November 26, 2019 • 30 mins
How far did the components of your phone travel to land in the palm of your hand? Nowadays, even the most mundane items can come from half a world away. This wasn't always the case -- join the guys as they explore the weird, weird world of shipping in this special two-part episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:26):
welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
If you are a resident of these United States, you
may be familiar with something we call the U. S.
Postal Service. Uh. There, there's still a big deal. It's
a crazy operation when you think about it. And just
for a quick statistic, every single day they process and
deliver one eight seven point eight million pieces of just
(00:52):
first class mail every twenty four hours. Hi, I'm Ben Bullin.
Hey I'm Noel Brown, And I'll tell you I didn't
realize until he dug into this subject, uh, that the U. S.
Postal Service wasn't even established officially until the seventies. That's correct.
It's insane to me. I figured it was just something
that was around since time immemorial. You hear about Benjamin
Franklin being uh, you know, the first official postmaster General. Um,
(01:14):
but that they did not have a government body. It
was more of like an ad hoc kind of situation. Yeah,
it was a department, the post Office department, not the
Postal Service. Right, that's right. So we also would be
remiss if we didn't send an audible shout out in
the I guess the ear mail to our super producer,
Casey Pegram And speaking of you know, I like that
(01:37):
you bring up the surprising recent origin of this, uh,
this modern postal service, because I was thinking about this
off air. Is it easier or more difficult to run
a postal service today? Because we know that there's this
amazing technology, right, we have GPS, we have tracking system
(01:59):
school or but we also have many many more people,
millions more addresses. Still, I think it's easier to run
a postal service or a package service now than it
was back in the day. That is our topic for
this episode, the weird, weird, weird history of shipping just
(02:20):
in general. You know who I was ship, Casey Pegram
and Pikachu and that's a that's a fandom reference, it is,
That's not what we're talking about today. This is a
different kind of shipping, oh, like shipping and receiving. Got it,
Casey uh seems to approve of my my shipping choice.
Do yes, Casey on the case, Casey on the case.
So let's let's think about it, Like, what's the weirdest
(02:43):
thing you guys have ever mailed or received in the mail?
You know, I once received a single floor tom drum
like a like a like from a Yamaha drum kit,
like just the tom, and then I ended up meeting
the guy who I bought it from on eBay completely randomly.
I was in the market for a single drum, found
one to my liking, and then it ended up at
a guy from Athens, where I eventually moved, and his
(03:06):
name is Taker the drum or the guy, the guy. Okay,
what did you name the drum Yamaha with the factory
name exactly? Because some people name their instruments. That's the
real thing. Yeah, I wonder if you have a drum
kit in your drummer, do you name each individual drum
or do you give the whole kid a single name? Casey,
you're a drummer, what do you think. I think it's
more of a kid thing, yeah, than the individual drums.
(03:27):
Maybe if you have like a I don't know, special
symbol or something, maybe give it a name. But yeah, yeah,
like old Zilji or something. Yeah. So the responsive question
did I ask? I I have a weird shipping story.
It's very short. Uh, it won't take too long. So
I used to live out in the hinterlands, very small
area in Central America, and I had to get some medication.
(03:51):
Ship to medication itself is not unusual. It's you know,
it's sent through the post all the time. But I
was so far away from the U West and so
far away from regular shipping routes that this had to come.
Let's see, picked up at a pharmacy, put in international mail,
carried by a private carrier. Once it got in country,
(04:14):
and then the last two stops, uh, it went on
the back of a pickup truck. There was a guy
in the back of a pickup truck. It went about
ten miles that way, and then it was handed off
to a courier on a dirt bike. And there wasn't
really an address, so I had to go stand in
front of this building, which is like the main drag
of town, and just wait till I see the right
(04:38):
looking guy in the dirt bike. I am the only one,
by the way in this scenario who is who looks
like I do. So I'm pretty recognized. So but did
you flag him down or did he just he his
made a bee line right for you. He recognized he
saw it from a distance. And I was so weird
because I could see through the stamps and the markings,
how many different kind of systems this had gone through.
(04:58):
And that's that's what I am still baffled by. You know,
when you when you have something very delicate, for instance,
like a drum shipped through the mail, where you have
something even normal shipped through you know, to the ends
of the earth, how can we do that? It's impressive
as a species. It's really funny. Been the the situation
(05:19):
that you just described is not too far removed for
what became the order of the day for shipping. It
would be this kind of like going around your asked
to get to your elbow situation where uh, steamships would
go down to Panama and then they would you know,
transfer the deliveries to horses who would then make a
(05:39):
journey over the very very treacherous isthmus of Panama and
then picked up again by new ships and taken up
the Pacific coast um. And that that that that was
how it was done until eighteen fifty eight, when over
land delivery became much more of a thing and a
bidding war ensuit. Or we're getting a little ahead of ourselves,
but I really like your story. It really sets the
(06:01):
tone for this uh this topic now, thanks man, I
mean yours as well. The more things change, right, the
more they stay the same. History doesn't repeat, but it
tends to rhyme. It's true. I like that you brought
up the phrase ad hawk at the top of the
show because before the eighteen hundreds, what we would call
(06:21):
a package a courier delivery service was pretty unorganized. There
wasn't a huge central authority. You would say, okay, I
need to send uh duke casey pegram a uh not
a balustrade. That's too big a loot. For some reason,
you're saying you a loot l U t E. Sorry.
What is a balustrade? Ben? I've always wondered that it
(06:43):
was in an Amy Man song and I never knew
what it was. Is it like a banister, It's a
it's a kind of it's a railing, and it's kind
of an ornamental thing. Like if you ever drive by
an apartment building and you see maybe a nice one
with like a stone railing around one of the balconies,
that is a balustrade. That railing and the things a
(07:03):
little stems those are ballusters? Is that right? That is true?
Those would be hard to ship, though those would be
hard to ship. Shipping and balustrade at that time seems weird,
so we send him a loot instead, l U t E.
I would ship a balustrade with Casey pegram. I'm like
in the package. Now, you guys are just having a
relationship to go oh I with an inanimate object. That
(07:27):
people do that fine, I think so Casey on the case.
It is almost after all, lest people be judgmental. But
back to before the mid eighteen hundreds, I would need
to find a courrier of physical person or crew, and
I would say, get this loot to the duke, and
then the courrier would say, okay, we're gonna go to
(07:51):
the closest village near you know, the Duke's of the
Duke's palace or his fortress or whatever. And then and
of taking it to a specific address, the corrier would
probably just drop it off in whatever the common area
of town was. And mind you, zero protection for you
as the sender, to the recipient, or to the guaranteed
(08:13):
safety of the goods being transported or the you know,
the message or whatever. This is. This is an advance
of the idea of shipping larger things, which will come
to fruition as a thing called parcel post. But that
comes a yeah, and it's a it's a huge trust fall,
right because the courrier could literally disappear, you would never
(08:34):
see your loot again, and your loots will become the
courriers loot. And how funny is it that we've kind
of come full circle to that now where we put
all of our trust in this ride share and just
kind of like sharing economy where we don't really need
guarantees so much as long as they you know, had
the past the test to get on the app, then
(08:54):
we sort of trust them or we just aren't really
that concern. It's just kind of interesting. It's a little
bit of a full circle. You got stuff like task
Rabbit where people pick up stuff and do it for
you or as if they or you know whatever, all
of those absurdly named uh services. But it's true, Ben,
that is the very definition of ad hawc. You would
hire these individuals, you might get your stuff, you might not.
(09:15):
And it became, you know, there was a gap that
needed to be filled, and that specifically happened during the
California Gold Rush in the eighteen sixties when a lot
of folks were settling going west, young young men and women. Um,
and they really wanted to you know that it was
a time of technological boom, the idea of the telegraph,
(09:36):
and you know, being able to get things much more
quickly and by much more quickly. We're talking about you know,
weeks as opposed to months. Right, Yeah, but that still
looks great in comparison, it does. And uh, and you're right,
there's this, there's this what Malcolm Gladwell would call it
tipping point in the eighteen sixties, and it coincides with
(09:56):
the California Gold Rush. Part of it goes back to
the geographical fact that the United States is huge. It's massive,
it's very very wide exactly. And those ad howc methods
of shipping and receiving might have worked in a more
regional setup where you didn't have to travel as far,
but once you start going from sea to shining sea,
(10:17):
that becomes completely, um, just untenable. Um. And and by
the way, we're getting a lot of this chronology um
from a wonderful article from Atlas Obscura called From Pony
Express to Amazon Drone, The Strange History of Delivering Packages
by Dan Nosowitz. That's right, and in this shipping free
(10:38):
in this gap in the series of opportunity, we see
two incredible players emerge. One is called the Pony Express,
the other is called Wells Fargo. And the Pony Express
had a real missed opportunity by not adopting the tagline
let those ponies run. That's the Scott Benjamin quote, Scott
Benjamin quote at the lifetime let those ponies or ride.
(11:00):
I think he said run. I think it's run. Okay,
let him loose. So the Pony Express is what it
sounds like. They were, uh, letter transporting cavalry. They would
jump on these horses and they would deliver mail and
(11:23):
newspapers and important messages through a system like a relay
race of different mounted riders. So of course you would say, well,
it's ridiculous that I would write a letter in New
York and then hand it to some guy on a
horse and he would ride across the country. He wouldn't
he would ride a certain distance, he would link up
with someone else and they would ride along. Yeah, and
(11:45):
what would have taken twenty five days by stagecoach um,
or perhaps many many months on a on a sea
voyage um, the Pony Express could get it done in
about ten days from east coast to west coast, and
they operated between the operating between Missouri and California. But
they didn't operate that long. It might surprise some people
(12:08):
because the Pony Express after it went the way of
the Dodo due to the telegraph. The Pony Express was
very romanticized in the American zeitgeist, but it was only
an operation from April third, eighteen sixty two October of
eighteen sixty one, so just a little more than a year.
But in those eighteen months of operation, the Pony Express
(12:30):
changed history, it changed shipping, and it remains an impressive
endeavor today. Wouldn't you say, I absolutely would say, Um,
one thing that I didn't know about in that time
that it operated that very limited time. It did not
turn a profit. And in fact, there was a war
between the United States and the Paiute Indians called the
Pyramid Lake War that caused a temporary shutdown of the
(12:53):
company and cost them seventy five thousand dollars a princely
sum at the time. And after that they when they started,
all the damage had been done. Um, and they never
received a government contract, which as we know, can be
very very important for something that requires so much overhead
and infrastructure, and it is estimated um according to some sources,
(13:16):
including history dot com article entitled ten things you May
Not Know about the Pony expressed by Evan Andrews that
over the course of that very brief history of the company,
it may have lost around two hundred thousand dollars uh
and and just a couple of little quick facts from
that article as well. I thought this was interesting. The riders.
(13:38):
You think of Pony Express writers as being like grizzled
kind of cowboy types, but they actually were very slight fellows,
weighing between a hundred and hundred twenty five pounds, much
more like a jockey, and that's because of weight restrictions.
They wanted to keep them as light as possible so
they could like increase productivity in terms of like you know, quick,
quicker turnaround times. And the is my favorite one, as
(14:01):
they received a salary of between a hundred and a
hundred and fifty dollars months is a big deal of
the time, and they were asked to submit themselves to
reading this loyalty oath, which says, I hereby swear before
the Great and Living God that during my engagement, and
while an employee of Russell Majors in Waddell, which is
the partners in the endeavor, this was a private company. Exactly,
(14:24):
I will, under no circumstances use profane language. That I
will drink no intoxicating liquors. That I will not quarrel
or fight with any other employee of the firm. And
then in every respect, I will conduct myself honestly, be
faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts
as to win the confidence of my employers. So help
me God. I want to add to that excerpt with
(14:47):
a fascinating classified advertisement. This is an alleged advertisement wanted
young skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers.
WILLI to risk death daily? Orphans preferred? No orphans? Yeah,
that's I mean, because that's enticing when you think about
(15:08):
the age that they're trying to get to feel like
I'm gonna live dangerously No, And it's like, you know,
you better not have anybody that's gonna miss you because
you might get an arrow through the throat or something.
I don't know if there's any number of ways you
could have died on those treacherous journeys because the West,
you know, the areas between that frontier very treacherous in
terms of terrain, in terms of potential, you know, ways
(15:31):
of just falling to your death. There's any number of
ways you could die. That's right. If Oregon Trail taught
me anything, it's that any time you travel with a
group of six or more people in that time, one
of you is going to get dysenterry, one of you
is going to break a leg and uh, you know
you might lose some ox oxen, but not break a leg.
(15:51):
And like a doing well in a you know, high
school musical kind of like a compound fracture with a
bone sticking out and stuff. You guys remember Oregon Trail?
Did you play? Are your fans? Yeah? Totally remember Fording
the River Dying of dysentery. Yeah. I actually have a
card game version of it that came out pretty recently.
That's quite a lot of fun. I recommended if you
if you if you haven't seen that, should they update
(16:13):
the diseases? No, it's it's literally just a card game
version of Oregon Trail has a neat mechanic to the
way you play it. I I really it's all that's cool,
but I'd like to check it out. Yeah, yeah, we
should have a bring it to the next office game night.
It sounds like a plan. If you want to participate
in the Pony Express, there's kind of way you can
do it today. You can follow their footsteps or should
(16:35):
I say hoof prints by visiting the Pony Express National
Historic Trail. It goes through a ton of different land jurisdictions.
It has several sites that are open to public visitation,
and there are a couple of places where they've got
automobile access. It's it's a piece of living history. It's
worth it, and it is indeed history. The Pony Express
(16:59):
is no or because in while it was only an
operation for that eighteen month period, in eighteen sixty six, Uh,
the owner of the time sold the assets for Pony
Express to outfit named Wells Fargo, and he sold it
for one point five million dollars in eighteen sixty six.
(17:21):
You know that's a ton, right, and Wells Fargo, you
might be saying, or you probably said earlier in the episode,
you said Wells Fargo. Uh, Holy moly, Stars and Garters.
Isn't that a bank? Well? Yeah, now, but you may
have seen their iconic logo, which is a horse drawn
stage coach um with the what do you call it?
(17:44):
A captain, pilot, rainsman, what do you call a driver?
Just the driver boom, there you go to do little,
the one who speaks to the hors that guy. And
that is because while the pony expressed largely was known
for delivering letters, Wells Fargo uh kind of had the
market corner on delivering larger things packages. Coachman, I bet
(18:07):
you it's a coach It's a coachman. I think you
can do driver as well, but coachman is much more appropriate.
I love that. And before they made their real money
in banking, Wells Fargo was absolutely the end all be
all of package delivery, as you can tell by this
very very absurdly catchy little ditty I warn you in
(18:28):
advance from the nineteen sixty two film version of the
nineteen fifty seven Broadway musical The Music Man by Meredith Wilson.
Have a listen how the Wells Fargo wagon as a
called and down the streets. All please let it be
far me hole. The Weld's Fargo wagon is a calm
(18:52):
and down the street. I wish I wish I knew
what it could be. I got a box with me
for sugar wargos in March, I got a great Medican
Montgomery Awards sent me across a bathtub and a cross
(19:12):
cut saw. Uh there was there was shipping, all kinds
of stuff, that's right. And it was literally all kinds
of stuff. Because the folks are teamed up. They're on
the East Coast in New York to create Wells Fargo
wanted to dominate shipping across the contiguous United States and beyond.
They wanted a monopoly, and there were a bunch of
(19:36):
East Coast shipping concerns at the time. But Wells Fargo
is different. It was the creation or the result of
a supergroup team up between three different people. Henry Wells,
William G. Fargo, those are the names we know. And
then another one you may not have heard of, a
guy named John Butterfield. On their own, these dudes each
(19:59):
had shipping company. But uh, they when they joined forces
in eighteen fifty, they created something. This is a trick question.
What do you think they created? Way to not Wells
far ago? Right, that's correct, I'm I'm thinking some other
legacy brand. Let's see they called they called the package
(20:20):
shipping industry at the time, the express industry. Wait a minute,
and these activities were taking place in America. Let's see.
I like what, I like where we're going with this,
United Express, American Eagle, State Express, Packaged Postal Eagle, America
un Canada Mail in a hurry. Okay, I like all
(20:42):
of those, and those did not make it out of
the pitch meeting that ultimately settled on, um, you guessed it,
maybe American Express. Yes, I hope, we hope we left
enough breadcrumbs there. And this is probably obvious to everyone,
but I think it's so interesting how the biggest banks
and credit card companies always got their start like in
the gold Rush and like you know, occupying some niche
(21:05):
and then just kind of like ballooning from there. And
now we have our you know, our Wells Fargoes and
our you know big banks of the world which are giant, right,
So these guys joined forces in eighteen fifty they make
American Express. Fast forward two years. American Expresses primarily an
(21:28):
East coast operation, but they want to they want to
get in on the growing West Coast market, or at
least some members of American Express to you see, Henry
Wells and William Fargo are gassed about it. They're super excited.
But the Board of American Expresses, it's like, well, why
are we gonna do this California thing? We got, we
(21:50):
got a pretty nice operation here on the East coast.
It ain't broke, don't fix it, Fargo, And they said, wells, no,
they didn't say that. They they started their own company.
They kind of, uh, they took what they learned from
the American Express operation and they just moved it to
the West coast and they changed the name. Yeah, and
(22:11):
and again early on they their biggest service was delivery
of valuable goods, um, you know, jewels and gold, and
then eventually kind of more you know home goods that
that that folks that actually had a little money to
spend from like catalogs, ship and shipments and stuff like
that could could lutes, balustrades, all of that stuff. Um.
(22:35):
And they were very clever in their marketing and did
a good job of endearing themselves to the news media
by including free newspapers along with any packages that you
would ship through their their service. And this is great
because everybody enjoys being plugged in getting the latest news.
(22:57):
And we have to remember this is before television. This
is a time in an age where information is a
little tougher to come by, so getting a free newspaper
is a great value. Add things get a little weird
when the company starts directly delivering gold as well. Right,
that's where it becomes a little bit more than a
(23:18):
postage service, It's true, and that you know, we we
we'll find out and as we as we know based
on what we know Wells Fargo as today, that became
much more of their bread and butter. But because they
were handling so much of this precious material that was
coming out of the gold rush, um, they it made
just perfect sense to them to set up a situation
where they could you know, invest and hold onto people's
(23:40):
assets for them. And they did such a good job
and uh, you know, did it so quickly that folks
were very comfortable with them. And then you know, like
that was sort of one of the early days of
folks having money that had been formerly you know, destitute,
and they needed to trust somebody and they trusted Wells Fargo.
So um. And a really good point in this Atlas
(24:01):
Obscure article is every new settlement gold mining colony that
was set up. You'd have yourself a saloon, and you'd
have yourself a Wells Fargo. Yeah, absolutely, maybe a church
to who knows. Definitely a Wells Fargo. And earlier we
had walked through this strange and inconvenient Rube Goldberg esque
(24:21):
shipping system that companies like Wells Fargo would use. They
would send the steamships down to Panama, the horses over
the smith which was a dangerous, uh and at times
deadly trip, and then they would send ships up the
Pacific coast. In eighteen fifty eight, they create the first
(24:44):
of what we described as overland delivery service, named in
a burst of creativity, the Overland Mail Company. And this
is where Wells Fargo really kind of took that shipping
to the next level because they a um started getting
a little bit of assistance from Congress UH and that
(25:04):
a bidding war began to establish much more of a
nationwide postal system. And that company, that offshoot was and
the running and won the contract. And so the Overland
Mail Company, and it's by now very experienced owners take
(25:26):
a step forward. There there's still a private company, but
now they're very closely working with the government, and they
are carrying all official mail. We know a little bit
about their original contract. They cracked a deal with Uncle
Sam and they said, okay, mail is never gonna take
longer than twenty five days. But despite what it said
(25:49):
on paper, the reality was much different, you know, And
there was still a lot of wilderness in the West.
There's still a lot of intervening variables. So you could
you could trust that Overland and Wells Fargo and these
kinds of outfits would do their best to get the
mail to you at some point, which you wouldn't really
(26:10):
be able to safely predict it all the time. Eventually,
Butterfield resigns and Wells Fargo as the company, takes over
the board of Overland Mail in eighteen sixty and then
they buy the company straight out in eighteen sixty six.
And then everything changed when in eighteen sixty nine, the
(26:33):
very first transcontinental railroad system came into existence, which was
a network um of various rail lines that were connected
um through some very forward thinking individuals that started the
Central Pacific Railroad Company. Yeah, and so imagine all the
machinations of Wells Fargo, of Henry Henry Wells and William Fargo.
(26:59):
Imagine it like a very beautifully constructed palace of cards
in a windy room. Because as soon as all these
regional railroad systems are connected, this house of shipping cards
that Wells Fargo has built just rushes through the windows. Uh.
The owners of Central Pacific in almost a single stroke,
(27:23):
render everything Wells Fargo has worked on all all of
its monopolistic infrastructure outdated, if not obsolete. Right, But they
were quick to hop on the train. That's that's not
even a pun. That's just I thought it works. Just
laziness as Farllows and Wells Fargo. Um, they they knew
what the score was, and the Central Pacific Railroad Company
(27:46):
was actually kind of jerking them around a bit, like
playing a little bit of like a cat batting around
some sort of you know, um hand knitted mouse toy.
And they created an express company themselves, and that is
when um Wells Fargo purchased that company from Central Pacific
so they could get in on shipping their goods through
(28:09):
the railroad system. And that's what got them in the door. Yes, yeah,
do you know what I have to be honest here,
this is way more fascinating than I thought it would
have been. Uh, you know, before I started researching this,
what do you think? Well, then, first of all, I
hope you always feel that you can be honest with
me and the listeners, and I think you do. I agree, though,
(28:29):
I was surprised at how the history of shipping and
receiving and mail and packages, all things that sound a
little dry on the surface actually pretty fascinating. And there's
a lot of adventure and the Pony Express. Who knew
we're not even halfway done with this? Well we're okay, officially,
we're halfway done with the story. We're going to We're
(28:52):
going to conclude, and we hope you tune in for
our follow up on the weird, weird, weird history of
shipping stuff. In the meantime, you can continue the conversation.
We want to hear your shipping war stories or your
your strange anecdotes. You can find us on Facebook, you
can find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter,
not just as a show, but as individuals. Can find
(29:13):
me exclusively on Instagram at how now Noel Brown, Um
where I get into various adventures and misadventures, and you know,
you can see me hanging out and doing cute stuff
with my kid and going to concerts and eating delicious foods.
And you can join my various global Shenanigant and see
me get kicked into and out of different places, communities
and countries on Instagram at Ben Boland or on Twitter
(29:37):
at Ben Boland hs W. Thanks as always the super
producer Casey Peperam, Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
Christopher Hasiota is here in spirit as always, thanks of
course to Gabe Lousier, Thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat. Thanks
to and Noel. I appreciate you. I appreciate you reluctantly
co signing me on this part. But thanks to Jonathan Strickland,
(29:59):
ak that twister a k A young Quizzles a k
a uh Stricka poo, he would hate that one, Mr Quister,
there we go. I like the rhyd their sister, sister,
twisted sister, the twisted Quister. I like that. Um yeah,
I think okay, reluctant thanks to to Jonathan Strickland and
absolute wholehearted um from the bottom of my heart thanks
(30:21):
to super producer Casey Pegram. Did you already say that
even if you did. I'm adding another one because we
just love the crap out of that guy. Uh and
thanks to you, Ben. I like your hat today, sir,
thanks so much so I got it in the mail
oddly enough. How do you like that? See you next time, folks.
(30:44):
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:26):
welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
If you are a resident of these United States, you
may be familiar with something we call the U. S.
Postal Service. Uh. There, there's still a big deal. It's
a crazy operation when you think about it. And just
for a quick statistic, every single day they process and
deliver one eight seven point eight million pieces of just
(00:52):
first class mail every twenty four hours. Hi, I'm Ben Bullin.
Hey I'm Noel Brown, And I'll tell you I didn't
realize until he dug into this subject, uh, that the U. S.
Postal Service wasn't even established officially until the seventies. That's correct.
It's insane to me. I figured it was just something
that was around since time immemorial. You hear about Benjamin
Franklin being uh, you know, the first official postmaster General. Um,
(01:14):
but that they did not have a government body. It
was more of like an ad hoc kind of situation. Yeah,
it was a department, the post Office department, not the
Postal Service. Right, that's right. So we also would be
remiss if we didn't send an audible shout out in
the I guess the ear mail to our super producer,
Casey Pegram And speaking of you know, I like that
(01:37):
you bring up the surprising recent origin of this, uh,
this modern postal service, because I was thinking about this
off air. Is it easier or more difficult to run
a postal service today? Because we know that there's this
amazing technology, right, we have GPS, we have tracking system
(01:59):
school or but we also have many many more people,
millions more addresses. Still, I think it's easier to run
a postal service or a package service now than it
was back in the day. That is our topic for
this episode, the weird, weird, weird history of shipping just
(02:20):
in general. You know who I was ship, Casey Pegram
and Pikachu and that's a that's a fandom reference, it is,
That's not what we're talking about today. This is a
different kind of shipping, oh, like shipping and receiving. Got it,
Casey uh seems to approve of my my shipping choice.
Do yes, Casey on the case, Casey on the case.
So let's let's think about it, Like, what's the weirdest
(02:43):
thing you guys have ever mailed or received in the mail?
You know, I once received a single floor tom drum
like a like a like from a Yamaha drum kit,
like just the tom, and then I ended up meeting
the guy who I bought it from on eBay completely randomly.
I was in the market for a single drum, found
one to my liking, and then it ended up at
a guy from Athens, where I eventually moved, and his
(03:06):
name is Taker the drum or the guy, the guy. Okay,
what did you name the drum Yamaha with the factory
name exactly? Because some people name their instruments. That's the
real thing. Yeah, I wonder if you have a drum
kit in your drummer, do you name each individual drum
or do you give the whole kid a single name? Casey,
you're a drummer, what do you think. I think it's
more of a kid thing, yeah, than the individual drums.
(03:27):
Maybe if you have like a I don't know, special
symbol or something, maybe give it a name. But yeah, yeah,
like old Zilji or something. Yeah. So the responsive question
did I ask? I I have a weird shipping story.
It's very short. Uh, it won't take too long. So
I used to live out in the hinterlands, very small
area in Central America, and I had to get some medication.
(03:51):
Ship to medication itself is not unusual. It's you know,
it's sent through the post all the time. But I
was so far away from the U West and so
far away from regular shipping routes that this had to come.
Let's see, picked up at a pharmacy, put in international mail,
carried by a private carrier. Once it got in country,
(04:14):
and then the last two stops, uh, it went on
the back of a pickup truck. There was a guy
in the back of a pickup truck. It went about
ten miles that way, and then it was handed off
to a courier on a dirt bike. And there wasn't
really an address, so I had to go stand in
front of this building, which is like the main drag
of town, and just wait till I see the right
(04:38):
looking guy in the dirt bike. I am the only one,
by the way in this scenario who is who looks
like I do. So I'm pretty recognized. So but did
you flag him down or did he just he his
made a bee line right for you. He recognized he
saw it from a distance. And I was so weird
because I could see through the stamps and the markings,
how many different kind of systems this had gone through.
(04:58):
And that's that's what I am still baffled by. You know,
when you when you have something very delicate, for instance,
like a drum shipped through the mail, where you have
something even normal shipped through you know, to the ends
of the earth, how can we do that? It's impressive
as a species. It's really funny. Been the the situation
(05:19):
that you just described is not too far removed for
what became the order of the day for shipping. It
would be this kind of like going around your asked
to get to your elbow situation where uh, steamships would
go down to Panama and then they would you know,
transfer the deliveries to horses who would then make a
(05:39):
journey over the very very treacherous isthmus of Panama and
then picked up again by new ships and taken up
the Pacific coast um. And that that that that was
how it was done until eighteen fifty eight, when over
land delivery became much more of a thing and a
bidding war ensuit. Or we're getting a little ahead of ourselves,
but I really like your story. It really sets the
(06:01):
tone for this uh this topic now, thanks man, I
mean yours as well. The more things change, right, the
more they stay the same. History doesn't repeat, but it
tends to rhyme. It's true. I like that you brought
up the phrase ad hawk at the top of the
show because before the eighteen hundreds, what we would call
(06:21):
a package a courier delivery service was pretty unorganized. There
wasn't a huge central authority. You would say, okay, I
need to send uh duke casey pegram a uh not
a balustrade. That's too big a loot. For some reason,
you're saying you a loot l U t E. Sorry.
What is a balustrade? Ben? I've always wondered that it
(06:43):
was in an Amy Man song and I never knew
what it was. Is it like a banister, It's a
it's a kind of it's a railing, and it's kind
of an ornamental thing. Like if you ever drive by
an apartment building and you see maybe a nice one
with like a stone railing around one of the balconies,
that is a balustrade. That railing and the things a
(07:03):
little stems those are ballusters? Is that right? That is true?
Those would be hard to ship, though those would be
hard to ship. Shipping and balustrade at that time seems weird,
so we send him a loot instead, l U t E.
I would ship a balustrade with Casey pegram. I'm like
in the package. Now, you guys are just having a
relationship to go oh I with an inanimate object. That
(07:27):
people do that fine, I think so Casey on the case.
It is almost after all, lest people be judgmental. But
back to before the mid eighteen hundreds, I would need
to find a courrier of physical person or crew, and
I would say, get this loot to the duke, and
then the courrier would say, okay, we're gonna go to
(07:51):
the closest village near you know, the Duke's of the
Duke's palace or his fortress or whatever. And then and
of taking it to a specific address, the corrier would
probably just drop it off in whatever the common area
of town was. And mind you, zero protection for you
as the sender, to the recipient, or to the guaranteed
(08:13):
safety of the goods being transported or the you know,
the message or whatever. This is. This is an advance
of the idea of shipping larger things, which will come
to fruition as a thing called parcel post. But that
comes a yeah, and it's a it's a huge trust fall,
right because the courrier could literally disappear, you would never
(08:34):
see your loot again, and your loots will become the
courriers loot. And how funny is it that we've kind
of come full circle to that now where we put
all of our trust in this ride share and just
kind of like sharing economy where we don't really need
guarantees so much as long as they you know, had
the past the test to get on the app, then
(08:54):
we sort of trust them or we just aren't really
that concern. It's just kind of interesting. It's a little
bit of a full circle. You got stuff like task
Rabbit where people pick up stuff and do it for
you or as if they or you know whatever, all
of those absurdly named uh services. But it's true, Ben,
that is the very definition of ad hawc. You would
hire these individuals, you might get your stuff, you might not.
(09:15):
And it became, you know, there was a gap that
needed to be filled, and that specifically happened during the
California Gold Rush in the eighteen sixties when a lot
of folks were settling going west, young young men and women. Um,
and they really wanted to you know that it was
a time of technological boom, the idea of the telegraph,
(09:36):
and you know, being able to get things much more
quickly and by much more quickly. We're talking about you know,
weeks as opposed to months. Right, Yeah, but that still
looks great in comparison, it does. And uh, and you're right,
there's this, there's this what Malcolm Gladwell would call it
tipping point in the eighteen sixties, and it coincides with
(09:56):
the California Gold Rush. Part of it goes back to
the geographical fact that the United States is huge. It's massive,
it's very very wide exactly. And those ad howc methods
of shipping and receiving might have worked in a more
regional setup where you didn't have to travel as far,
but once you start going from sea to shining sea,
(10:17):
that becomes completely, um, just untenable. Um. And and by
the way, we're getting a lot of this chronology um
from a wonderful article from Atlas Obscura called From Pony
Express to Amazon Drone, The Strange History of Delivering Packages
by Dan Nosowitz. That's right, and in this shipping free
(10:38):
in this gap in the series of opportunity, we see
two incredible players emerge. One is called the Pony Express,
the other is called Wells Fargo. And the Pony Express
had a real missed opportunity by not adopting the tagline
let those ponies run. That's the Scott Benjamin quote, Scott
Benjamin quote at the lifetime let those ponies or ride.
(11:00):
I think he said run. I think it's run. Okay,
let him loose. So the Pony Express is what it
sounds like. They were, uh, letter transporting cavalry. They would
jump on these horses and they would deliver mail and
(11:23):
newspapers and important messages through a system like a relay
race of different mounted riders. So of course you would say, well,
it's ridiculous that I would write a letter in New
York and then hand it to some guy on a
horse and he would ride across the country. He wouldn't
he would ride a certain distance, he would link up
with someone else and they would ride along. Yeah, and
(11:45):
what would have taken twenty five days by stagecoach um,
or perhaps many many months on a on a sea
voyage um, the Pony Express could get it done in
about ten days from east coast to west coast, and
they operated between the operating between Missouri and California. But
they didn't operate that long. It might surprise some people
(12:08):
because the Pony Express after it went the way of
the Dodo due to the telegraph. The Pony Express was
very romanticized in the American zeitgeist, but it was only
an operation from April third, eighteen sixty two October of
eighteen sixty one, so just a little more than a year.
But in those eighteen months of operation, the Pony Express
(12:30):
changed history, it changed shipping, and it remains an impressive
endeavor today. Wouldn't you say, I absolutely would say, Um,
one thing that I didn't know about in that time
that it operated that very limited time. It did not
turn a profit. And in fact, there was a war
between the United States and the Paiute Indians called the
Pyramid Lake War that caused a temporary shutdown of the
(12:53):
company and cost them seventy five thousand dollars a princely
sum at the time. And after that they when they started,
all the damage had been done. Um, and they never
received a government contract, which as we know, can be
very very important for something that requires so much overhead
and infrastructure, and it is estimated um according to some sources,
(13:16):
including history dot com article entitled ten things you May
Not Know about the Pony expressed by Evan Andrews that
over the course of that very brief history of the company,
it may have lost around two hundred thousand dollars uh
and and just a couple of little quick facts from
that article as well. I thought this was interesting. The riders.
(13:38):
You think of Pony Express writers as being like grizzled
kind of cowboy types, but they actually were very slight fellows,
weighing between a hundred and hundred twenty five pounds, much
more like a jockey, and that's because of weight restrictions.
They wanted to keep them as light as possible so
they could like increase productivity in terms of like you know, quick,
quicker turnaround times. And the is my favorite one, as
(14:01):
they received a salary of between a hundred and a
hundred and fifty dollars months is a big deal of
the time, and they were asked to submit themselves to
reading this loyalty oath, which says, I hereby swear before
the Great and Living God that during my engagement, and
while an employee of Russell Majors in Waddell, which is
the partners in the endeavor, this was a private company. Exactly,
(14:24):
I will, under no circumstances use profane language. That I
will drink no intoxicating liquors. That I will not quarrel
or fight with any other employee of the firm. And
then in every respect, I will conduct myself honestly, be
faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts
as to win the confidence of my employers. So help
me God. I want to add to that excerpt with
(14:47):
a fascinating classified advertisement. This is an alleged advertisement wanted
young skinny, wiry fellows not over eighteen, must be expert writers.
WILLI to risk death daily? Orphans preferred? No orphans? Yeah,
that's I mean, because that's enticing when you think about
(15:08):
the age that they're trying to get to feel like
I'm gonna live dangerously No, And it's like, you know,
you better not have anybody that's gonna miss you because
you might get an arrow through the throat or something.
I don't know if there's any number of ways you
could have died on those treacherous journeys because the West,
you know, the areas between that frontier very treacherous in
terms of terrain, in terms of potential, you know, ways
(15:31):
of just falling to your death. There's any number of
ways you could die. That's right. If Oregon Trail taught
me anything, it's that any time you travel with a
group of six or more people in that time, one
of you is going to get dysenterry, one of you
is going to break a leg and uh, you know
you might lose some ox oxen, but not break a leg.
(15:51):
And like a doing well in a you know, high
school musical kind of like a compound fracture with a
bone sticking out and stuff. You guys remember Oregon Trail?
Did you play? Are your fans? Yeah? Totally remember Fording
the River Dying of dysentery. Yeah. I actually have a
card game version of it that came out pretty recently.
That's quite a lot of fun. I recommended if you
if you if you haven't seen that, should they update
(16:13):
the diseases? No, it's it's literally just a card game
version of Oregon Trail has a neat mechanic to the
way you play it. I I really it's all that's cool,
but I'd like to check it out. Yeah, yeah, we
should have a bring it to the next office game night.
It sounds like a plan. If you want to participate
in the Pony Express, there's kind of way you can
do it today. You can follow their footsteps or should
(16:35):
I say hoof prints by visiting the Pony Express National
Historic Trail. It goes through a ton of different land jurisdictions.
It has several sites that are open to public visitation,
and there are a couple of places where they've got
automobile access. It's it's a piece of living history. It's
worth it, and it is indeed history. The Pony Express
(16:59):
is no or because in while it was only an
operation for that eighteen month period, in eighteen sixty six, Uh,
the owner of the time sold the assets for Pony
Express to outfit named Wells Fargo, and he sold it
for one point five million dollars in eighteen sixty six.
(17:21):
You know that's a ton, right, and Wells Fargo, you
might be saying, or you probably said earlier in the episode,
you said Wells Fargo. Uh, Holy moly, Stars and Garters.
Isn't that a bank? Well? Yeah, now, but you may
have seen their iconic logo, which is a horse drawn
stage coach um with the what do you call it?
(17:44):
A captain, pilot, rainsman, what do you call a driver?
Just the driver boom, there you go to do little,
the one who speaks to the hors that guy. And
that is because while the pony expressed largely was known
for delivering letters, Wells Fargo uh kind of had the
market corner on delivering larger things packages. Coachman, I bet
(18:07):
you it's a coach It's a coachman. I think you
can do driver as well, but coachman is much more appropriate.
I love that. And before they made their real money
in banking, Wells Fargo was absolutely the end all be
all of package delivery, as you can tell by this
very very absurdly catchy little ditty I warn you in
(18:28):
advance from the nineteen sixty two film version of the
nineteen fifty seven Broadway musical The Music Man by Meredith Wilson.
Have a listen how the Wells Fargo wagon as a
called and down the streets. All please let it be
far me hole. The Weld's Fargo wagon is a calm
(18:52):
and down the street. I wish I wish I knew
what it could be. I got a box with me
for sugar wargos in March, I got a great Medican
Montgomery Awards sent me across a bathtub and a cross
(19:12):
cut saw. Uh there was there was shipping, all kinds
of stuff, that's right. And it was literally all kinds
of stuff. Because the folks are teamed up. They're on
the East Coast in New York to create Wells Fargo
wanted to dominate shipping across the contiguous United States and beyond.
They wanted a monopoly, and there were a bunch of
(19:36):
East Coast shipping concerns at the time. But Wells Fargo
is different. It was the creation or the result of
a supergroup team up between three different people. Henry Wells,
William G. Fargo, those are the names we know. And
then another one you may not have heard of, a
guy named John Butterfield. On their own, these dudes each
(19:59):
had shipping company. But uh, they when they joined forces
in eighteen fifty, they created something. This is a trick question.
What do you think they created? Way to not Wells
far ago? Right, that's correct, I'm I'm thinking some other
legacy brand. Let's see they called they called the package
(20:20):
shipping industry at the time, the express industry. Wait a minute,
and these activities were taking place in America. Let's see.
I like what, I like where we're going with this,
United Express, American Eagle, State Express, Packaged Postal Eagle, America
un Canada Mail in a hurry. Okay, I like all
(20:42):
of those, and those did not make it out of
the pitch meeting that ultimately settled on, um, you guessed it,
maybe American Express. Yes, I hope, we hope we left
enough breadcrumbs there. And this is probably obvious to everyone,
but I think it's so interesting how the biggest banks
and credit card companies always got their start like in
the gold Rush and like you know, occupying some niche
(21:05):
and then just kind of like ballooning from there. And
now we have our you know, our Wells Fargoes and
our you know big banks of the world which are giant, right,
So these guys joined forces in eighteen fifty they make
American Express. Fast forward two years. American Expresses primarily an
(21:28):
East coast operation, but they want to they want to
get in on the growing West Coast market, or at
least some members of American Express to you see, Henry
Wells and William Fargo are gassed about it. They're super excited.
But the Board of American Expresses, it's like, well, why
are we gonna do this California thing? We got, we
(21:50):
got a pretty nice operation here on the East coast.
It ain't broke, don't fix it, Fargo, And they said, wells, no,
they didn't say that. They they started their own company.
They kind of, uh, they took what they learned from
the American Express operation and they just moved it to
the West coast and they changed the name. Yeah, and
(22:11):
and again early on they their biggest service was delivery
of valuable goods, um, you know, jewels and gold, and
then eventually kind of more you know home goods that
that that folks that actually had a little money to
spend from like catalogs, ship and shipments and stuff like
that could could lutes, balustrades, all of that stuff. Um.
(22:35):
And they were very clever in their marketing and did
a good job of endearing themselves to the news media
by including free newspapers along with any packages that you
would ship through their their service. And this is great
because everybody enjoys being plugged in getting the latest news.
(22:57):
And we have to remember this is before television. This
is a time in an age where information is a
little tougher to come by, so getting a free newspaper
is a great value. Add things get a little weird
when the company starts directly delivering gold as well. Right,
that's where it becomes a little bit more than a
(23:18):
postage service, It's true, and that you know, we we
we'll find out and as we as we know based
on what we know Wells Fargo as today, that became
much more of their bread and butter. But because they
were handling so much of this precious material that was
coming out of the gold rush, um, they it made
just perfect sense to them to set up a situation
where they could you know, invest and hold onto people's
(23:40):
assets for them. And they did such a good job
and uh, you know, did it so quickly that folks
were very comfortable with them. And then you know, like
that was sort of one of the early days of
folks having money that had been formerly you know, destitute,
and they needed to trust somebody and they trusted Wells Fargo.
So um. And a really good point in this Atlas
(24:01):
Obscure article is every new settlement gold mining colony that
was set up. You'd have yourself a saloon, and you'd
have yourself a Wells Fargo. Yeah, absolutely, maybe a church
to who knows. Definitely a Wells Fargo. And earlier we
had walked through this strange and inconvenient Rube Goldberg esque
(24:21):
shipping system that companies like Wells Fargo would use. They
would send the steamships down to Panama, the horses over
the smith which was a dangerous, uh and at times
deadly trip, and then they would send ships up the
Pacific coast. In eighteen fifty eight, they create the first
(24:44):
of what we described as overland delivery service, named in
a burst of creativity, the Overland Mail Company. And this
is where Wells Fargo really kind of took that shipping
to the next level because they a um started getting
a little bit of assistance from Congress UH and that
(25:04):
a bidding war began to establish much more of a
nationwide postal system. And that company, that offshoot was and
the running and won the contract. And so the Overland
Mail Company, and it's by now very experienced owners take
(25:26):
a step forward. There there's still a private company, but
now they're very closely working with the government, and they
are carrying all official mail. We know a little bit
about their original contract. They cracked a deal with Uncle
Sam and they said, okay, mail is never gonna take
longer than twenty five days. But despite what it said
(25:49):
on paper, the reality was much different, you know, And
there was still a lot of wilderness in the West.
There's still a lot of intervening variables. So you could
you could trust that Overland and Wells Fargo and these
kinds of outfits would do their best to get the
mail to you at some point, which you wouldn't really
(26:10):
be able to safely predict it all the time. Eventually,
Butterfield resigns and Wells Fargo as the company, takes over
the board of Overland Mail in eighteen sixty and then
they buy the company straight out in eighteen sixty six.
And then everything changed when in eighteen sixty nine, the
(26:33):
very first transcontinental railroad system came into existence, which was
a network um of various rail lines that were connected
um through some very forward thinking individuals that started the
Central Pacific Railroad Company. Yeah, and so imagine all the
machinations of Wells Fargo, of Henry Henry Wells and William Fargo.
(26:59):
Imagine it like a very beautifully constructed palace of cards
in a windy room. Because as soon as all these
regional railroad systems are connected, this house of shipping cards
that Wells Fargo has built just rushes through the windows. Uh.
The owners of Central Pacific in almost a single stroke,
(27:23):
render everything Wells Fargo has worked on all all of
its monopolistic infrastructure outdated, if not obsolete. Right, But they
were quick to hop on the train. That's that's not
even a pun. That's just I thought it works. Just
laziness as Farllows and Wells Fargo. Um, they they knew
what the score was, and the Central Pacific Railroad Company
(27:46):
was actually kind of jerking them around a bit, like
playing a little bit of like a cat batting around
some sort of you know, um hand knitted mouse toy.
And they created an express company themselves, and that is
when um Wells Fargo purchased that company from Central Pacific
so they could get in on shipping their goods through
(28:09):
the railroad system. And that's what got them in the door. Yes, yeah,
do you know what I have to be honest here,
this is way more fascinating than I thought it would
have been. Uh, you know, before I started researching this,
what do you think? Well, then, first of all, I
hope you always feel that you can be honest with
me and the listeners, and I think you do. I agree, though,
(28:29):
I was surprised at how the history of shipping and
receiving and mail and packages, all things that sound a
little dry on the surface actually pretty fascinating. And there's
a lot of adventure and the Pony Express. Who knew
we're not even halfway done with this? Well we're okay, officially,
we're halfway done with the story. We're going to We're
(28:52):
going to conclude, and we hope you tune in for
our follow up on the weird, weird, weird history of
shipping stuff. In the meantime, you can continue the conversation.
We want to hear your shipping war stories or your
your strange anecdotes. You can find us on Facebook, you
can find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter,
not just as a show, but as individuals. Can find
(29:13):
me exclusively on Instagram at how now Noel Brown, Um
where I get into various adventures and misadventures, and you know,
you can see me hanging out and doing cute stuff
with my kid and going to concerts and eating delicious foods.
And you can join my various global Shenanigant and see
me get kicked into and out of different places, communities
and countries on Instagram at Ben Boland or on Twitter
(29:37):
at Ben Boland hs W. Thanks as always the super
producer Casey Peperam, Thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme.
Christopher Hasiota is here in spirit as always, thanks of
course to Gabe Lousier, Thanks to Eve's Jeff Coat. Thanks
to and Noel. I appreciate you. I appreciate you reluctantly
co signing me on this part. But thanks to Jonathan Strickland,
(29:59):
ak that twister a k A young Quizzles a k
a uh Stricka poo, he would hate that one, Mr Quister,
there we go. I like the rhyd their sister, sister,
twisted sister, the twisted Quister. I like that. Um yeah,
I think okay, reluctant thanks to to Jonathan Strickland and
absolute wholehearted um from the bottom of my heart thanks
(30:21):
to super producer Casey Pegram. Did you already say that
even if you did. I'm adding another one because we
just love the crap out of that guy. Uh and
thanks to you, Ben. I like your hat today, sir,
thanks so much so I got it in the mail
oddly enough. How do you like that? See you next time, folks.
(30:44):
For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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