Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Don't call it a comeback,
Speaker 1: we'll actually do, because we are back with part two
Speaker 1: on the weird, weird, weird history of shipping things in
Speaker 1: the US. If you have not listened to part one
Speaker 1: for for you know, for your sake, we're just looking
Speaker 1: out for you, go ahead and pause this, Go play
Speaker 1: part one. It's worth it. We'll wait. I'm Noah by
Speaker 1: the way, Oh that's right, and I am Ben Boland.
Speaker 1: We are joined as always with our super producer, Casey Pegroom,
Speaker 1: and we are officially halfway through the very strange story
Speaker 1: of how things it from point A to point B
Speaker 1: and all the weird stops they make along the way.
Speaker 1: How about we joined that already in progress. The way
Speaker 1: that Atlas Obscura phrases is pretty funny. The author says,
Speaker 1: the owners of the Central Pacific Railroad created a company
Speaker 1: solely for the purpose of screwing with Wells Fargo, which
Speaker 1: which I always love it when people interject a little
Speaker 1: bit of petty humanity into these stories. This story is
Speaker 1: full of petty humanity for sure. Now, yeah, yeah, we've
Speaker 1: all been to the we've all had this ship something somewhere,
Speaker 1: so you're right, they do. They do decide to purchase
Speaker 1: this company, and they continue being this huge force in
Speaker 1: the package industry until World War One. Because during World
Speaker 1: War One, the US government forces all of these postage services,
Speaker 1: all the express industry companies to combine into a single
Speaker 1: monolithic thing and they nationalize it and they call this
Speaker 1: the Railway Express Agency. Yeah, and this is specifically so
Speaker 1: the government could have an easier time of shipping wartime
Speaker 1: necessities um such as rations, human beings and all of
Speaker 1: the other trappings and accoutrement of of war. And as
Speaker 1: we know in history, you know, all good things must
Speaker 1: come to an end um and disruptive technology is just
Speaker 1: the order of the day. And in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: this monolith um collapsed as well, and it's because of
Speaker 1: motor vehicles. They they just became much more efficient for
Speaker 1: shipping things because you weren't bound to literal routes laid
Speaker 1: out on tracks, and you could just be a lot
Speaker 1: more nimble in shipping stuff. And that's when we start
Speaker 1: to see Wells far ago completely abandoning uh shipping and
Speaker 1: receiving in favor of exclusively their banking operations, which again
Speaker 1: they were happening in tandem. The banks were kind of
Speaker 1: part and parcel, if you'll excuse the pun. You don't
Speaker 1: have to um to the shipping business. Because of the time,
Speaker 1: they were already handling these assets that made sense to
Speaker 1: them to be able to just invest them and hold
Speaker 1: them for people in all of these various wells fargo locations.
Speaker 1: So they give that up and this is when we
Speaker 1: start to see um a lot more individual companies pop
Speaker 1: up startup companies at the time, for lack of a
Speaker 1: better term, like ups and FedEx. Yeah, we have to
Speaker 1: remember that while all these swells and shipping tycoons were
Speaker 1: putting their stamp on history. Uh, we have to remember
Speaker 1: that the Federal Post Office at this time was a
Speaker 1: lot more like a regulatory agency than something that actually
Speaker 1: shipped packages and letters. So while all this is happening,
Speaker 1: and let's let's jump back in time here in the
Speaker 1: early days of the Federal Post Office, it wasn't a
Speaker 1: shipping company. It was more of a regulatory agency. They
Speaker 1: made rules about how packages and letters should be sent.
Speaker 1: Until that is, several big changes occur, which us to
Speaker 1: the current day. The first was the Rural Free Delivery Act.
Speaker 1: There the establishment of Rural Free Delivery in eight This
Speaker 1: was huge from more than half of the country because
Speaker 1: half of the country lived in rural areas and now
Speaker 1: they could get mail directly sent to them instead of
Speaker 1: having to go to you know, the county seat to
Speaker 1: find the post office. And in nineteen thirteen there was
Speaker 1: another big change. It was something called parcel post. Yeah,
Speaker 1: parcel post, it's to send. I mean, it's as simple
Speaker 1: as it became much more cost effective to ship things,
Speaker 1: maxing out at fifty pounds at the time. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was so efficient that, as is referenced in this
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscure article, uh, college students would ship their dirty
Speaker 1: laundry home and the especially made metal boxes so their
Speaker 1: parents could do their laundry for them and then ship
Speaker 1: it back. And it was more cost effective to do
Speaker 1: that than to go to a laundry matter hire somebody
Speaker 1: to to wash their clothes for them, which is crazy, right.
Speaker 1: You have to wonder was the mail just that cheap
Speaker 1: or were laundry mats themselves incredibly expensive. There's so much
Speaker 1: weird stuff that's been mailed over over the years. We
Speaker 1: can we can laundry list a few towards the end,
Speaker 1: but we should mention just an honorable mention, of course,
Speaker 1: to Charlotte May Piersdorff, who was literally mailed from Grangeville
Speaker 1: to Lewiston, Idaho for about fifty three cents. Her trip
Speaker 1: only took a few hours. This was legal at the
Speaker 1: time because she was under the weight limit. I hope
Speaker 1: they poked some holes in the box for her. She
Speaker 1: did make it, she did survive, yes, so maybe she
Speaker 1: was practicing some sort of deep meditation to restrict your breathing.
Speaker 1: I have you ever seen that Malcolm in the middle
Speaker 1: episode where the older brother whose name I'm forgetting, what's
Speaker 1: his name, doesn't matter, he wants to ship himself to
Speaker 1: China because he wants to beat up his pen pal
Speaker 1: for some reason. And Dewey, the very smart younger brother,
Speaker 1: UM decides to help him and also screw with him
Speaker 1: by packing him up into a giant wooden create and
Speaker 1: then simulating what it would feel like to make that
Speaker 1: journey by like, you know, rocking it back and forth
Speaker 1: and having sound effects. And he even had like a
Speaker 1: fish out so it smelled like the sea and all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and Um he's got like, you know, boxes
Speaker 1: of cereal and like milk and stuff inside the crate. Um.
Speaker 1: I just love the idea of of anyone shipping themselves
Speaker 1: somewhere as a substitute to other more traditional forms of travel,
Speaker 1: and shout out of course the Henry Box Brown. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of our fellow listeners are waiting to
Speaker 1: at least have the mention of this brilliant man who
Speaker 1: escaped slavery when he was thirty three by having himself
Speaker 1: mailed in eighteen forty nine to Philadelphia, Which is talking
Speaker 1: about out of the box thinking. Well, the out of
Speaker 1: the box thinking led him into a box and then
Speaker 1: he got out of it. Eventually did get out of
Speaker 1: the box. That's true. Um, yeah, that's a really cool story.
Speaker 1: And there's an episode of stuff you missed in history
Speaker 1: class on that very subject. So let's let's bring ourselves
Speaker 1: forward to the future. You mentioned UPS earlier. They started
Speaker 1: out in Seattle in seven as the American Messenger Company
Speaker 1: or AMC, with no affiliation to the to the Theater Company. Now,
Speaker 1: this was kind of like a gig economy. There were
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids who weren't full time employees. They
Speaker 1: were just doing odd jobs for not a ton of money.
Speaker 1: Remember the episode we did about the firefly catchers an hour,
Speaker 1: It was that company. That was the company. It was
Speaker 1: like a chemical company that like literally crowdsourced little kids
Speaker 1: to go around catching fireflies. Um, this was like that
Speaker 1: on a smaller scale initially, which is crazy considering you know,
Speaker 1: the corporate Megalith's eventually became. But yeah, they describe it
Speaker 1: here as as almost like a lemonade. It stand mentality. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course it ballooned when this young man
Speaker 1: at the age of nineteen, James casey Um expanded and
Speaker 1: he started kind of combining the efforts of all of
Speaker 1: these little disparate, um gig kind of courier services and
Speaker 1: moved outside of Seattle and then changed the company's United
Speaker 1: parcel service in nineteen nineteen. And their big thing was
Speaker 1: using cars. Like we said, it was much more nimble. Um.
Speaker 1: They were very good at planning these routes and making
Speaker 1: things as efficient as possible. Yeah, and at this time
Speaker 1: UPS experiences tremendous growth thinks, of course, to the boom
Speaker 1: of the automobile industry. It also naturally becomes a direct
Speaker 1: competitor to this parcel Post system because UPS gets something
Speaker 1: called common carrier rights. Common carrier rights mean that shooping
Speaker 1: companies like UPS have some of the rights and responsibilities
Speaker 1: of a public company or state service even though it's
Speaker 1: a private entity. Because it's explicitly working for the general
Speaker 1: public good, it is subject to regulation by the government.
Speaker 1: This sounds like a bunch of red tape, but ultimately
Speaker 1: what it allows UPS to do is to become at
Speaker 1: the time the biggest package shipper in the world. And
Speaker 1: uh they are, of course still overland shipping. There's no
Speaker 1: airmail yet, although some some folks tried, right, I think
Speaker 1: the US government actually tried airmail a couple of times.
Speaker 1: The po D, the Post Office Department, started delivering mail
Speaker 1: by aircraft in nineteen eighteen. But they couldn't, you know,
Speaker 1: they couldn't deliver packages, just letters, just very fancy letters,
Speaker 1: and that list included. We had the newly established United
Speaker 1: States Postal Service, which, as we mentioned at the top
Speaker 1: of the show, went from being a more of a
Speaker 1: department to an actual agency. They have the letter deliveries,
Speaker 1: thatch suation on lock. No one else really needs to
Speaker 1: mess with that. It's not really an area of concern
Speaker 1: for any of these other companies, we have ups and
Speaker 1: then in nineteen seventy one we have Federal Express, which
Speaker 1: which the seed of that idea began in a Yale
Speaker 1: dorm room in nineteen sixty five. It was a dream
Speaker 1: the subject of a term paper by undergraduate Frederick W. Smith,
Speaker 1: who essentially invented the idea of airmail Um. In this
Speaker 1: paper that didn't even get a particularly good grade. Uh.
Speaker 1: He his professor did not see the value in this
Speaker 1: revolutionary idea, and he he didn't flunk it, but it
Speaker 1: probably it sounds like he gave it more of a C.
Speaker 1: So then in seventy one, after a little bit of
Speaker 1: time spent in the military, Smith got out of his
Speaker 1: service and he bought um a very large share controlling
Speaker 1: share in an Arkansas company called Arkansas Aviation Sales, which
Speaker 1: is in Little Rock, Um. And he began to see
Speaker 1: how tough the logistical side of using airplanes to deliver
Speaker 1: freight in a timely manner. So he decided that he
Speaker 1: was going to find a better way to do that,
Speaker 1: using kind of the lessons he learned from that term paper. Right,
Speaker 1: so fred Smith is pretty candid with himself and the
Speaker 1: employees of Arkansas Aviation sales about the difficulties facing their company,
Speaker 1: and I gotta say I appreciate that FedEx's official website
Speaker 1: is also very honest about the bumps and obstacles in
Speaker 1: the way. That's where we're getting a lot of this
Speaker 1: history here. Uh. He is behaving exactly like all those
Speaker 1: people you see at the beginning of made for TV
Speaker 1: infomercials where something happens, they kind of bumble something and
Speaker 1: they go, there's got to be a better way. And
Speaker 1: that is where he gets the idea for Federal Express
Speaker 1: because going back to the paper, which was still very prescient,
Speaker 1: he thinks there are two big challenges logistics and then infrastructure,
Speaker 1: right which are inextricably intertwined. So he also he chooses
Speaker 1: the name Federal Express for some pretty clever reasons. Said,
Speaker 1: federal makes it sound, you know, more like a government entity,
Speaker 1: like like patriotic too. You wanted to appeal to people's
Speaker 1: patriotism and the idea that I think the Federalist papers
Speaker 1: was a big part of the foundation of our country
Speaker 1: and there would be positive associations with that. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: thinks it will help attract public attention. It also helps
Speaker 1: him with one of his first potential clients, the Federal
Speaker 1: Reserve Bank. He thought, they're gonna love this. They turned
Speaker 1: it down, but obviously FedEx soldiered on. They moved to Memphis,
Speaker 1: Tennessee because it was kind of central in the US
Speaker 1: and the airport was in a great location, was rarely
Speaker 1: closed due to bad weather. They were also able They said, look, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: if you want to move FedEx here, we will work
Speaker 1: with you. Yeah. And again that goes into his forward
Speaker 1: thinking as far as like streamlining the process and the logistics.
Speaker 1: So UM. They began operations on April seventeenth and nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three. According to their official website, they had three
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty nine employees UM and fourteen planes that
Speaker 1: were housed in hangars there at the Memphis Airport, and
Speaker 1: on their first outing they delivered a hundred and eighties
Speaker 1: six packages to twenty five states UM Rochester, New York,
Speaker 1: to Miami, Florida and all points in between. And much
Speaker 1: like the Pony Express, they were not profitable UM at first,
Speaker 1: but unlike the Pony Express, they did figure out how
Speaker 1: to soldier through and from nineteen seventy three to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, no profits. But then in July of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five it started becoming a very um prominent carrier
Speaker 1: of luxury goods in the marketplace UM, and it started
Speaker 1: to become this kind of bellweather of how to do
Speaker 1: business shipping things in this kind of new era of
Speaker 1: on demand, door to door shipment. This path ultimately leads
Speaker 1: FedEx to become the world's largest all cargo air fleet.
Speaker 1: They have tons of planes thanks to deregulation, and in
Speaker 1: three they were the first American company to get one
Speaker 1: billion dollars worth of revenue within ten years of a startup,
Speaker 1: without being bought by anybody and without merging. So they
Speaker 1: got there on their own in that business sense. And
Speaker 1: this still despite the company's size, it's just a small
Speaker 1: piece of the weird, weird, gigantic thing we call the
Speaker 1: shipping industry. We didn't even get into cargo ships when
Speaker 1: everybody listening to know, if you want a weird vacation,
Speaker 1: you can actually book a ride on a cargo ship.
Speaker 1: You know why. You just have to be very flexible
Speaker 1: with your times. Is it like cost effective? This is
Speaker 1: more like a weird vacation. It's like it's a weird vacation.
Speaker 1: It's it's a slow boat across the ocean. So I
Speaker 1: wouldn't like book myself passage on a cargo ship to
Speaker 1: save money. Uh maybe you could, depending, you know. It's
Speaker 1: it's just it's so different because it's gonna take such
Speaker 1: a long time. You might have to you can say, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to arrive you know, X amount of months
Speaker 1: or days later in East Asia, but they'll say, okay,
Speaker 1: well give it a margin vera of a month or two.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that makes it. That makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 1: And we mentioned this briefly at the top of the show.
Speaker 1: But like where things are now, it's interesting how it's
Speaker 1: come full circle now. Shipping and receiving is becoming much
Speaker 1: more back to those old days of just kind of
Speaker 1: getting a courier like with like a task Rabbit person
Speaker 1: or using uber in some places, like in New York,
Speaker 1: Uber driver will pick up and bring you stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: like if they're not supposed to, but they will. And
Speaker 1: then you have other delivery you know, on demand services
Speaker 1: like ziftyh and what have you. And I feel like
Speaker 1: we've kind of come back full circle. Um, not to mention, uh,
Speaker 1: the elephant in the room the giant, giant elephant in
Speaker 1: the room, which is Amazon in terms of how potentially
Speaker 1: they stand to dominate shipping and receiving through their Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime memberships, etcetera. You know, Like I mean, they have
Speaker 1: all these fulfillment centers that are nearby, so when you
Speaker 1: order goods, you're not having to have it shipped from
Speaker 1: across the country. You're literally have a duplicate facility that's
Speaker 1: much more close to you that you could get your
Speaker 1: whatever it is, your you know, Pikachu key chain, you know,
Speaker 1: in the same day, because it's literally just a local
Speaker 1: delivery person bringing it from that fulfillment center that might
Speaker 1: only be an hour or even less away from you
Speaker 1: if you live in a bigger city like New York.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting to see how that's going to develop
Speaker 1: as they start, you know, experimenting with terrifying things like
Speaker 1: using drones to deliver birthday cakes and and what what whatnot.
Speaker 1: And now we've we've caught up to the current situation.
Speaker 1: We also want to give an honorable mentioned to several
Speaker 1: strange things that have been shipped in the past. Of course,
Speaker 1: diseases have been shipped accidentally. I would assume, well, there's
Speaker 1: a lady named Miss Daisy James in a August seven
Speaker 1: issue of the New York Times, who said the dead
Speaker 1: birds and small animals are sent to taxidermists throughout the country.
Speaker 1: She also handled different strains of smallpox, diphtheria, and scarlet
Speaker 1: fever that were shipped by doctors to the health board.
Speaker 1: Remember when people were sending anthrax in the mail a
Speaker 1: lot that was a thing or fake anthrax as well?
Speaker 1: There were also been entire buildings shipped, sometimes brick by
Speaker 1: brick pets of course, loose diamonds, which are you know
Speaker 1: the millionaires go to escape plan uh, and many many
Speaker 1: other strange things. One one thing that might be of
Speaker 1: interest to some of us is that you can ship
Speaker 1: things anonymously through the mail. These are These can range
Speaker 1: from practical jokes to uh to just very weird stuff
Speaker 1: or contraband perhaps or contraband perhaps, which we are not
Speaker 1: we're not condoning right on a family show. But what
Speaker 1: happens to the recipient? I mean, sure, you can send
Speaker 1: something um anonymously, but the person that receives it could
Speaker 1: then be on the hook for whatever you sent. Is
Speaker 1: how does that work? Well, there's a need article on
Speaker 1: cheat sheet dot com, where it says it lists some
Speaker 1: different entities that will help you send weird stuff. You
Speaker 1: can send somebody a potato in the mail. You can
Speaker 1: send them a glitter bomb, which is crazy, really really horrible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would not do that to someone, and please don't
Speaker 1: do that. It just gets in every orifice. It's been
Speaker 1: described as, of course, the herpes of the craft world.
Speaker 1: It's that's very true. You can ship a brick, you
Speaker 1: can send people fake money. You can send them a
Speaker 1: gigantic teddy bear, a venus flytrap, just some sand. One
Speaker 1: of the weirdest things. A lot of these are jokes
Speaker 1: and strange pranks. You can send prank candles that smell
Speaker 1: good when they burn for the first few minutes and
Speaker 1: then they go from like vanilla to you know, sulfur
Speaker 1: uh uh fecal smell. Yeah, and then you can send
Speaker 1: the worst cup of coffee. You can send an eggplant, uh,
Speaker 1: some things like that, Like I think potatoes and coconuts
Speaker 1: you don't even have to wrap. You can just put
Speaker 1: a stamp on them. I do love a good mail
Speaker 1: order coconut. That's that's the way I uh, that's the
Speaker 1: way I often prefer them. Uh and this this brings
Speaker 1: us to you, dear listeners, What are some of the
Speaker 1: weirdest things that you have ever encountered via parcel or post?
Speaker 1: What's the weirdest thing you've ever delivered or had delivered
Speaker 1: to you? We want to know. You can find us
Speaker 1: on Facebook, can find us on Instagram. You can find
Speaker 1: us on Twitter, not just as ridiculous history, but as
Speaker 1: individuals as well. You can find me exclusively on Instagram,
Speaker 1: where I go by the handle at how Now Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at ben Bowland h
Speaker 1: s W for the old school how stuff Works fans
Speaker 1: out there. You can also find me on Instagram in
Speaker 1: various adventures where I am at ben Boland. Thanks as
Speaker 1: always the super producer Casey Pegram, Alex Williams who composed
Speaker 1: our theme, research associate gabelues here. Um Christopher Haciota is
Speaker 1: here in spirit Eve's Jeff Cote of course, the Quister
Speaker 1: a K. Jonathan Strickland, a k A Young Quizzles, a
Speaker 1: k A A sap Quizzy a k A the Worst.
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