Highway Post Office First Trip

In yesterday's post I shared my finds from the local flea market. Well today I wanted to show you some more of those covers I had gotten. While putting the covers in order I realized I had a small portion from 1941. It wasn't until after I had sorted everything that I realized what made the ones from 1941 different. The cancellation did not say, "First Day of Issue", rather they said, "First Trip". Now I have read and researched a lot of things regarding the mail, but I had never come across a FDC like this before.

Upon a quick google search I discovered that there was something called the Highway Post Office which was a bus that traveled between two cities and a worker would sort mail enroute. Pretty neat huh?

The First Trip issue was the only mail carried on the HPO during their first trip, which is why the special cancellation. I did some digging and I was able to find a picture of one of those buses as seen below.

Can you imagine seeing one of those babies driving down the road? I love the colors used on the bus and the clear detail on the front designating it for US Mail. The HPO ran from 1941 to 1974 and was originally thought to take the place of the railway mail service. This was not the case, however, as the railway mail service outlasted the HPO by 3 years. 

One last interesting picture I found while searching was this one of FDR dropping mail in the Highway Post Office bus drop slot. 

Wouldn't it be neat if they revived the HPO for just one round trip around the US collecting stamped letters and cards to be sent to others? I would certainly find the time to drop a few pieces of mail in that slot. What about you?