(first posted 2/17/2018) What a beauty – this is a 1941 White 700 Series Transit coach, modified as a Suburban model, and outfitted as a mobile postal sorting facility. If you haven’t heard of these Highway Postal Buses, they have quite the interesting history – let’s take a quick look…
Rail transportation was just seeing the very tip of its slow, unfortunate decline as the decade of the 1940’s began. The US Postal Service, which had used the rail system to transfer and sort mail in specially designed rail coaches for over 80 years, was looking for alternatives.
They chose to purchase a fleet of buses, outfitted very similar to the railcars – and for their first models, they chose truck and bus manufacturer White. We previously looked at these White coaches and can likely understand why they were selected. Stoutly built, they had the company’s unique and powerful 464 cubic inch 12 cylinder opposed piston (flat) gas engine. That certainly helped get the mail delivered quickly…
At 96 inches wide and 35 feet long, they were no doubt a little more cramped inside than the larger railcars. And as the stains on the shirts show, this was before the advent of portable A/C units for buses.
Most runs were around 150 miles, as that was the typical unrefueled range. They’d make stops at on average 25 cities and towns along their routes, dispensing and picking up mail.
The Whites served well for over 10 years, but as the company exited the bus business in 1953, the Post Office looked to a variety of other manufacturers for replacements – here a GM Old Look.
Fageol provided a version of its trailer-bus hybrid, made in conjunction with Fruehauf.
Flxible offered its popular Clipper.
And Southern California bus and fire apparatus maker Crown, known for readily modifying its products to meet customer’s requirements, had this model. There’s likely a big 779 cubic inch Hall-Scott SOHC gas six cylinder laying on its side amidships under the floor.
In the 1960’s, automation brought sweeping changes in mail sorting and delivery. By the early 1970s, the Postal Buses were no longer needed, and the last run was made in 1974. Fortunately, two of these buses have survived – a beautifully restored model is located at the Crawford Museum of Transportation and History in Cleveland – fitting as that was the hometown of White. And the model in the photo at the top of the article is at the Virginia Museum of Transportation, awaiting its restoration.
Nice write up. Very informative. Never heard about those buses. The use of trains to transfer and sort mail was common here un Germany until the 90´s, in other parts of europe too, I think. We also had postal buses, but that were regular buses to transport passengers and mail.
What is most surprising me, is the 12cyl. gas engine.
Ditto. A piece on the engine would be a great sequel!
I was aware of the Highway Post Offices, but have never seen one, and didn’t know any were preserved.
As was pretty common, the switch from RPO to HPO ended passenger rail service in my hometown. The NYC got permission to drop the run in Dec of 1959 and the last runs were on Christmas Eve.
I vaguely remember seeing a mobile P.O., possibly being used as storage at a scrapyard nearby. They also had another bus wearing Huckster livery and looked to be a mobile general store. I might have to make a trip over there. That Crown is fantastic.
I don’t think any railway post office cars had air conditioning, either, even the last ones that were built for Santa Fe in 1964. Incidentally, the RPOs outlasted the highway post offices-the RPO line between Washington and New York survived until 1977; by then they operated as part of a Conrail mail and express train and included some RPOs that had been built by the Pennsylvania Railroad before WW1.
RPO officially ended in 1967, before the creation of Amtrak. But you are right in that Amtrak continued a bit beyond on the controlled N.E. corridor between D.C. and NYC. Amtrak also started a mail and package business in the ’90’s (not actual RPO functions but just mail hauling) using converted boxcars that would run at speed but one of Amtrak’s revolving door CEO’s canned it in the 2000’s – said it was a distraction to on time performance.
An interesting aside, I worked for CSX Transportation for many years, back when the company had a headquarters in both Baltimore, MD and Jacksonville, FL. We used to send interoffice mail between the two cities by rail. If you were out the door with mail in Balto. by 4 PM, it ended up in Jax the next morning. Since the Amtrak trains moved mostly over CSX the entire route (D.C. to Jax), the mail sacks were taken to the train station and given to the head Amtrak conductor who handled it from there.
Fascinating. I knew about the RPOs, but did not know about these postal buses. Thanks for furthering my bus education! (that’s a bus pun, btw).
I knew nothing of these. Sounds like the Post Office bought a lot of gas!
Jim, thanks for this – count me in among those who never heard about these. In Israel we had quite a few White buses but most were conventional and the few integral types which saw service back then (1930s-1940s) were lighter and locally bodied. As for post buses, Israel being the size of a pinhole, there was no need for something that big – Israel Post used a fleet of Dodge COE vans for letters and the small parcels – but the country’s largest bus operator, Egged, had a fleet of Leyland Royal Tiger chassis rebuilt as parcel vans (see below. Pic by Dagan Sheihy), which was the nearest we ever came to the US post buses…
Just a little more info on the restored 1941 White in the last picture can be found here: https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/current/moving-the-mail/mail-by-rail/highway-post-office-buses/ If I’m not mistaken, this particular bus used to be on exhibit in the Smithsonian’s “History and Technology” museum (now called the National Museum of American History). I believe I used to see that as a kid and DC-area-resident all the time in the late 60s and 70s.
I’ll just chime in again – that comment just above is me…may have been one of my first ever comments on CC – with an update to the link for the article about this bus at the National Postal Museum (a terrific name for a museum no matter what its collection).
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/collections/object-spotlight/highway-post-office-bus
I’m fascinated by buses used for things like a “mobile post office” or bookmobiles. Just terrific.
Glad to know that White 700 series as the top is going to be restored. It’s a good-lookin fella.
Glad to know that White 700 series at the top is going to be restored. It’s a good-lookin fella.
Sorry that I missed this article in 2018 and happy that it is reprinted for us. I have no recollection of these buses despite my years. This summer, my wife, her youngest sister and I traveled on the Oil City & Titusville Railroad, which emanates southeast of Erie, PA. The attached photograph is of the last operating mail railcar in The U.S. It operates under the aegis of the Titusville, Post Office. Of course, we mailed postcards to children from here. The postcards arrived three weeks after we arrived home! Great rail trip with good folk explaining the route and the history of the Pennsylvania Oil Boom. The postal worker is a delightful gent, too. The postal museum is a winner when you are in D.C. Meline and I visited it. The rail car has a video showing men actively working in 1977 as the last of the regularly operated mail cars was in action. As for those two postal workers in the bus, WHEW! What sweat! Hard to understand how they put up with this. But then, think of miners, some of whom have over the years worked in the nude. Thanks again.
Try that image attachment again.
Two of the illustrations in the article, one White almost certainly from the 1940s, potentially earlier, and a presumably-later Flxible–bear a startling resemblance to the “Elephant-styled” VW bus front-ends.
Coincidence? Or did VW recognize a good thing when they saw it?