18 Things You Never Knew About the Post Office

From mail-delivery boats to storing stamps underground, these facts may surprise you

Daniel Bortz,

AARP

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Published May 13, 2025

A balloon shaped like a dog and bearing a postage stamp emerges from a mailbox

You can ship inflated balloons in the mail without packaging — though there’s no guarantee they’ll arrive at their destination without popping first.

Chris Gash

Love it or hate it, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has a rich history — and there’s a lot you may not know about this nearly 250-year-old institution.

Here are some surprising facts about the post office.

The first U.S. post office was housed in a tavern in Boston.

The watering hole, owned by Richard Fairbanks, primarily collected mail between the Colonies and England. When it opened in 1639, letters cost a penny apiece to mail.

The first postage stamp, introduced in 1847, featured Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general by the Continental Congress in 1775. His salary: $1,000, or about $41,500 today. He held the job for a year before being dispatched to France to serve as an ambassador to the court of King Louis XVI.

The post office invented ZIP codes.

In 1963, the Postal Service introduced the Zoning Improvement Plan (ZIP) code to better process and deliver increasing volumes of mail. ZIP codes allowed mail to be sent to specific streets, homes and businesses. The largest ZIP code in the continental U.S. is 99734 in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, measuring 30,683 square miles.

It delivers more mail and packages than any other postal service in the world.

The U.S. Postal Service processes and delivers an astonishing 44 percent of the globe’s mail. It serves nearly 169 million addresses nationwide, covering every town, city and state. The longest daily delivery route is rural Route 001 in Sidney, Montana, at 195.2 miles.

a clock running with different figures below it

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It doesn’t deliver mail only on land.

A 45-foot boat delivers mail to ships traveling along the Detroit River. The vessel has the only floating ZIP code in America.

The smallest full-service post office occupies an 8-by-7-foot shed in the Florida Everglades.

The tiny outpost can accommodate only one worker at a time. Clerks have reported sightings of snakes, alligators, bears and other wildlife on the premises.

Each year, the Postal Service makes changes to its offerings and prices.

On Jan. 19, 2025, the price of several postal services increased. Moreover, the agency said in April that it will raise the price of a first-class Forever stamp by 5 cents, from 73 cents to 78 cents, on July 13 if the price change is approved by the USPS Board of Governors.

USPS mailboxes are considered federal property.

That makes it a crime to vandalize a mailbox, according to federal law. Violators face fines of up to $250,000, or up to three years in prison, for each act of vandalism.

The Postal Service is self-funded.

USPS is an independent government agency that generally does not receive tax dollars to support its operating expenses. Instead, it relies on selling postage, products and services to fund its operations.

It sells mail and letter carrier costumes for kids.

You can buy them online for $25 to $30. It also sells post office mailbox and postal truck costumes for toddlers. There’s even an Instagram-worthy mail carrier dog costume for $18.

It has a department dedicated to deciphering poor penmanship.

What happens to mail with addresses that can’t be read by the Postal Service’s automated processing equipment? Images are taken and sent to the Remote Encoding Center, a nondescript building on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. There, employees — called “digital detectives” by the post office — review them and manually type in the address information. The facility, which operates around the clock, receives around 2.3 million address images per day.

You can ship bricks in the mail without packaging.

You can also send potatoes, coconuts and rocks without boxing them. (Postage costs are determined by weight, making heavy spuds costly to mail.) You can even mail inflated balloons — though there’s no guarantee they’ll arrive at their destination without popping first.

Celebrities and historical icons were post office workers.

Future presidents Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, abolitionist John Brown and novelist William Faulkner served as postmasters. Actors Steve Carell, Rock Hudson and Morgan Freeman worked as letter carriers before making it big in Hollywood. You can see a list of famous postal employees here.

There are more than 246,000 Postal Service vehicles.

It’s one of the largest civilian fleets in the world. The agency is in the process of rolling out electric mail trucks, announcing plans in December 2022 to acquire at least 45,000 battery-powered delivery vehicles by 2028.

Some postal workers still deliver mail by bicycle.

The USPS delivers mail by bike on 50 routes in Arizona and Florida. One branch, in Sun City, Arizona, has specially equipped bicycles with baskets designed to distribute and balance the mail load evenly when the carrier dismounts, protecting fragile packages.

There’s a Postal Service museum in Washington, D.C.

The National Postal Museum, opened by the Smithsonian in 1993, houses approximately 6 million artifacts, including postal stationery, greeting cards, letters, mailboxes, postal vehicles, mail carrier uniforms and — of course — stamps. Admission is free.

It stores stamps in a limestone cave 150 feet below ground.

The underground facility, located in Kansas City, Missouri, provides consistent temperatures and humidity levels year-round, which helps maintain the stamps in mint condition.

The Postal Service delivers mail to Santa.

Every year, thousands of children send letters to Santa Claus with their holiday wishes through the USPS Operation Santa program. His mailing address is 123 Elf Road, North Pole, 88888. The holiday classic Miracle on 34th Street features the program in a courtroom scene. The Postal Service shares some of the heartfelt letters online.

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Daniel Bortz is a personal finance editor at AARP. His work has been published by the New York Times, Washington Post, Consumer Reports, Entrepreneur, Kiplinger, Newsweek, Money and other national publications.