson then whined, “these are Macintosh, I wanted Granny Smiths”. The public was so excited by this delivery development that they tried to send humans via Parcel Post. This practice of using the mail to deliver humans from one place to another commenced later in 1913. Shortly after Parcel Post went into effect, an Ohio couple used the service to mail their infant son from their house to his grandmother’s house a mile down the road. The practice was banned in 1920.
Package Delivery Update – 11:57 p.m. (our) Package left Carrier Facility West Omaha, Neb. 9:58 a.m. Package arrived Carrier Facility Stroudsburg, Pa.
“On any given day, according to UPS, 2 percent of the world’s GDP can be found in delivery trucks or package cars”…. Thomas Friedman ……….. United Parcel Service (UPS) originated in 1907, when the American Messenger Company was started in Seattle by 19-year-old James E. Casey and another teenager, Claude Ryan. Using a borrowed $100 as their initial capital, they set up the business in a cellar beneath Ryan’s uncle’s tavern. Yes, a bar again, see first colonial post office 1639 above. Their first employees ran errands and made deliveries on foot or by bicycle. They opened another office opened in 1912 and off they went. The following year the company merged with a competitor and acquired its first delivery truck, a converted Model T Ford. Any color the customer wants, as long as it's black…………. Henry Ford……….At this time, Casey and Ryan decided to concentrate on delivery of packages from stores and so they changed the company name to Merchants Parcel Delivery. In 1916 employee Charles Soderstrom had the idea to paint the company’s vehicles dark brown, a color that tends to camouflage grime. In 1925 the entire company became known as United Parcel Service (UPS), and by the end of the decade UPS was operating all over the West Coast. In 1930 the United Parcel Service moved its headquarters to New York City.
Package Delivery Update – 5:16 a.m (our) Package left Carrier Facility Carrier Facility Stroudsburg, Pa.10:48 p.m. Package arrived Carrier Facility Charlotte Amalie, U.S Virgin Islands
Fed Ex earned a place in our hearts during the winter of the lockdown for Covid. We ordered some wine online. Delivery was by Federal Express. “Your package was delivered!” read the happy text. Since signatures were not required during those dark days, we looked outside our front door. No case of wine. We looked outside our back door. No case of wine. We called Fed Ex. “It was delivered”, we were told. “No, it wasn’t”, they were told. For the sake of brevity, I have left out the excruciating process of transferred calls, the busy signals and phone calls simply cut off until I got someone named Ralph who just happened to pick up a ringing phone as he walked by an empty desk at their Scranton, PA. facility. In the meantime, we called the wine outlet and explained our difficulty. “Oh, Fed Ex again!”, we were told. Apparently Fed Ex and wandering packages seemed to go hand in hand for them. Graciously, they offered to send a replacement case of wine. Fed Ex still had not located our previous case, but they were aware of our problem thanks to Ralph although alas, we would be subject to their tender mercies of delivery once again for our additional order. Miraculously, the replacement case of wine was delivered. We called out to the driver as he was walking away and (masked, with gloves on), gave him a tip. Five minutes later, the driver knocked on our door. Our missing case of wine had been delivered to the empty home of neighbors who do not come up to our development during the winter. He “just happened to look” there. We now had two cases of wine, one room temperature and one chilled - that was the week that outside temperatures were averaging 10° which is not good for red wine but hey, any old “port” in a storm. Helped with dealing with Covid madness though.
On April 17, 1973, Federal Express, founded by Richard Smith, began operations in Memphis, Tennessee, with 389 employees. That same day, 14 aircraft delivered 186 packages to 25 U.S. cities. Why Memphis? it’s centrally located in the U.S. Its airport is rarely closed because of bad weather. The airport was willing to make improvements for the operation and additional hangar space was readily available and besides, there are at least 21 songs about Memphis including Chuck Berry’s Memphis Tennessee and Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis.
Flash forward to the present and Fed Ex struck again. We received a happy text from Walmart. Our two cases of Perrier were delivered! I checked outside the door. Nope! Driveway? No. Neighbors? No. Time to call Walmart since they sent the text. Just then, at that exact moment -and the timing couldn’t have been more exquisite, our home Wi-Fi went out. No signal. No nothing. Gone was Wi-Fi and along with it our desktop computer, cable TV and our land line phones. I couldn’t make a phone call with the cell phone either. We live in a sketchy cell phone reception area and at this moment that was sketchy too. Somewhere, someone had our Perrier. Finally, I stood in the middle of our street (ironically across from our mailbox) that past experience indicated that on a sunny day with no wind, I could get one bar on the phone and make a call. Why? Like how cows always face north or south while eating? Why do you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery is dead? Why are there 5 syllables in the word "monosyllabic”, or sexual reproduction, another of life’s mysteries. I called Walmart. Miraculously I got through right away. This was good news since I had to hold the phone against the back of my head in order to get that one bar. The loud conversation, recall I was holding the phone to the back of my head, went thusly. “What is your order number?” Me – “I don’t have it; our Wi-Fi has gone out and the order number is on your email”. “What is your tracking number?” “Don’t have it, no Wi-Fi.”. He tried his best to assist us. “We need your email address. Is your email address – Johncaf25@aol? “Me, “no”. After he read off several more incorrect e-mails, I gave him the correct e-mail address. “Is your mailing address **** Lakeview Terrace?” said he. “No, there is no such address in our town.” said I. I give correct mailing address. Sounds of fingers clicking on keyboard (see our essay Have You Noticed?) “Give me a few moments to review this,” said he. A few moments pass. A few more moments pass. Still more moments pass. The phone is hurting my head, my shoulder is sore and I’m getting cramps in my fingers but I’m afraid to move it lest I lose the call. Assistance returns. “The Fed ex driver scanned in the wrong address and delivered it to the wrong address they will attempt to retrieve your order.” I stifle a laugh but he can’t see me smiling and thinking ‘yea, this is going to go well when they knock on someone’s door and ask for the Perrier back’. “If the order is not retrieved in 24-48 hours, he continued, (this is a Saturday, they’re going to retrieve the order on a Sunday?), you will get a full refund.” I thank him and disconnect the call and think, “and then I’m supposed to order another delivery from Fed ex?” Miraculously, our missing Perrier completed its arduous journey and arrived, intact, three days later and our thirst was quenched. All was right with the world. However, we all know that there is one thing that is certain about mail delivery and it is uncertainty.
Please Mister Postman look and see Oh yeah
Is there a letter in your bag for me?………The Marvelettes.
Package Delivery Update – 2:03 a.m. (our) Package left Carrier Facility Charlotte Amalie, U.S Virgin Islands 8:09 a.m. Package arrived Carrier Facility Stroudsburg, Pa. 8:15 a.m. package -Out for Delivery. It was delivered. We eagerly opened the package. The item was the wrong size. It had to be returned.
* In case you were wondering, in 1971, Ray Tomlinson, a computer engineer working for Bolt Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, developed a system for sending messages between computers he called email. He used the @ symbol to identify addresses. Tomlinson says he can't remember the first message he sent, or the exact date he sent it.
** The word Indian came to be used because Christopher Columbus repeatedly expressed the mistaken belief that he had reached the shores of South Asia. Convinced he was correct, Columbus fostered the use of the term Indios --originally, person from the Indus valley in India - to refer to the peoples of the New World. We also note that Columbus was a blonde.
Sources:
https://everything-everywhere.com/the-history-of-postal-delivery/
https://www.hived.space/blog/a-brief-history-of-postal-services#:~:text=The%20very%20first%20traces%20of,system%20of%20couriers%20on%20horseback.
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/research-articles/100-years-of-parcels-packages-and-packets-oh-my/the-first-packages
https://postalmuseum.si.edu
https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Parcel-Service
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101048919383&seq=7
