Studebaker ZIP postal delivery vans loaded on a rail car for bulk delivery

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=4580348302200265&set=gm.853908947009007&idorvanity=751896323876937

I posted about the ZIP Studebaker postal delivery vans a little while ago https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2025/07/a-63-studebaker-zip-van-i-dont-think.html

Packard Mail Truck, 1923 Washington DC, Shriners Convention, Postmaster Mooney

Set up for the big convention of Masonic orders held that year in Washington, D.C. The gent in front is Postmaster William M. Mooney

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/257/

https://www.shorpy.com/node/13429?size=_original#caption

it took 12 years but I finally came across some good photos of the Wagenhals electric postal delivery cart

Steve looked these up way back in 2012, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2013/09/1913-wagenhals-electric.html

https://forums.aaca.org/topic/341211-period-images-to-relieve-some-of-the-stress/page/626/

Jimmy Morris was one of five brothers who all served in World War II. They all came home and lived long lives. After the war, Jimmy Morris spent most of his career as a mail carrier in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.... but 3 letters he sent home from WW2 in Europe, just were found, and read for the 1st time by his family

Thanks to a postage collector on a mission and a social media post, a brother and sister opened the previously sealed letters their late father sent to his parents in 1944 from England, around D Day, while he was serving in the 83rd Thunderbolt Division of the U.S. Army during the war.

Erik Martin, a postage collector in Massachusetts ordered a batch of war envelopes online.

"This batch had four letters to the same woman, and I saw that three of them were still sealed, so I've never seen that before," Martin said.

He became determined to find the descendants of Mrs. Francis Morris, so Martin posted the information he had about the letters on a Facebook page. 

That helped lead to the connection within a day. From there, Martin mailed the letters to the Morris family in Delaware County.

All three letters were written between May and June of 1944, right around D-Day, when their father was stationed in England.

 
https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/world-war-ii-delaware-county-family-letters/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/philatelycheatersaroundtheglobe/posts/25426009440334442/

Summer and Winter Resort Post Offices, and South Western Michigan resorts in the 1920s and 30s

 According to the publication "Summer and Winter Resort Post Offices of the United States 1891-1966" by Chester Smith Jr., the Wabaningo Post Office began operation in 1897 and ran continuously until 1938. 

The post office was open from June 15 to September 15 and served the Sylvan Beach Resort and other resorts in the area. 

There were over one hundred resort post offices in Michigan that operated three or four months out of the year during the peak of the resort area in the 1920s and 1930s and 1600 resort post offices across the United States.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Pere Marquette Railroad provided service from Chicago to West Michigan’s resorts, even running extra trains called the Resort Special in summer months. 

https://www.miplace.org/4a77f3/globalassets/documents/shpo/research-resources/publications/west-michigan-pike-project-report--volume-ii-historic-resource-survey-part-ii.pdf

a 63 Studebaker Zip Van. On facebook marketplace... here's a rare opportunity to restore a van (little more than a good paint job) to a well remembered iconic professional postal delivery van! It's a Zip Code van! (Thank you Blind Dog Fabrications!)

 
Called the zip van because ZIP Codes were just being introduced by the postal service at time.

So these vans were named zip vans to help spread the work and were only made one year by Studebaker because AMC was a low bidder the next go around for the contract.

There were 4,238 made and probably less than a handful still in existence

They have 2 sets of gas pedals, so they could be driven while standing and while sitting.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/672886261782204

As I just posted last week, https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2025/07/1951-studebaker-2r6-stepvan-restored-by.html  professional vehicles are a rare sight at car shows, museums, etc

This painted one, was sold in 2021 on Bring a Trailer, https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1963-studebaker-zip-van-2/

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/man-explores-abandoned-junkyard-finds-rare-1963-studebaker-zip-van-256426.html

I just saw this, and realized i hadn't added the world's ugliest postal delivery truck to the list of UGLY vehicles

 

And to show just how ugly it is, they conveniently parked it next to a regular ordinary boring delivery van 

https://fordauthority.com/2025/06/ford-e-transit-oshkosh-usps-evs-saved-by-senate-parliamentarian/

https://fordauthority.com/2025/12/usps-says-ford-based-delivery-fleet-upgrade-going-well

interesting new design for Fed Ex trucks

2025 Ford Mustang GTD Spirit Of America

https://fordauthority.com/2025/04/ford-mustang-gtd-spirit-of-usps-coming-later-this-year-exclusive/

Snail Mail, an old mail truck resurrected with a twin turbo engine, runs 12s in the 1/4

 

have you heard of Vernon from the Texas area of Fed Ex? Awesome guy... standing ovation for above and beyond effort to get a package back to the sender after it was lost in the shuffle

A while ago I ordered a tiny little White Sox cap for Rob's new child, and it just never turned up. And then about a year after I'd ordered it, when it's too big to fit the tiny head, I got the package, it looked like it'd been kicked across the united States, this box was taped up with all this different tape, it was so wrecked.

I opened it, and there was this letter, I love it so much

Dear Mr Farrier, the contents of this package were given to Fed Ex ground in Houston Texas, on August 11th. 

Though transferred to us by a driver from the US Postal Service in a package swap, that we do once per month, the packages tended to the wrong carrier

According to the driver, your package is one of several they had found in a cargo bin containing primarily DHL packages and he added, that the packages may have been there for quite a few months,

We explained to him that we are Fed Ex, and had no way to move DHL packages and gave them back to him to return to the USPS distribution center

upon examining the packages, I notice that your package had a ship date 21st of the 6th of 2022, and had been bouncing around delivery companies for over a year, never landing with the original intended delivery company

 I instructed one of my quality assurance administrators to rebox your package and create a Fed Ex label so that we could finally forward the package to you

since the bottom packing tape had dried out and no longer sticks, we can open the bottom flaps, and the contents, a small White Sox, infants baseball cap, appears to be intact and undamaged 

I realize that the cap my no longer fit the toddler, but as a lifetime baseball fan myself maybe he or she can save it for one of THEIR children. Go Sox!

Vernon

https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/fb-cars from minute 7 to 10

Newspaper deliveryman, Mexico City, 1977

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=791230419670910&set=a.461345895992699

interesting contrast of transportation methods, and eras, that the UPS company has existed in.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/51700165343/in/album-72157672968365917/

UPS got into the parcel delivery service in 1907, with bicycles, and in 1913 bought its first Model T

Before the 1950s, UPS wasn’t allowed to deliver packages in between both private customers and commercial ones (like department stores). Then, they acquired something called “common carrier rights”. Those rights made UPS the US Postal Service’s biggest competitor.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/old-ups-delivery-truck-photos_n_5584562 or https://www.wayup.com/guide/community/ups-520-sponsored-4-innovation-ups/ for UPS vehicle history

a photographer in Maryland had taken about 10,000 glass plate negative photos between 1905 and 1927, and about 2200 still exist. Thousands were destroyed when his inheritors cleared out his photo studio in order to make a chicken coop

and this reminds me that history is lost forever unless it's photographed, painted, drawn, or written down. 

Everything that has ever happened that wasn't somehow recorded, is nearly unknown to the human race unless some physical example is found. Civilizations have been on this planet, that we know nothing about, until something is discovered about those, and everything that ever happened in the centuries that they existed, is a complete blank.

 Like the Khmer Empire in Cambodia between 800 to 1300 A.D. which was largely forgotten by locals... and in WW2, soldiers stumbled across a burial chamber of an unknown civilization in Bulgaria. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2023/01/soldiers-stumbled-upon-a-2400-year-old-tomb-on-the-battlefields-of-wwii

Anyway, big picture? Unless you write your biography, most everything you ever experienced will be like it never happened the moment you die. My entire paternal family tree was utterly unknown by anyone alive until I did the family tree through Ancestry.com... because no one had recorded it, or anything about anyone in the family. No one knew our last name was chosen when a German ancestor came to the USA and left behind his German family name for something more American, which was very common among European immigrants.  

I've seen a lot of steam tractors, but I can't remember ever seeing one with wheel covers. 

what a cool arrangement of the people, which beats the hell out of the typical standing about and posing with boredom. 

 a 1990 feature in LIFE magazine exposed Beachy’s work to the world in a 1990 feature

https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2017/08/national-treasure-almost-lost-forever.html

https://garrettcountymuseums.com/photos

the post office's new delivery vans are uglier than they appear in photos

Washington, D.C., 1919

https://www.shorpy.com/node/14149?size=_original#caption

I posted this from a magazine photo I saw a month ago, but now that I've found it at SEMA, it deserves these, better, photos

 

http://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2022/09/ive-never-seen-anyone-make-rock-crawler.html

heatwave side effect, delivery drivers for the post office (USPS) and UPS are roasting, and posting photos of the 120+ degrees in their vans during their work day... because neither delivery company installs air conditioning for their drivers

UPS delivery drivers are sharing photos of the thermometer readings inside their trucks, showing that the temperature can reach up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit as part of a campaign to highlight unsafe working conditions.

Thermometer readings were posted by the Teamsters Union this past Monday. One shows a driver’s hand holding a temperature thermometer and pointing it into the back of their truck, filled with boxes on shelves. The thermometer reads 121.4 degrees.

On June 25, a 24-year-old California driver named Esteban Chavez died after he fell unconscious in his truck due to the heat, the family believes the cause of death was heatstroke, according to The Guardian.

At the time, UPS said it would be “ineffective” to put air conditioners in the trucks due to making frequent stops. The union replied that federal guidelines “clearly recommend such cooling is in fact an effective means for employers to mitigate the risk of heat illness on the job”.

Later that same month, a Scottsdale, Arizona, homeowner released doorbell video footage of a UPS driver collapsing in front of his door as he delivered a package in 110F (43C) heat.

The Teamsters announced on Monday that they were kicking off their fight for a better contract with UPS, since the current contract would expire in exactly one year.

“UPS hasn’t been proactive at all on the topic of heat and that’s going to have to change. We’re demanding the company take action now to protect workers and this is going to be one of a number of key issues that we’re bringing to the bargaining table when we go into contract negotiations," said Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien, and with 1.2 million members, it’s one of the largest unions in the world.

"UPS is projected to pull in more than $100 billion in revenue in 2022 off the backs of Teamsters, and while management sits inside drooling over those figures, we’ve got members going to the emergency room," Perrone said. "These trucks and warehouses are infernos. UPS can afford to do the right thing and protect its workers. They need to stop making excuses and do it now."

The Teamsters represent about 350,000 UPS workers, and heat safety protections are a top issue in the union's negotiations as their contract is set to expire next year.

I haven't come across reports on Fed Ex or Amazon or DHS

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ups-drivers-trucks-temparture-hot-b2137584.html

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7ggnv/ups-drivers-are-sharing-heat-readings-of-120f-inside-their-trucks

https://www.audacy.com/krld/news/national/union-rep-says-ups-is-sending-drivers-out-to-die-amid-heat

https://twitter.com/TeamsterRnF

https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/02/news/companies/ups-air-conditioning/index.html

not only does this prove OSHA is not proactive, but it proves OSHA ignored the death of USPS delivery driver Peggy Frank in 2018, that I'm proud to point out I covered in news in 2018 https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/07/postal-delivery-worker-dead-in-her.html and followed up on in 2019 https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/08/peggy-frank-died-last-july-due-to-usps.html

in World War II there was one all-Black, all-female Postal Directory Battalion, of the Women’s Army Corps, the 6888th. Respect.

It was a direct result of their success that President Harry S. Truman desegregated the military in 1948. 

As for the Six Triple Eight’s wartime logistical triumph, the 6888th, dispatched to Britain under the command of Col. Charity Adams in 1945, managed to clear a massive backlog in undelivered mail to soldiers in the European theater of operations.

With the slogan “no mail, low morale”, they were sent to sort the massive backlog of mail in the European theater. Reports indicate the women were confronted with warehouses stacked to the ceilings, Christmas packages, love letters, and in some cases, final correspondence between loved ones lost.

 Solving that severe morale issue and getting the letters and packages out was supposed to be an arduous task stretching six months at the least. 

 They did it in three.

“Only four women are buried at Normandy, and three are from the Six Triple Eight,” Cummings said during the ceremony, referring to the fact that the unit was subsequently sent to France as the war ended to clear another monumental postal logjam. They again completed it in record time.

It has taken decades for a widespread sharing of their story — indeed, Phyllis Wilson, president of the Military Women’s Memorial and a retired Army chief warrant officer, said she spent 37 years in the military and “never knew” of the 6888th’s heroics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/16/black-women-6888-gold-medal/

https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2021/03/03/all-black-female-battalion-closer-to-congressional-gold-medal/

https://coolchicksfromhistory.tumblr.com/post/77755315051/frolicking-in-the-snow-at-camp-shanks-are-a-group

Pictured in softball training, 11 September 1945, is Dorothy Ellis from Chicago. Dorothy of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion of the Women's Army Corps played short center in the softball team that went on to win the Championship for the Chanor base section Northern France. They then competed in the European Theatre Championship in the U.S Riviera Recreational Area in Nice France on 8th December 1945.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1227704092730218&set=pcb.1227704212730206

I posted about these once, a long time ago, back in 2011, the Type 147 Fridolin, made to be used as postal delivery (thank you Phil and Crank_Case for the reminder!)

I don't remember the name, or number, but I think they were only made in Germany

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1676189062734721&set=pcb.2225531377604381

https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2011/06/custom-vw-mashup-of-bus-and-notchback-i.html

https://www.facebook.com/FokusVision/photos/pcb.1134763310404350/1134760697071278