Parcel Post Service - What Was The Largest Object Shipped?

This is an interesting story that resulted in a change for the delivery of parcel post items. Do you know what the largest object or thing that was sent through this service?

Mk,

In 1916, an entire bank – probably the largest and heaviest object ever sent by parcel post – was dismantled and shipped from Salt Lake City, Utah to Vernal, California. Its more than 80,000 bricks were mailed in 50-pound lots, one ton at a time. While the shipments saved the cost of wagon freight, they caused untold misery for local postmasters and railroad workers. Too late to stop the shipment, the Postmaster General decreed that henceforth a single shipper could post no more than 200 pounds a day.

It is an interesting story for one of the back of the book stamps.

I bet they were and mad when those shipments started working their way through the system.

on your knowledge Rick!

What type of postage would they have put on a 50 lb. item back in 1916? Just curious.

rockin

Great Story!
Thanks for posting it!
Gussyboy1

Interesting, very interesting!

I could be mistaken, but I believe that the biggest single item ever mailed was when the castaways tried to send Gilligan back to Hawaii by post.

Here is a link to the story.

I don't recall that episode. Some people did mail their kids by parcel post

I heard a story about how a western rural school district, maybe 70 years ago, wanted to build a brick school house. They contacted a brick manufacturer back east but the shipping cost for the quantity of bricks needed exceeded the total budget. Someone found that the post office would deliver the bricks at considerable savings. The problem was that each brick had to be mailed individually. The bricks were purchased and delivered to a location near the factory and each brick forwarded by mail to its final destination.