Post riders or postriders describes a horse and rider postal delivery system that existed at various times and various places throughout history. The term is usually reserved for instances where a network of regularly scheduled service was provided under some degree of central management by the State or State licenced monopoly.
These networks included predefined routes known as Post-roads complete with distance markers and waypoints. Unlike other forms of mounted courier, post riders collected and delivered mail over the course of their route, meeting with other riders at scheduled times and scheduled places to exchange forwarded items. In this way correspondence could pass reliably from rider to rider and cover a considerable distance in a reasonable time at reduced cost.
While some integration with local postal services in larger centers occurred, by and large the post riders were a separate entity under separate management and tariff structure.
Read more about Post Riders: History, Operations, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words post and/or riders:
“A demanding stranger arrived one morning in a small town and asked a boy on the sidewalk of the main street, “Boy, where’s the post office?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then, where might the drugstore be?”
“I don’t know.”
“How about a good cheap hotel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Say, boy, you don’t know much, do you?”
“No, sir, I sure don’t. But I ain’t lost.””
—William Harmon (b. 1938)
“There where the course is,
Delight makes all of the one mind,
The riders upon the galloping horses,
The crowd that closes in behind....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)