Out of office: Post offices have been on the decline for over a century

12/16/23 7:00PM

Out of office

‍In addition to its fleet of trucks, the USPS has some 26,000 Postal Service-managed post offices across the nation to process all of the letters and packages. That is significantly down on the number that existed in 1901, meaning that today there are roughly one-third as many post offices… for a population that is 5x the size.

The boom in post offices in the 1800s tracked closely with America’s expanding frontier, with intrepid business and store owners often taking up the mantle of sorting and distributing much of the mail in local towns and cities, receiving a commission from the government for doing so. That created the truly enormous network of “post offices”, which peaked at 77,000 in 1901. For context on just how expansive that number is, there are “only” ~16,000 Starbucks stores in the US today.

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