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T

the flying belgian

Member
It is so cold here in so. Mn. that my mind gets wandering to funny places. So my question this evening is---before the time when cars had automatic trans. how did the rural mailman get the mail in your box? Now with auto he sits in the passenger seat and stretches his left leg over to run brake and throttle and steers with left hand. I don't see how he could have done clutch and shift and steer from passenger seat.
 
Our mailman had a ford falcon, 3 on the tree, he sat on the right. Never thought about it till now,!
 
Air cooled VW only needed the European pedal cluster to drive from the other side (other than steering). The cables, mounts, and everything were the same. They even used the same shift pattern. They froze to death, but they always got there.
 
'til about 25-30 years ago (around here), all the mailboxes were on the mailman's left side; very little traffic and he pulled over to the 'wrong' side of the road.
 
Back in the 40"s and 50"s the mailbox was on the same side of the road as was your house. The mailman would cross over on wrong side to put the mail in the box.
 
our mailman drove a 54 chevy ,, I know it had to be a powerglide ,, because I remember how it would whine when he turned around in our drive and would stop and chat with dad for a few minutes ,,. moms cousin , used to deliver the mail in a model t thru out southern dubois co ind , he used to have to stop and adjust titen the bands on the tranny so he could keep going on muddy roads ,..
 
This doesn't answer your question, but I had a great uncle who was a rural mailman way back before automatics. I do remember him saying he'd occasionally have to stop to adjust the bands in his Model T along the route. Jim
 
So did ours here in Ontario. He just sat in the center with mail on both sides. Car was narrow enough to reach the mail box. Now they drive small cars down the shoulder on the wrong side of the road.
Later Bob
 
Only one I remember was Mr Nelson, 54 Ford, 6 cyl, 3 on tree, bench seat. He sat more or less in the middle, stops were sometimes a mile apart. Drove from the middle, kept a box on seat by right door for the next few stops, slide over a bit & had long arm reach. Had a "swing-up" window attached to top of door so he didn't have to crank window each stop.
Willie
 
my uncle used to deliver milk in detroit what he did was he had a trained horse he get what he needed tell the horse to go ahead the horse would go to the end of the block and wait for ted to catch up then repeat pick up what he need tell the horse to go and he would deliver
 
Hydra-Matic introduce the first GM automatic transmission in about 1939 (for Cadillac?). They built transmissions for combat vehicles during WW2. Automatic transmissions didn't become popular in cars until the late 1940's.

Dumb question; did Model A Fords have heaters?
 
They had a hole in the firewall. There was a heat exchanger box on top of the manifold. The fan would push the air through it and into the cabin. I didn't figure they would work for anything, but the neighbor's had an old coffee can lid bent around it with just a few holes in it. Presumably the first two speed heater fan.
 
Model A had optional manifold heater. Our current mail lady has a new jeep wrangler with right hand drive, made in canada.
 
Cherokees and Wranglers with right hand drive come off the same assembly line in Toledo as left hand drive Jeeps. I bought new rhd Cherokees in 1994 and 1998. P package for postal use was just another option. The export jeeps with rhd were also made in Toledo but gauges used metric system. If you go to jeep.com and view the window sticker for a 2014 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sport RHD you will see the Toledo disclosure. By the way, was a mite chilly here in central MN driving with the window down at -24F. Joe
 
In the forties and fifties the mail was not always delivered past your house. I remember two places where we lived that the mail was only delivered to a battery of boxes at an intersection and we had to travel at least a mile to pick up the mail. And as has already been said, there wasn't much traffic then, and many roads were unpaved, the mail carrier just drove down the left side of the road. On most of the unpaved roads, everyone drove down the middle anyway, until you met another vehicle.
 
Subaru supplied a lot of rural mail carriers in the "90s. Friend of mine had a Legacy RHD. They worked really well, but Jeep got the contract for RHD postal vehicles after Subaru bowed out. I think they were Cherokees.
Jeep; like Subaru, supplied RHD for overseas markets so it was no special design for either company. Just had to do the crash testing and such.
 
I was a part time rural carrier in Highland, NY back in the mid-sixties. Classified as a heavy duty route with 575 boxes on a 43 mile route, the regular carrier was put on a five day schedule because of this classification, so I worked every Saturday.
I started out with a '62 Falcon stick shift.
Sat in the middle with the first class mail between me and the passenger door and the magazines in the drivers seat. Could reach the pedals easily from that position. Drove mostly in low and second and would pop the shifter from low to second with the thumb of my left hand which was also the steering hand.
I was in my mid-twenties at the time and it made a perfect second job when I really needed the extra money to support our family with two little kids.
A little too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. I observed that folks with healthy teenage kids rarely had their box shoveled out but the real old folks almost always did.
 
Some had gas heaters.There was a carrier locally that used Model Ts and then went to a Model A which he drove until he retired in late 50s-early 60s.changed or rebuilt engines every couple years.Died a very rich man.
 
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