TIL that in Victorian London mail delivery routes would go by every house 12 times a day.

randomaccount43543 , 4 hours ago

The original article by the NYTimes:

The Birth of Cheap Communication (and Junk Mail) - By Randall Stross

www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/21digi.html

ladicius , 4 hours ago

In Germany mail was delivered two times a day, in the city district even more often, up until the 1960s.

Nowadays the mailpeople show up two times a week.

Olap , 4 hours ago

Britain still had this until early 2010s I believe, early post and late post. Daily in the city, not Sundays, is the norm now. You still find prioriry post boxes which are collected twice a day too

idiomaddict , 4 hours ago

It blows my mind that they don’t pick mail up from peoples houses. I live in a city, so it could be different in more rural areas, but I my closest mailbox is almost a half kilometer away.

randombullet , 3 hours ago

Yeah, I was a little shocked too.

Especially in apartment complexes. There’s usually a communal outbox for anyone to send out mail. But no, you’ll have to go all the way to a post office to drop off mail. The nearest one is a 20 minute walk for me.

Anticorp , 3 hours ago

That is crazy. In the USA they pick mail up at everyone’s house, and there are big mailboxes every couple of blocks.

Carighan , 2 hours ago

I mean if nothing else, the need for it has just utterly collapsed. Even in a largely still print-driven country like Germany.

Parcels, that’s an entirely different thing. And you will notice that DHL, UPS, they all do at-home pickup. Or DHL and Hermes have drop of spots in what feels like every single little kiosk, bakery or ice cream parlor.

But mail? Actual, proper, snail-mail? That’s mostly on the way out, actually. It’s no longer a big need for virtually anybody. Most people I know check their physical mailbox at most once a week, sometimes once a month (since invoices arrive monthly usually).