Potatoes in the Mail | Hacker News Reader

Potatoes in the Mail

facts.usps.com

510 pointsmooreds256 comments

I love parcels. Always have. My mom worked at the post office.

Cheap postage hack: Nearly all U.S. stamps issued since World War II don’t have value. You can buy old stamps on eBay for about 60–75 % of face value as “face” stamps—and they’re perfectly valid for mailing.

Unconventional postcards: A thin sheet of plywood with a Sharpie address label is a fun postcard. (it just costs a lot more than a normal postcard)

Small Flat Rate Box physics: With a 70 lb limit, you’d need something exotic—say, a primordial black hole—to exceed the weight cap.

Spare the carrier’s back: A Medium Flat Rate Box packed with 10,000 pre 1982 copper pennies tips the scale at roughly 68 lb. Maybe ship the coins another way—your postal carrier will thank you!

For a few years, your money was better spent investing in Forever stamps vs the stock market..

This was more or less the plan behind the original Ponzi scheme. The problem is that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to convert stamps back to cash at anything close to face value.

fun fact. in federal prisons (and some portion of state prisons), books of stamps are essentially $5 bills. It's common to see people with huge wads of stamps in their pockets much like you would with cash. a few years ago, it became much more difficult to convert stamps back to cash, so a few companies popped up that would accept stamps in the mail for some value on the dollar and books of stamps are the currency of (most) US prisons to this day.

The jails and prisons are all shifting to a system where they will frank your mail with the correct postage and take it off your commissary to avoid people owning stamps.

I once sued because the jail was selling Forever stamps at 49c but Congress had reduced the price to 47c. The government's argument was that they had purchased 10,000 of them at 49c, so selling them at 49c was legal as they weren't "ripping anyone off." The appellate courts did not agree with that argument.

Also, funny thing in jails, the sticky leftover gutter parts of the stamp books had value because they could be used to repair torn things like books, photos and magazines.

In the '90s I corresponded with a prisoner whose facility did not allow them to have stamps; they could only send usps envelopes with the postage preprinted directly on the envelope.

Oh, I thought they were using cans of mackerel!

> Unconventional postcards: A thin sheet of plywood

Can confirm, I laser cut wedding invitations out of 1/4" plywood and mailed them out like that. I think it required some "non-machineable" stamp or similar, but they all arrived at their intended destinations.

Several friends and I have been tossing around the idea of sending a solid billet of osmium in a small flat rate box, matching its size. "One rate, any weight," right?

Sadly this experiment would cost in the high tens of thousands of dollars. We may try with titanium some day. That would only be ten thousand dollars.

Titanium is 4.51 g/cm³, vs osmium at 22.5 g/cm³. Did you mean tungsten at 19.3 g/cm³?

This is the HN comment I didn't know I needed.

Midwest Tungsten sells a 1.5" cube (1 kg) for $200. I have one, as well as a magnesium cube of the same size. They look identical but the Mg cube weighs 1/10 as much. It's fun to let someone hold the W cube to feel the weight and then toss them the Mg cube with "Here, catch!"

https://shop.tungsten.com/tungsten-cube/

I want that 7" cube, but $35k is well out of my price range.

Where'd you get the magnesium cube?

Not sure where they got it from, but the same folk have https://shop.tungsten.com/magnesium-cube/

I have both too! It’s a really fun talking piece when I have friends over.

Broken tungsten carbide drill bits are a much cheaper way to get dense weights (I made a running vest one time) if you can find a machine shop or online, etc.

Yes, tungsten. Oops

If you just used lead the billet would be 31lb, it'd be procurable and shippable for under $100.

Osmium is about twice as dense so yeah that would still be shippable at around 60 lb... I don't think that's even tens of thousands at that point? Isn't it going to be in the millions? I'm just thinking that like if you went for gold instead, 50 lb is 800 oz, at $3300/oz these days doing this with gold is $2.64M, no? And surely osmium blows gold out of the water by like 10x, right?

Jokes on you when the $100 of insurance is all you get back from the post office...

Edit: a sibling comment points out that you can probably do this under $100 with tungsten too and get up into that 50lb+ range.

Depleted uranium would be my first choice for this; we had big bars of the stuff laying around the lab that we used for door stops. (The lab was a place that designed nuclear weapons.)

DU is harmless unless you eat or breathe it but alas it's now illegal to possess more than a minute quantity of it.

Tungsten is actually slightly denser and it has the advantage of being obtainable.

Isn't DU heavy metal-dangerous, but not radiation-dangerous?

Yes

It's both. DU is never completely "depleted" because radiation falloff is asymptotic. DU is primarily an alpha emitter and alpha particles cannot penetrate skin, but they can cause damage if you breathe, eat, or inject DU dust.

That's why our use of big lumps of DU as door stops was considered "safe" (at that time several years ago) but in labs where people machined the stuff they were a lot more careful.

Sorry to be a downer, it’s a fun thought experiment – but also a good way to get a postal worker hurt, and possibly a nice lawsuit :)

How? Postal workers shouldn;t be carrying things that are too heavy. I suspect the USPS would have to arrange a special delivery.

Back when flat rates originally came out I don't think they had an actual weight limit.

A buddy of mine used to cast and paint figurines. Well, someone ordered a bunch of lead ones and they used a flat rate to ship it. The box weighed something like 80lbs. It was basically just a block of lead

It's probably coincidence but a few months later a weight limit was placed on flat rate boxes. It's still crazy high. We always thought the timing was funny.

I don't think it was a coincidence. Basically everyone who shipped raw metals in quantities that would reasonably fit in those boxes, did so.

The weight limit is 70 pounds = 31.8 kg. Lead is 11.35 g/cm^3.

Small flat rate box, 21.9 x 13.7 x 4.12 cm = 1236 cm^3 = 14kg; you can fill 100% with lead and mail it. Tungsten is also allegedly fine, but it will weigh 23 kilos and be quite difficult to pick up (can't get a finger under an edge...)

Medium flat rate box = 95kg; you can fill it 33% with lead, or ~45% with steel and mail it.

Large flat rate box = 144kg; only 22% lead.

(CGS units give me nightmares, so I'll swap to SI.)

For solids at room temperature and pressure the best you could do seems to be osmium or iridium, unless you have access to heavy transactinides.

  mass/kg substance
  2.57e5  small flat rate box
  2.26e5  osmium 
  2.25e5  iridium
  2.65e5  meitnerium (theoretical)

Considering the expense of synthesizing meitnerium and the half-life which is measured in seconds, I would recommend getting insurance as well as express shipping if you do try.

Less than a second for all known isotopes I can find [0] So by the time you get to the post office it's under the weight limit (and you and everyone nearby are dead from the massive radiation dose probably)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitnerium#Stability_and_half-...

What's wrong with 278Mt? That should give you a lesiurely 4.5 seconds.

The problem is I missed it wasn't ms like the rest of them. Still stands though you'll lose too much density by the time it's weighed even assuming you could mass create the Mt all at once.

Not with that attitude.

If you've got a particularly slothful postal worker you might consider topping up your meitnerium with a similarly sized sample of roentgenium-282. If you don't have any to hand then perhaps you'll have better luck producing tennessine-294 and waiting a couple of minutes. Amusingly your trip from Tennessee to x-ray land will take you via Moscow and Japan.

(Beware that you might end up making the box bulge a bit, since you'll necessarily go over the size limit by including less dense materials as well as necessary apparatus.)

> Nearly all U.S. stamps issued since World War II don’t have value

"Forever stamps" were introduced in 2007. What other stamps before then didn't have a face value? I don't remember any.

I think the idea is you can buy old stamp collections for less than face value.

E.g. this collection of 8000 stamps is $75: https://www.ebay.com/itm/396477663178

Looking at the pictures, many are more than $.01 value.

Assuming they’re uncancelled, you’ll end up multiples of your money ahead if you rip the collection apart and use it to mail stuff.

The challenge would be having enough surface area on your package to plaster on 6-cent stamps.

> The challenge would be having enough surface area on your package to plaster on 6-cent stamps.

It’s not too hard if you mail paper that can’t be folded.

Can also cover what you can and get the clerk to print you a label for the rest.

It is "legal enough" to stuff whole sheets of stamps into a pouch and attach the pouch to a parcel, if you do it at the post office and have them cancel the stamps at the counter. Let them know they can just use a Sharpie to cancel whole sheets at a time. Legal enough in the sense that my local post office lets me do it, and the local postmaster has okayed it, and the packages always make it, but I'm not entirely sure if it's 100% above-board. My record is over 800 stamps on a single Priority Mail box. Way, way more than would fit on the surface area of the box, and certainly way more than anyone could reasonably use if they actually had to apply the adhesive on the stamps.

I couldn't parse that at first either, but I think what they mean is that they don't have value as a collector's item. They still have face value, but they sell for less than that because they're not perceived as actual legal postage any longer, even though they actually are.

> Nearly all U.S. stamps issued since World War II don’t have value.

That's true of pretty much all stamps from all countries since WW2. Postal agencies have discovered that collectors will buy new issues and never mail them, preserving them as "mint". So it's pretty much free money for the Postal agency. Many countries (including the USPS) constantly come up with new designs to sell to collectors.

I noticed that when I began collecting as a boy, thinking the post WW2 issues were all just "soup can labels" and had zero interest in them.

Your comment made me think of the Terry Pratchett book "Going Postal" in which a conman is put in charge of the post office and quickly realizes what you said: selling stamps is free money. One of my favorites from his later discworld books.

Yeah, they are little more than the sticker books you buy for kids.

And I had a 3-year-old who proudly showed me the toy covered in "stickers" after he found a book of 100 $0.48 stamps!

ouch!

On the opposite of the spectrum:

From a set of year 2000 USPS experiments:

> Helium balloon. The balloon was attached to a weight. The address was written on the balloon with magic marker; no postage was affixed. Our operative argued strongly that he should be charged a negative postage and refunded the postal fees, because the transport airplane would actually be lighter as a result of our postal item. This line of reasoning merely received a laugh from the clerk. The balloon was refused; reasons given: transportation of helium, not wrapped.

https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/TMP-1...

Image links are dead, including on archive.org :(

Now you know the reason why courier services often include both weight and volume in their pricing calculations.

And for freight... density, stackability, and durability.

I remembered and searched for the same article. I found this version (on the same domain) with images and better formatting.

https://improbable.com/annals-of-improbable-research-july-au...

I would like to understand how this works. Did they hand off the to-be-mailed uwrapped, say, lemon or a hammer or a deer tibia to a person at a post office? Wouldn't the post office clerks just say "sorry you gotta box that, we sell one of these here options"?

The article has lots of info about what clerks said and did at delivery, but little about when they were sent, which suggests to me that there's something about how USPS works that different from how it works where I live that's assumed to be obvious to the reader. You can't just drop a deer bone or a lemon in a mailbox right? It wouldn't fit, would it?

From the link: > mailed at public postal collection boxes (when possible to cram the object through the aperture) or at postal stations (if possible).

In the US, post offices generally have drop boxes outside for letters (since you normally just need a stamp), and a larger drop box for packages inside, since you can often get pre-paid labels for stuff like item returns.

Thanks!

> Never-opened small bottle of spring water. We observed the street corner box surreptitiously the following day upon mail collection. After puzzling briefly over this item, the postal carrier removed the mailing label and drank the contents of the bottle over the course of a few blocks as he worked his route.

I'm pretty sure that's a very serious crime, given all the strict laws about mail.

https://time.com/archive/6712646/shipping-the-cement-is-in-t...

TIME

July 4, 1988 12:00 AM EDT

What is the cheapest way to get 6,000 concrete blocks and 4,600 bags of cement to a remote Eskimo village? Answer: mail them. Sam Krogstad, a construction supplier in Anchorage, is sending the individually addressed blocks (postage: $4.33 each) and bags ($4.27) about 700 miles north to Wainwright, where they will be used to build a small harbor on the Arctic Ocean. Krogstad’s bill for stamps will be about $45,000, less than what other shippers would charge.

The Postal Service is not pleased about the shipment, which will cost about $180,000 to deliver by truck and plane. But the agency can find nothing illegal about Krogstad’s parcels, which weigh a few pounds less than the 70- lb. maximum for regular mail.

Mr. Krogstad forgot to check international mailing regulations just as asiduously.

We could have had our own homegrown Temu, in America.

I moved to Juneau mostly via USPS. It was fairly inexpensive.

It helped a bit that my apartment was directly above the Auke Bay PO.

The old stamp trick is genius! There's something extra satisfying about mailing a letter covered in vintage stamps like it's on a time-travel mission

Wait so what’s the point of the forever stamps? And what do you search for on eBay exactly?

A forever stamp is guaranteed 1st class postage for a letter, regardless of the current rate.

Before forever stamps were introduced people would have to add a 1 or 2 cent stamp next to the 20 or 25 cent stamp in order to reach the current rate for mailing a letter.

I used "media mail" to move myself home from Hawaii back to the mainland once. It was so cheap.

> Nearly all U.S. stamps issued since World War II don’t have value.

Can you elaborate? I don't know what this means, and other commenters seem confused as well.

From your description, it sounds like they very much have value -- 60–75% as you say.

And what are face stamps?

I believe they mean collector value hence them being worth less than their face value (which should in theory be the rough floor for them since they're still valid postage).

I think they’re referring to “forever stamps”, which are worth whatever the cost of a first class stamp normally is. They were designed to deal with the fact that people would buy stamps at a certain face-value which would then become difficult to use when postage rates rise to some non-integer multiple of the older stamps.

Forever stamps were only introduced in 2007. Which is a long time after WWII...

Technically they are USA Forever, which is looking less and less like Forever.

My dad once got a package in a decently sized box which was covered in 80 year old US stamps with face values from 2 to 15 cents. There were probably 150 or so stamps in total, enough to cover the few dollars or so of postage.

However, the post office apparently forgot to void the stamps (usually they draw over them with a pen), so his next step was to commit mail fraud. He steamed off 60 cents or so worth of unvoided stamps from the box and sent me a letter at school. That one went through just fine too.

It's not uncommon that letter mail within the same city in Canada doesn't get the postage marked, and you can reuse the stamps; my parents and grandparents sent a letter back and forth with the same stamp for more than a year!

Just because you can do it doesn't make it legal.

USA: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/7208 U.S.C. 7208.4

(4)Reuse of stamps

(A) Preparation for reuse

Willfully removes, or alters the cancellation or defacing marks of, or otherwise prepares, any adhesive stamp, with intent to use, or cause the same to be used, after it has already been used; or

(B) Trafficking

Knowingly or willfully buys, sells, offers for sale, or gives away, any such washed or restored stamp to any person for use, or knowingly uses the same; or

Knowingly and without lawful excuse (the burden of proof of such excuse being on the accused) has in possession any washed, restored, altered stamp, which has been removed from any vellum, parchment, paper, instrument, writing, package, or article; ... shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/479.163#:~:text=prev...

§ 479.163 Reuse of stamps prohibited. A stamp once affixed to one document cannot lawfully be removed and affixed to another. Any person willfully reusing such a stamp shall be subject to the penalty prescribed by 26 U.S.C. 7208.

Canada:

Section 55 of the Canada Post Corporation Act deals with evading payment of postage, and it is an indictable offence under Section 60, punishable by up to 5 years imprisonment. This means that individuals who intentionally avoid paying for postage or who use the postal service without paying are subject to legal penalties, including potential incarceration.

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-10/FullText.html Evading payment of postage

55 Every person commits an offence who, for the purpose of evading payment of postage,

(a) encloses a letter or any writing intended to serve the purpose of a letter in mail not paid at the rate of postage for letters;

(b) uses in payment of postage any previously used postage stamp;

The poor phrasing is a bit concerning. In headings or prior sentences sections talk about _reuse_ as a category. However they go on to enumerate individual actions that might occur in legitimate circumstances.

E.G. If a letter is prepared to be mailed, but it's realized the address is wrong before it's mailed, would it then not still be the first use if the to be sent envelope had it's stamps removed and placed onto a corrected envelop for the first use of the stamps? (Yeah, this would make no sense today with the cost of labor and general stuff, it's a hypothetical.)

I was able to quarter the cost of a whole shoebox of video-8 tapes under the media mail provision

> Unconventional postcards: A thin sheet of plywood with a Sharpie address label is a fun postcard. (it just costs a lot more than a normal postcard)

I've got a bunch of water color paper post cards from my days of random vacations and a large format camera. I recall that they also had a slightly more than post card rate postage on them (though not excessively so).

I used Polaroid type 59 film (peel apart) in the field and did a transfer right there. Take a picture in Yosemite? Pull it out, roller it on to the paper and drop it in the mail box. It was a one of a kind. The damage incurred while mailing (blunted corners, scuffs and such) was part of the nature of the art.

There were also families who were curious about the process and I'd sell them a sheet of film at cost for them to do what they wanted - be it have a photograph or go through the process of making a post card themselves. There was also the "this is what an old time camera looks like and how it works" that interested some of the younger children - the heavy black cloth and the upside down image.

Leather postcards were popular for a few years, but were then banned because they jammed up the sorting machines.

I taped a quarter to an envelope and it went through (obviously when postage was 25c).

I asked if anyone had a stamp and someone suggested I just do that.

Good thing it worked, it was my rent check.

On a childhood trip, to visit family in sunny Hawaii, we mailed back this coconut from the family yard, by writing our rainy Portland address on the coconut in Sharpie.

(The coconut was one of the large, oblong ones, with a smooth surface. Not the small, spherical things in the grocery store. So there was plenty of room for a legible address.)

When we got home, we planted it in a large indoor planter, hanged a lamp over it, and grew a sizable palm tree in our living room.

Lol, I remember seeing a coconut in the student mail receiving area at PSU in 2010 or so. So I like how this has been done multiple times

I wonder if that's the one that's now in the HUB fish bowl (was there on Monday)

Grandparent post mentions Portland. PSU may mean Portland State rather than Penn State

I stayed at a timeshare in Hawaii that had a "decorate a coconut and mail it home" activity. Every hour they generated 10 coconuts for mailing basically.

It's pretty common in Hawaii. In fact, I think the reason you can send them is because of lobbying from Hawaii.

What am I getting wrong? you planted a coconut but grew a palm tree ?

You got it right

> The coconut tree (Cocos nucifera) is a member of the palm tree family

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut

Coconut trees are in the palm tree family.

All coconut trees are palm trees, but not all palm trees grow coconuts.

Ha, I was confused too... but in the US, the terms coconut tree, palm tree and coconut palm are used interchangeably.

In India, you'd call a coconut tree a coconut tree and an arecanut tree a palm.

> I was confused too... but in the US, the terms coconut tree, palm tree and coconut palm are used interchangeably.

You're still confused. Coconut tree and palm tree aren't interchangeable; to be a coconut tree, the tree has to grow coconuts. All palm trees count as "palm trees", whether they grow coconuts or not. The prototypical palm tree grows dates.

Don’t know if I’d say dates are prototypical. Oil palms grow palm fruit, which is probably the most generic (and economically important) palm product.

And the cause of heart failure everywhere

Palm kernel oil, yes. Palm oil, no. Both come from the palm fruit and are frequently confused for one another.

Thanks for the info! I assume the kernel is just the seed inside?

Yes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_kernel

I’ve never seen palm kernel oil listed as a food ingredient. It seems to be most commonly used in cosmetics.

This is a mix up on why certain oils are on the current “oils to avoid” list. Palm oil gets a bad reputation mainly because of environmental issues with how it's grown, not because it's unhealthy. But all these concerns get lumped together in the “bad oils” list.

https://youtu.be/0k2Di6QqqEA?si=mUv-0O79DecW6SFX

Take a listen.

> The coconut was one of the large, oblong ones, with a smooth surface. Not the small, spherical things in the grocery store.

You say that like you think those are different things.

That's such a perfect blend of wholesome and chaotic

The small fuzzy spherical things are just what's inside the large oblong things, once the husk has been removed. People who have never really interacted with coconuts may be surprised to learn this.

I briefly lived in Miami when I was a child and interacted with a lot of coconuts. I am surprised to learn this

I don't understand how there can be 94 comments on this thread and not one of them is from someone who attempted (or succeeded) in mailing someone a potato. I am a homeowner. I have a address. I will receive a potato, or send one to whomever wants one. What's important about this story is "is is true?". Who's going to test it with me?

There's at least one who posted just a little bit before you. ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43724688

If you're willing to give your address to a Hacker News user then you need to spend more time researching your cohorts.

I used to run a website / forum and for a few years we did a secret santa; we sent and received packages to and from abroad. Not complete strangers, and anyone not comfortable with it (we did have multiple victims of stalking etc) didn't have to participate of course. But I got goodies from abroad, including a pink NY hat and an acrylic 9/11 memorial display thingy. Because why not? I sent clogs back, of course.

I'm on a dad support slack, and we regularly mail each other holiday cards (well, not everyone participates, but I think I spend like a hundred bucks a year sending those things out!)

Few things can improve a dad support slack like regularly mailing each other potatoes.

When you say it, it sounds dirty.

It's like Promise Keepers but with potato instead of promise. What could be more starchy and wholesome.

"I (sweet) potato you I won't forget next time?"

You're right. Hallmarked.

Promises you can eat (after proper prep)

I'm going to check how much this costs, but I think you've just figured out my christmas card for next year :)

For like the last 20 years, the majority of people I have done business with are people I have met on Hacker News, where I post (like everywhere else) under my own real name.

I sent a banana in the mail. I also sent a paperback book without any sort of box or wrapper. I think it was as Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Did the book make it to Magrathea?

As one of the wealthiest planets in the galaxy, I'm sure it did because of Magrathea's exceptional central planning infrastructure.

Mailing a banana is something I was wondering about when I first saw this thread. I remember seeing a photo in a book many years ago of a banana with a postage stamp on it and I was wondering whether it was really possible.

We successfully mailed two bananas in college. The second was to ensure that it actually left campus and round tripped via USPS.

I would like a potato. Emailed you.

You wouldn't download a potato!

I have received your email and do hereby commit to sending you a potato.

I have the USPS notification service [1] where they send me an email with a scan of all my incoming mail. I look forward to seeing what this one looks like.

[1]: https://www.usps.com/manage/informed-delivery.htm

I did something pretty similar with USPS around 15 years ago. Walked into the post office, handed them a banana, they slapped a label on it, and off it went. A few weeks later I heard from my friend in Monaco that her mom had gone to check the mail and found her hand covered in rotten banana. Whoops.

> What's important about this story is "is is true?"

The URL is at usps.com, so I'm guessing this is about as official as it gets.

I've mailed a coconut before and it worked. Never done a potato.

I’m still wondering if they are going to potato internationally, in which case I would very gladly exchange some continental taters with a colony-grown variety with you!

I have mailed a potato before. Sent it to a friend to celebrate Columbus Day (this was back when we overlooked his atrocities because it was a cool Italian guy who trafficked exotic nightshades across the Atlantic). It arrived just fine. The postal worker was quite helpful about wrapping it up with the appropriate postage. Post your address on the public internet and I’m sure you will get a lot more potatoes than you would expect.

I don't understand how there can be 94 comments on this thread, period. I mean, plenty of more interesting topics go unnoticed and people want to talk about mailing a potato? Ok...

Yeah how dare people have fun!

I just think they're neat.

Shipping is a major cost center to hacker startups. Interesting stuff here...

You do realize that you just inspired the "mail a potato" webapp, don't you? I give it approximately one week before we see a Show HN with that.

whoa whoa whoa. you can't post multimillion startup ideas on here FOR FREE! somebody's probably registered pota.to already!

There are already a few iterations of this idea out there!

Surprised there has been no mention of Wired's Return To Sender yet: https://www.wired.com/2008/12/st-15returntosender/

> Once he discovered Wired’s contest, he sent us [...] a mailbox

I snorted at this. How meta.

My wife and I moved our stuff across Canada -- from Alberta to Nova Scotia -- by mail. That's when I found out about the "monotainer," a giant palletized wire box that they fill with items heading to a common destination. Our boxes all went in a monotainer and made it to Halifax before we did.

The nicest part: Canada Post moved us in! Everything was waiting in our new apartment when we arrived.

You used to be able to ship via Amtrak, but they suspended the service. You could basically send up to a 500lbs pallet. You could also ship a bicycle, or a dead body. All three required correct packaging.

A bunch of us used the service to ship cheap PCs and CRT monitors up to New York for HOPE one year. The shipping cost more than the computers, but it wasn't much (a couple hundred bucks). Public Terminal Cluster was a huge success. Afterward we didn't want to ship them back home, so we gave away two pallets worth of old computer gear to whoever passed by on 33rd St. Took about an hour.

Greyhound still kinda does this. I think they're phasing it out, or they already did.

Basically if you could put it in a box and it would fit under their bus they would ship it to anywhere on their route.

i grew up in rural canada and we used this all the time. it didn't even have to be in a box - if you could convince the driver to let you put it on the bus, you could ship it. and as long as it was going to another stop on the same bus route you could load it onto the bus yourself and the person you were shipping it to could take it off the bus, so there was no worrying about how the shippers were going to treat your stuff.

it was almost as good a service as having a friend with a truck that was going that way. but sadly, no more greyhound in canada.

Buddy bought a new (to him) car door off ebay this way.

USPS actually allows a bunch of odd items if they meet basic requirements:

- Potato: write the address directly on the skin and add postage - Coconut: often mailed from Hawaii gift shops - Brick: just needs postage and an address - Inflated beach ball: address it directly, ships like a parcel - Plastic Easter egg: fill it, tape it shut, and label it - Flip-flop: address the sole and send it off - Small pumpkin: allowed if it’s dry and not restricted by ag rules - Live queen bees (plus attendants): surface mail only, special label - Day-old chicks: special packaging and timing required

Have mailed live queen bees in Europe as well. Funniest was when receiving some (I think it was from Denmark to Estonia before we joined the EU) and one delivery got stuck in customs due to unpaid alcohol tax — someone had misread “Live Bees” as “Live Beer”. Fortunately this was cleared out within two days and bees were still alive (but a little short on food).

What does shipping a live queen bee look like? How many servants does she travel with?

The queen is placed in a small isolation container called a queen cage: https://www.mannlakeltd.com/california-mini-queen-cages/

The queen cage is placed in a Bee Bus: https://bee-pros.com/beeBus.html

Postage is affixed to the Bee Bus which is filled with 3 lbs. of bees, which is about 10,000 to 12,000 bees: https://www.mannlakeltd.com/carniolan-honey-bees/california-...

I was working for a postal contractor and we had to go to the local P&DC (warehouse sized building where all the local mail comes in to be sorted and then shipped to various destinations).

The local foreman was giving us a lecture about safety and things not to do in there, and we were standing there listening to him. To my right about 10' away were a couple of boxes around 2' tall each. I was listening and my eyes were wandering, taking in the gigantic space when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the box move! It like tilted a little and there was definite movement inside (it had a slit in it)! I yelped like a little kid: "that box moved!"

The foreman nonchalantly dismissed it saying, "yeah those are ducks being mailed". I was shocked to say the least.

Back in the late 90s and early 2000s a buddy of mine caught and mailed a lot of live snakes.

Never heard of one getting out. Bet it would have been exciting if one did.

How cruel.

Let me elaborate. I'm not saying the OPs story is cruel. I'm saying shipping live animals is cruel. Shipping animals isn't transporting them using some specialized service; it's litterally sending them through the mail system like any other parcel, the same system that regularly damages heavily padded packages. The practice is still common today, especially for live chicks, and many animals die due to the conditions of transport. Their deaths are treated as an expected loss.

It's the same sort of 'logic' where E.G. in Rimworld (offhand) animals don't have (or didn't in the past versions) have conditions which lead to mental breakdown. They were handled with the level of needs of the worst treated categories of slaves. Though thinking of the phrases 'live stock' and the destiny of most farm animals...

Bricks too! https://facts.usps.com/sending-bricks-in-the-mail/

The story of the bank built from bricks sent through the mail reminds me of the time I completed a move from Austin to Boston by packing all my possessions into rubber tubs and sending them by parcel post.

The delivery date was a range, and I wasn't there on the day of the first attempted delivery. When I called the post office about it, their response (in a thick Boston accent) was, "oh, so you're the tub guy, huh?"

All in all, it was a really convenient way to execute a cross-country move, assuming you don't have a lot of stuff!

That's how a lot of military personal move their belongings. Just slap an address on their suitcase or duffle bag and mail it.

Or a TON of checked bags. Ran in to a guy in the airport once checking 10 bags. He bought the cheapest suitcase sets he could find, packed what he could, and sold the rest.

> I wasn't there on the day of the first attempted delivery.

oooh, ouch!

I wonder if they have to unload and reload the truck.

Back in that brief window when Amazon was bribing USPS to deliver on Sundays and I could get 50-75lbs of bird seed for $12 shipped I had lots of fascinating Sunday mornings watching postal service workers swear at me and heave bags at my front door.

I don't think that stopped: my neighborhood gets lots of USPS deliveries from Amazon on Sundays.

My cross-country move was

* Sell all furniture

* Shove everything in my car

* Put all my books in boxes and send media mail

When I moved internationally, I found out about the ‘M-Bag’ service. The post office gives you real mail sacks (hefty, expensive seeming things!), which you can directly fill with books and printer matter (and nothing else!). They’re then tagged after sealing the drawstring, and shipped internationally!

I’m sure the USPS wants those sacks back, but the post office in the UK, where I had them sent, was just perplexed by them and told me to keep them.

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-M-bag-Service

Flail and flail, it’s just another brick in the mail.

That history of the bank of Vernal was fascinating, thank you for sharing. Parcel post offered for packages of up to 50 pounds + price charged to post parcels from Salt Lake City to Vernal being less than half the cost charged by private carriers ==> lots of freight to Vernal starts getting sent by post! Then, bank director wanting pressed bricks for the front the new bank building in Vernal + closest pressed brick manufacturer to Vernal being in Salt Lake City + post still the cheapest freight option to Vernal ==> 37.5 tons of pressed bricks packed into 50 pound crates and posted!

Anyone interested in the history of freight & trade may also enjoy reading Marc Levinson's book "The Box" about the shipping container. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691170817/th...

Looks like the bank built with bricks via the mail is still there - https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4555831,-109.528633,3a,75y,2...

going up one level in url to facts.ups.com, then navigating to fun, lots of quirky stuff there.

There are even multiple services that will mail a Potatoe to the recepient, possibly anonymously: https://potatoparcel.com https://www.mailaspud.com https://www.anonymouspotato.com https://mysterypotato.com (the only one I have used is "anonymouspotato").

Are they services or just middlemen who turn around and use USPS?

It looks like they put the potato in a box?

Another great postal history article: "The Pneumatic Mail Tubes: New York's Hidden Highway And Its Development" https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/pdf/pneumatic-tub...

Throughput:

> The operation of the Pneumatic Tube System involved air forced cylinders known as "carriers", traveling in a spinning motion, through a well-greased tube at 30 miles an hour. At its peak productivity six million pieces of mail would whisk through the system daily at a rate of 5 carriers a minute with each carriers maximum load of approximately 500 letters

Shaking out the system:

> The first cylindrical carrier to travel through the New York City [pneumatic tube] system was one that contained a Bible, a flag and a copy of the Constitution. The second contained an imitation peach in honor of Senator Chauncy Depew, a driving force in this project. He was fondly known as "The Peach". A third carrier had a black cat in it, for reasons unknown to this author.

Diagnosing and fixing stalls in the network:

> The occasional carrier stalls in a tube it could be easily detected. Each receiving machine was equipped with a "tell-tale" fan. If a carrier failed to arrive on time the air pressure would fall to level that would cause the fan to stop revolving. The operator at the affected station would call the switchboard at the telephone number PE 6-7000. On a control board there, the blocking carrier could be located through colored lights designating each station. In 99% of the cases the arrested carrier could be made mobile again by increasing the air pressure behind the blockage and decreasing air pressure in front of it. This would in effect cause a vacuum. In the 1% of the time that these methods did not work a maintenance crew would have had to go out and dig up the streets.

Perks for staff operating the system:

> Recently I met an old friend who told me her father was once a rocketeer [responsible for the sending and receiving of the carriers]. In conversation with him I learned that he had spent some time working on the Pneumatic Tube System at the Bronx General Post Office. [...] He told me something off the record. Since there was a renowned sandwich shop in the vicinity of the Bronx General Post Office, they often got orders from the downtown postal stations. The sandwiches were delivered through the system. Now that's what I call a real submarine sandwich!

I wish I could find the article.

Years ago, someone tried mailing a lot of stuff through the post office.

I remember they mailed a $20 bill, and tried sneaking something oversized like skiis into a mail truck.

can't find the article though - search has really been SEO'd to death by companies involved in mail.

o3 found it- guess its a sign of where search is going: https://www.nalc.org/news/the-postal-record/2011/april-2011/...

and

https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/TMP-1...

Speaks to how bad search has gotten but some things are kind of inherently hard to search. “Tip of my tongue” sort of things. Llms are pretty good for that kind of stuff.

lol, that is it! :)

$20 bill. Days to delivery, 4.

Ski. ... The ski was slipped into a bin of postage that was being loaded into a truck behind a station (a collaborating staff member created a verbal disturbance up the street to momentarily distract postal workers attention). ...

Cockeyed

Man, that's a blast from the past. I loved Rob Cockerham's projects.

I once sent a beer coaster without envelope and just with an address scribbled on and a stamp to a beer loving friend from a holiday. We both were surprised it worked.

Also in the late 90s I remember my favourite computer mag having a picture of a 5 1/4 inch floppy sent to them. Complete with postmarked stamp. Allegedly it survived the procedure.

Ha! I did that a few times with 3½" disks - address and stamp on the label and slap a bit of tape over the shutter to prevent dust ingress. No issues.

I don't think I'd have risked it with 5¼" floppies though, they were a lot less robust and I can't imagine the franking machines would have been good for them.

Thanks for this, had heard about it once before, but timing here was perfect. Read at 4:20p, grocery store 10 min later, and made it to the post office by 4:55p. Mailed a yam to a friend in MT postmarked with her bday today. From SD California for a nearly 2lbs spud cost $16 for priority with tracking. 8x the cost of the potato itself but worth it for the pun potential.

Here is a great video showcasing what can and cannot be sent with Australia Post, plus so much more: https://youtu.be/FNdkTWiXaQM

How is postage attached? Can you just use stamps if you know the right amount? what if they fall off?

Superglue and smear epoxy on top of it. If that doesn't work, bust out the Gorilla glue.

I thought there must be some sort of URL spoofing or invisible unicode character action going on. But no, I typed in the URL by hand and it appears to be real!

I now know with certainty what sort of "card" my siblings are getting for their next b-days!

potato or coconut?

brick

Why not both?!

In THIS economy?!

There was a book I had as a kid called "The Encyclopedia of Immaturity" that explained how to do this.

USPS will mail all sorts of things. WIRED would let you mail them tons of interesting things. Working remotely I thought it would be hilarious to have everyone try and mail each other weird stuff as a company event.

What was the weirdest thing that got through?

I want to say it was a buoy. I might be wrong on that. I distinctly remember one of those plastic flamingos. If you’re asking about my event idea. Unfortunately, we didn’t end up doing it.

Random UK postage fact. Our postcodes are so specific, it's sufficient to write the house number and the postcode.

We sent ourselves a postcard from Spain addressed to:

S_3 _S_ (redacted)

– and it arrived.

My parents' house shares a postcode with just one other house.

When I was in secondary school, one of my classmates didn't believe a letter would reach me if the envelope had only my name and postcode (no house number or street name), so I gave him a stamp and challenged him to try.

I brought the letter to school a couple of days later.

How broadly true is that[1] in the UK (I’m assuming UK here, and not AUS or NZ or some other anglosphere country)? And is it more true in rural areas vs the city?

1 - a post code resolves to something approximating a single physical address, or at least close enough to reliably allow delivery

Not broadly true in the UK. The median is probably 15 or 20.

I've only ever lived in cities.

A post code is usually a few streets. Precise enough to prpbably figure put the restof the way in a pinch but still a pretty large number of potential addresses.

A post code is usually a few houses, 15 on average according to Royal Mail, so that's usually a single street.

There are exceptions in rural areas, where one post code covers multiple streets.

That is insanely specific. By contrast, my US zip-code covers at least 75 square miles, and that's a conservative estimate.

It is extremely convenient when filling in online forms, giving an address over the phone, or when getting into a non-app taxi.

Web forms and the in-car navigation prompt first for the postcode, then present a list of the full addresses and you pick one.

Over the phone, "W10 6TR" also avoids needing to spell anything, and I encourage you to search Google for it.

There's also some human readable part. The W means West London, people who live in West or South West London will be familiar with some numbers - W10 is Ladbrook Grove. B is Birmingham, BS is Bristol, BT is Belfast etc.

Are you referring to the 5 or 9 digit variant? Presumably not the 11 digit one as that corresponds to your unique address. (It follows that the 9 digit variant corresponds to at most 100 mailboxes.)

I've never tried inputting my 11 digit code in an online form but at least the 9 digit one is readily accepted. In my experience the last 4 will usually be completed for me based on the street address and if it can't find a match it gives me an error.

I didn't even know there was an 11 digit code until now! I was referring to the 5 digit code. 9 digit would be closer, but around here 100 mailboxes (zip+4 would actually be 9999 mailboxes) is still quite a few square miles. If I look out my living room window, I can see maybe 10 houses, and that's with a view that comes from living on top of a hill.

Zip+4 (9 digit) can't ever be more than 100 mailboxes because 11 digit is guaranteed unique. It follows that a 5 digit zip is limited to 1M boxes.

Unless I have a misunderstanding about 11 digit being unique anyway.

It depends. My postcode covers more like 50.

No need for an address in Ireland, a general description of the recipient will do.

https://www.irishpost.com/life-style/irish-postman-somehow-d...

Around 1800 there was a letter addressed "Sromfidevi England". After some head scratching they delivered it to Sir Humphry Davy.

Allegedly the US ZIP code system is similarly precise if you use the extra four digits plus the last two digits of the address number. For example, 89434-8669-35 should be enough to send mail to my favorite bar in town (assuming said bar accepts mail there; can't say I've ever tried).

That's a coffee shop.

Looks like there’s a bar next door.

It's also a bar! And they sell comics and related paraphernalia, hence the name of the place.

It turns out there are only two houses in my zip+4. But I don't have much confidence on my mail reaching me with just that...

Post offices have their own zip codes (usually one higher than the town they're in) and if they have less than 10,000 PO Boxes, ZIP+4 identifies one uniquely.

Singapore is like this - 5 digit numeric postal code in a country where most people live in apartment buildings (HDB's).

As a result, most towers (blocks) have their own post code. Even in complexes with 3 towers sharing a common main level (floors B2 through 3), still have their own postcode.

If you go on website and put your postcode, it will autocomplete the address except for the unit number.

Same in the Netherlands. Postcode and house number is unique and enough to deliver mail. I usually write the return address that way.

My grandma used to tell me stories about sending watermelons in the mail like that during the summer.

Just don't try to send them to Norway, where you'd need a special permit for importing potatoes.

They also allow you to mail Sea Grape leaves as if they were postcards. I did it many times, and here's an old post I found that also confirms it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/obv56n/s...

My only complaint is that the leaf arrived, but they didn't stamp it. I can't prove to people that it was actually mailed.

What a nice change of pace reading about random USPS facts here on HN!

I went to some workshop in the US circa 1990 and I ended up with a bunch of books that I didn't want to carry with me. So I put them in a box and (surface) mailed them home. It was heavy, international, and cost very little IIRC. I think this doesn't work any more? Parcels have become very expensive.

In the US there is a reduced media mail rate for educational materials. Not sure how it would work internationally.

https://about.usps.com/notices/not121/not121_tech.htm

The US used to have "ship mail" options for sending international by boat. Not sure if there was even more discounts for media, and/or if it's still offered.

Another comment mentioned M-bags: https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-M-bag-Service

Cats also :-D

https://external-preview.redd.it/-Z5tNlOZZU8uN7KEFXpRvjTgWF1...

Nope. Only specific animals are mailable.

https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm

(You can mail baby chickens and honeybees, though.)

Yeah, when I worked at the post office there would occasionally be a box of chicks go through. No other animals that I can remember.

I have gotten bees in the mail twice. The first time they delivered to my home, the second time I had to go pick up at the post office. Both times the carriers I interacted with seemed a little worried about the contents.

The first set didnt' do well at all. I probably lost more than 60% of the 5 lbs. of bees, and that hive never thrived. My most recent ones are still going strong and I think I can officially say at this point that they made it through the winter :)

I will send a potato in the mail. I feel like I must do this as a rite of passage.

They better hide this fact: https://facts.usps.com/diverse-workforce/

From the Old Internet: https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/TMP-1...

They tried mailing all sorts of things, including things which should not be mailed. Collectively, the USPS seems to have a sense of humor.

Wait until you find out you can send chickens by mail

https://facts.usps.com/shipping-chicks/

I was just at a historical farm and they explained this to me! They said that it can often go badly though, like if there’s a storm that delayed shipments, they can all die, which is super sad

My sister worked for the post office years ago. If her office received live birds, and thought they might die (because the owner couldn't be reached to pick up or whatever), an employee could take them home and care for them.

Wait until you hear what happens to male chicks.

At least maceration is a more-or-less instantaneous death, as opposed to slowly starving in a box.

Various live animals, queen bees and up to 8 attendant bees by air, but bee hives by ground only. Fair warning: the recipient of mailed bee hives may get a phone call at any time of day or night to "please come get them ASAP".

https://about.usps.com/posters/pos138/pos138__v04_revision_0... https://pe.usps.com/PUB52_Archive/NHTML/PUB52_Archive_202204...

People have sent children by mail:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/brief-history-chil...

...I don't think they let you do this anymore.

It sounds funny, but they didn't really "mail" them as you think of the word. Rather they traveled in the company of a trusted adult who happened to work for the post office.

How much? I need someone to tend my looms.

You'll want to save money by shopping in bulk:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_Train

My Grandparents lived in a very small farming town (pop 500) and word would get around town when chicks had arrived and she would take us down there to see them.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, live scorpions can be mailed too (for specific purposes only), as long as they're properly packaged and labeled: https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm

I don't have much to add to this discussion except I have in fact been mailed a potato several years ago.

Poor USPS probably has to keep special containers on hand just for idiots like me that just have to try this.

I am unsurprised but only because my mind was blown when live chickens were sent to us via the USPS.

https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm

[A Brief History of Children Sent Through the Mail (2016) ](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24957499)

Why? You wouldn't want to eat it after the ink/glue all over it and wouldn't it turn up green? Was this one invented for fun or is there a real practical reason for doing this?

> wouldn't it turn up green

Err, why? Potatoes will keep for weeks before sprouting and turning green. Months if they’re away from light.

I remember the Klutz Book of Kids' Shenanigans had a bit about doing this kind of thing. I think they suggested mailing a shoe.

Why does USPS allow for these items to be posted?

Pretty counterintuitive given how persnickety they usually are about the details when mailing a conventional box.

The scroll to auto navbar is cool but weird

I'm just sad the person that threatened to mail me a shoe to my PO box did not follow through.

My dad’s college roommate once mailed him a coconut. It was an object of fascination for me as a kid.

Bad time to be working in the undeliverable mail department if this practice gains traction.

True fact! My wife sent one to a friend of hers. Got delivered promptly, undamaged.

Can you do it for just one stamp or do you need to weigh and label it?

The linked article says you need it weighed for appropriate postage.

You have to weigh it.

Do they ship to Mars?

I'd prefer a coconut please!

TIL you can also mail coconuts.

Irish knights?

Honestly, this is the kind of chaotic good energy I want more of in the world

Reminder that the post office should not profit as a business just as firefighters police public schools do not “profit”

Like it or not, this is a bad look for a service that many argue is a waste of money.

Anyone who argues that USPS is a "waste of money" is either grossly misinformed or lying through one's teeth; USPS is self-funded through postage and other fees, not through taxpayer funding. You still have to pay for postage to mail a potato.

USPS supported physical ad spam is a huge waste of time, recycling system capacity and environmental impact. I wonder if they would still break even if they discontinued that disgusting practice?

If you could opt out of having a mailbox and use email for police and government correspondence then it wouldn’t be so offensive, but as far as I know you are practically required to maintain a hole where they can shove their ad spam.

I put my name on this opt out list and it stopped about 2/3 of the junkmail. It costs $6 for 10 years. I think it was worth it.

https://www.dmachoice.org/register.php

It's easy to demonstrate that it is not a waste of money compared to commercial services, but let us argue counterfactually for the moment that it is the most expensive alternative.

It is the only universal (in the USA) communications service, and therefore a necessary service which is not filled or reasonably filled by private alternatives.

If the post office mandate was only to be profitable, it would have been disbanded decades ago. It is a communication organization mandated by the constitution, by the founding fathers. Profit was never ever part of rurual postage service, neither was rural electrification, not rural phone service, and rural internet. The service that shows the most profit is the war machine.

How many people does the post office unalive?

The post office is loved by children, young adults, and senior citizens. Is the profitable military as popular amoung the people who call our veterans loosers? This comes from a propoganda machine of the oligarks who want, instead of government service, want only their own selfish profits.

War is a waste of money, and arguing about it is a waste of time.

To the many who think mail to rural people is a waste of money? I would rather recieve a letter from someone than a list of war dead.

Thr many who think that profit is the reason for the existence of the post office, left a Marine for dead in Africa, lied about it, and never learned to pronounce his name to his mother.

At least a coconut in the mail is not as empty headed as most of the political party that wants to run the entire government as a profitable business only to bankrupt it like a casino.

How do they bankrupt a casino?

Show me the first politician who ran on a platform of a profitable war machine? Pretty sure it was the German socialist Democratic party, who were never thet socialist not democratic.

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