Going Postal
Should the U.S. Postal Service be parceled out to private companies? There are historical caveats along the mail trail.
WASHINGTON — A year before the formal declaration of independence, the Patriots in North America formally established their own means of reliable communication by having the Second Continental Congress, on July 26, 1775, create the United Colonies Post.
The legacy continental postal system was under British Control and no longer trustworthy as tensions escalated. The King’s Men could intercept or censor correspondences of those who opposed royal rule. Without a secure communications system it would be challenging for the Patriots to coordinate among the Continental Army, militias and political leaders.
There was one man best suited to the job as America’s first postmaster— the iconoclast, Benjamin Franklin. He has been the postmaster general for the colonies under British rule between 1753 and 1774. He well understood the routes and knew how to make them more efficient. Franklin’s work would pave the way for the new country’s Postal Department, created by the Post Office Act of 1792.
That system survived until 1970 when Congress sought to modernize it amid inefficiencies and labor unrest. Since then the mail has been in the hands of the United States Postal Service, a supposedly self-sustaining creature with significant autonomy from direct federal control — but still under Congressional oversight and regulation.
The USPS is required to provide consistent and reliable mail service to every address in the country at the same rates, ensuring universal access, including for such far flung outposts of the empire as American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Your mileage may vary.
For years, an increasing number of Americans have complained about the soaring costs of stamps and mailing packages, slow or missing deliveries and a postal system that appears archaic.
I live, on a secluded peninsula along the Potomac River, a 42-mile drive from the White House. I count myself lucky if a letter from relatives out West makes it here in a week and that if I need to go to the post office the closest one is (only) 10 miles away. In the distant past, my neighbors’ grandparents enjoyed the luxury of two post offices within a few miles. The first one on the peninsula was boarded up in 1934 and the second one shuttered in 1955.
Contrast this to my contemporary experience where I turn to Amazon, not the mailman, to ordering items online in the morning and having them frequently delivered to my front porch the same evening. The U.S. Postal Service gave up on same-day special delivery service in 1997, replacing it with services its patrons pan as poorly named — Priority Mail and Express Mail.
Keep in mind the USPS is supposed to be a self-sustaining entity. In the fiscal year ending this past September 30th, it reported a net loss of $9.5 billion.
Retirement-related costs are about 12% of its operating expenses and USPS is saddled with higher retirement liabilities than other agencies, which it must pay through revenue rather than appropriations provided by Congress. All of this is why, in the months ahead, we’re going to hear more about privatizing America’s postal system. The first Trump administration advocated this six years ago and it’s likely to be the stance of Trump 2.0.
The president-elect has already been discussing the matter with Howard Lutnick, his nominee to run the Department of Commerce. The chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, has said he can’t go to the bathroom without a member of Congress sharing a postal horror story. The postal system is likely to be an attractive spending cut target for Elon Musk’s DOGE advisory panel, the Department of Government Efficiency, (which despite its ambitious name is not and is unlikely to ever be an actual department of the U.S. government. It currently only exists as a Twitter account).
Trump isn’t very sentimental, apparently, about anything postal. He dispatched a letter of denunciation to the Universal Postal Union, as I detailed in 2018, to pull the United States out of the international organization, complaining of perceived favoritism for China. UPU reforms the following year allowed the United States and other nations to set their own rates for delivering inbound international mail (which became effective in 2021). This compromise addressed Trump’s key complaint and the president announced he wouldn’t pull the country out of the international postal system after all.
Before any politician or administration advisor in Washington seriously contemplates pawning off the post office to the highest bidder, I would suggest visiting one address: 2 Massachusetts Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20002. That is the location of the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum, which exhibits a fascinating timeline of the mail evolution.
Postmaster Franklin, in the waning days of British rule, took his job seriously. Following a 1,600-mile inspection of the existing route, he organized a weekly mail wagon between Philadelphia and Boston. Postal riders, carrying lanterns, relayed the mail around the clock.
The 268-mile route between Boston and New York was known as “the King’s best highway.” Today it’s a part of U.S. Route 1.
On less traveled routes, riders would use a hand axe to notch trees marking the path.
Colonial postmasters did more than supervise the mail. Many printed and sold broadsides — single sheets of paper listing ship arrivals, official decrees, court decisions, news of floods and pirates, ministers’ sermons, letters from travelers and even a few advertisements. These newspapers began to be printed regularly, evolving into weeklies or dailies with such names as The Boston Post-Boy, the Courier of New Hampshire and the Pennsylvania Packet and General Advertiser.
As the Patriots bristled under British rule, due to all those new taxes and a restriction of civil rights, the Brits began employing only postmasters they deemed loyal to the Crown who were authorized to open and read the mail in the quest to root out insurrectionists. Americans, not surprisingly, began boycotting the post office.
Ad hoc postal stations at the time were located in taverns and inns. Locals would gather to socialize and retrieve any letters addressed to them.
By 1800, selected post offices of the finally independent United States were designated as regional distribution centers. This hub-and-spoke system is in use again today.
Free home delivery was a later benefit. Until the mid-19th century, most letter carrier were not paid by the government — they earned money by charging a cent or two for each letter delivered. Most Americans preferred to save their pennies and pick up the mail at the post office. During the Civil War this meant scenes of anxious women and children in long lines at post offices waiting for word from their husbands and fathers on the front lines. A postal employee, Joseph Briggs, took pity on them and convinced his bosses to begin free delivery, which was first implemented in Cleveland, Ohio.
Mail costs traditionally were calculated based on distance. The sender paid in cash and the envelope was marked in red ink, Alternatively, letters could be sent black ink "collect," which obligated the recipient to pay for delivery. Circular ink hand-stamps with the sending date and location were used to mark the outbound mail.
Private mail routes, competitors to the government, were outlawed in 1845 — a ban that effectively remained in effect until 1979 — and a newly legislated mail service commenced with contractors carrying the U.S. mail with “celerity, certainty, and security.” Weary of repeatedly writing these words in ledgers, postal clerks substituted three asterisks— * * * —and the phrase “Star Route” was born. The contracted carriers were allowed to use any form of transportation they desired to carry the mail, from canoes to snowshoes.
Star Routes still exist with a less memorable official name — Highway Contract Routes. Among the most unique is the five days a week, up to eight hour round trip route in Supai, Arizona. Mules travel switchbacks to the bottom of the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, descending 3000 feet.
The innovation of the pre-printed United States postage stamp came along in mid-1847. Two years earlier, Congress had lowered postage rates, which dropped again in 1851 to three cents, where it remained for more than 30 years.
If you’ve lost track of today’s rate for a first class letter it’s 73 cents and it will possibly increase in 2025. That is why is it advisable to buy those ‘Forever’ stamps, which for nearly 15 years have been a customer favorite. Anyone who had purchased them when they first were issued in 2007 and still has a stash made a good investment: They cost only 41 cents back then.
Early U.S. stamps are part of the National Philatelic Collection, housed at the Mass Avenue museum. Thousands of stamps can be viewed, part of the millions in the collection, which is the largest collection of Smithsonian artifacts except for those held by the National Museum of Natural History.
One of my first childhood hobbies was collecting stamps (along with coins and baseball cards). Naturally, I wanted to see the rarest stamp in this vast collection. I figured it would be the famous Inverted Jenny, a 24-cent airmail stamp issued in 1918. Due to a printing error one sheet containing 100 stamps, featuring a Curtiss JN-4 biplane, known as a "Jenny,” was printed with the plane appearing upside down. A single stamp from this sheet in November of 2024 sold for $2 million.
Somewhat to my surprise, that is not deemed the rarest U.S. stamp. The honor goes to an experimental one-cent stamp from 1868 featuring, appropriately, Benjamin Franklin. It is known as the Z-Grill, for its pattern of small, horizontal indentations designed to absorb ink and prevent reuse of the stamp after cancellation. Only a pair of 1-cent Z-Grills is known to still exist. One is owned by the New York Public Library and on long-term loan to the National Postal Museum. The other was purchased at auction in June for $4.4 million by an unnamed bidder. Based on aesthetics, I’d rather have an Inverted Jenny in my collection.
Air mail was another experimental delivery system that took wings in the early 20th century America. Until then, the mail moved mainly by horse and carriage, train and that final mile, on foot. (One of these days I will write about the most exotic delivery system attempted anywhere —the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim’s 1935 Rocket Mail Experiments under authorization of the royal palace).
The United States post office implemented its first scheduled airmail service in 1918. The inaugural route connected the nation’s capital, Washington, with Philadelphia and New York City — the first flight using a modified Jenny biplane piloted by a pair of Army officers. Civilians pilots were hired a year later and in 1920 letters began flying across the continent, from New York to San Francisco. The postal service still relied on trains to move the air mail at night until the innovation of lighted airfields in 1924.
The technological innovations advanced throughout the 20th century. Optical scanners were developed to read handwritten addresses and help with the sorting.
The ZIP code system (Zoning Improvement Plan) debuted in July of 1963, with the help of an introductory film. It replaced postal zones for large cities, which were first used during World War Two.
Most adults probably know their ZIP code but how many can remember their enhanced ZIP+4 number? I cannot. ZIP+4 was introduced in 1983 and seems mostly utilized by bulk mailers.
Few matters in Congress these days enjoy bipartisan support, but criticism of the USPS unites a number of Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill (20515, by the way, is the exclusive ZIP code for Congressional offices).
Members of both parties, during hearings, have lashed out at the controversial postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a Trump appointee. But DeJoy will have survived for entirety of the Biden administration thanks to a Board of Governors reluctant to fire him, citing operational improvements and financial reforms under his leadership and concerns about ousting him creating chaos.
A harsh spotlight was shone on DeJoy in 2020 when many Democrats and state election officials accused him of undermining confidence in mail voting at a time when then-President Trump repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of postal ballots.
The tour of the National Post Museum highlights voting by mail as an American tradition, dating back to 1864 when Union soldiers were allowed to use absentee ballots sent by post. In 1901, Kansas became the first state to permit voting by mail, but it was limited to railroad employees.
What becomes evident from the museum tour is that the postal service is as ingrained an American institution as any we have and is older than the country itself.
In some countries, however, government-run postal systems are passé.
Our former colonizers, the United Kingdom, fully privatized their postal service in 2015, although they still call it Royal Mail.
Germany did it 15 years prior to the Brits with Deutsche Post now owning global logistics company DHL.
The majority of Nippon Yusei is out of public hands, although the Japanese government retains a 36% stake in the conglomerate which trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and whose assets exceed two-and-a-half trillion (not a typo) dollars. It’s also a bank and a life insurance company. I had a postal savings account there for many years when I lived in Japan
In the Netherlands, the Dutch entity, formerly Royal PTT Post is now operated as a private company, PostNL. (Scoll down that link for a nice explanatory video.)
In those countries, the conversions are given mixed reviews. Systems have modernized and are more efficient, but some customers complain about higher costs and reduced reliability and accessibility.
America’s postal system has the authority to borrow money from the U.S. Treasury to cover its operational deficit, up to a statutory limit that is currently set at $15 billion. This borrowing helps cover losses but it also adds to the system’s debt burden, compelling further service cuts and the closing of more postal facilities.
The Second Continental Congress in 1775 thought creation of a government-run postal service was of the utmost importance and urgency. The 119th U.S. Congress in 2025 may want future deliveries taking a different route, especially if Donald Trump leans heavily on Republicans to push privatization. When the postal system’s fate inevitably comes up for a vote, patrons from Bazoo, West Virginia to Yigu, Guam, will certainly see it as a red letter day.
