500 years of delivering the mail
Feature
2016 marks Royal Mail’s 500th year of postal services. GreenFleet looks back over the firm’s transport methods, including horse‑drawn carriage, plane, hovercraft, and even rocket – as well as its present day fleet and low-carbon initiatives.
During its 500 years of postal services, Royal Mail has constantly embraced new ways of working in its drive to deliver mail faster and more efficiently, often resulting in broader benefits to society at large. As the postal service became a key channel for communication, deliveries were required to be as quick and efficient as possible. This led to a number of innovations from horse-drawn carriages in the late 1700s, steam-driven packet ships in the early 1800s, trains in 1911 and planes with the first overseas airmail flight taking place in 1918. These advances in technology helped open communications with the Commonwealth and drove social advances such as improvements in literacy skills.
The trial proved to be a success and in 1785 it led to the launch of new routes from London to Norwich, Liverpool, Leeds, Dover, Portsmouth, Poole, Exeter, Gloucester, Worcester, Holyhead and Carlisle. A service to Edinburgh was added a year later.
The introduction of mail coaches assisted with the development of one, uniform time across the UK rather than having times which varied by region. In the 1780s, local time varied from place to place, and could not be accurately maintained. The postal service played a huge role in bringing about the change as collections were governed by a uniform time regardless of where they took place. A standardised time system (GMT) was first introduced on the railways on December 11, 1847 and the vast majority of Great Britain’s public clocks were standardised to GMT by 1855.
Setting sail
In the 17th century, international trade was exclusively carried out by sea. Packet ships were used for this trade and proved essential for delivering mail to and from the colonies. While officially the captains of packet ships were forbidden to engage larger ships in battle, in 1793, the packet ship Antelope successfully fired on the French Privateer ‘Atlanta’ until she surrendered. A privateer was a vessel authorised by a government to attack foreign vessels during wartime.
Prior to this attack, the Antelope had been captured twice before, by the French, and ransomed back to the English. The crew successfully defended the mail and the packets on board and were hailed as heroes when they arrived back in England.
In 1821, steam-driven packet ships were introduced to deliver mail across the British Empire and the Commonwealth. This led to the founding of Royal Mail Ships (RMS) in 1840.
Rail mail
The General Post Office and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway reached an agreement that saw the start of mail being carried by train in 1830. The first route was between Liverpool and Manchester. This led to the passing of the Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act in 1838 which required railway companies to carry mail by ordinary or special Travelling Post Office (TPO) trains.
By 1963, there were 49 mail trains in operation, with one to five TPOs carriages attached to passenger trains. Complete TPO trains ran between London, Aberdeen and Penzance. The use of railways for transporting mail declined towards the end of the 20th century and the last TPO service ran on 9 January 2004.
With rail operating above ground, the 1860s saw the start of explorations of underground rails taking place. The Pneumatic Dispatch Company built an underground tube that linked Eversholt Street with Euston Station in London. It was later extended to the Royal Mail Headquarters building at St. Martin’s Le Grand. Acting on the peashooter principle, railcars were sucked or blown through the sealed tube at speeds up to 35 mph. A pre‑cursor to Mail Rail, the pneumatic railway, the project was doomed to fail and the Pneumatic Dispatch Company wound up in 1876.
Taking to the skies
Experiments with air travel took off in the early twentieth century with the first powered air flight taking place on 17 December 1903. Almost eight years later, the first scheduled airmail service flew from Hendon to Windsor. The historic flight was part of the celebrations for the Coronation of King George V.
Seven years later in 1918, the UK’s first overseas airmail service began. It was a joint venture between the Royal Air Force and the British Army Post Office (BAPO). The route operated between Folkestone and Cologne. Additional routes quickly developed and within thirty years, Britain was the world’s largest carrier of airmail.
From 10 million airmail letters per year in 1935, numbers doubled annually, reaching over 91 million in 1938.
Motorised mail
The first motor vehicle entered service at Royal Mail in 1907. It was a two and a half tonne lorry called the Maudslay Stores Number 1. It was in operation for 18 years during which it covered over 300,000 miles.
Since the launch of the first motor vehicle, Royal Mail’s vans and lorries have become a familiar sight on Britain’s streets over the years, changing their make and shape in line with prevailing trends. Many of these historic vehicles are now stored at Royal Mail’s archive in Debden, Essex and include the famous Morris Minor vans and the iconic Land Rover Defender.
Unusual methods of delivery
In the 19th century, a River Postman received and delivered mail to the moored ships in the Pool of London, the stretch of the River Thames from London Bridge to below Limehouse. The position continued until 1952.
Legend has it that between 1830 and 1850, mail was conveyed between Chichester and Arundel, Sussex, in a cart drawn by four large dogs, and that this cart was once the victim of an attempted robbery by highwaymen.
In the hope of speeding up postal deliveries in 1930, central London almost had its very own monorail. Railplane, the brainchild of George Benn, was designed to run above the trainline between Croydon and the Holborn Viaduct, cutting journey times from one hour to ten minutes. Although a test line was set up in Glasgow it was never progressed.
German businessman Gerhard Zucker tried to convince the General Post Office that postal delivery by rocket was viable and carried out several experiments in 1934. Although initials tests were a success, rockets on longer flights exploded before reaching their intended destinations.
Pigeon post became a vital means of communication during the First World War and by the end of the war there were 22,000 pigeons in service. In 1943, the PDSA Dickin Medal was instituted to honour the work of animals in the war and 16 pigeons were awarded the medal during the Second World War.
The first ever Hovercraft mail service in the world travelled from Rhyl on the north coast of Wales to Wallasey on 20 July 1962. However, due to strong winds and continued engine failure, this service was stopped.
The Royal Mail fleet today
Today, the Royal Mail’s environment strategy focuses on three areas: optimising its transport networks to use fuel more efficiently, trialling new vehicles that are more fuel efficient or use alternative fuels, and changing driver behaviour.
Royal Mail now delivers to more than 29 million addresses across the country, six days a week as part of the Universal Service Obligation (USO). The company aims to become a more efficient and competitive business, while minimising its environmental impact.
It does this through routing, where the company utilises a balance of road, rail and air transport. Core network reviews have reduced the overall number of miles from around 162,000 per day in 2010-11 to approximately 145,000 per day in 2015-16.
Reducing the use of air transport continues to be a key focus for Royal Mail. It has been able to replace air transport with road services on routes to and from Bournemouth, Cardiff, East Midlands, Edinburgh and Stansted. This has reduced associated CO2 emissions by approximately a third.
Royal Mail uses airmail only to meet First Class, Special Delivery and priority traffic obligations and also increasingly flies mail through airline partners, taking advantage of existing flights.
The vehicle fleet
Today, Royal Mail’s fleet of around 47,000 vehicles is the largest fleet of road vehicles in the UK. The vehicles use stop-start technology and other features to reduce environmental impacts. Well maintained vehicles help the fleet operate more efficiently and the company’s fleet excellence programme places greater focus on maintaining all of its vehicles to a high standard. What’s more, vehicle service centres have been restructured to improve vehicle utilisation, which has helped maintain 97 per cent availability.
Royal Mail has worked with its trailer manufacturer to select a new single-deck trailer specification which uses lightweight materials and an aerodynamic design to reduce fuel consumption. It also rolled out 300 Cartwright Cheetah Fastback Trailers across its fleet in December 2015, which will deliver an expected saving in fuel consumption of up to eight per cent.
Royal Mail’s fleet now includes 320 vehicles that comply with the Euro 6 standard on commercial vehicle emissions. The standard aims to lower levels of harmful exhaust emissions such as nitrogen oxide (NOx) and other pollutants.
The company continues to trial two Peugeot Partner electric vehicles operating out of its West London delivery office. Driver feedback from the electric vehicle trial has been positive and the trial has successfully demonstrated how far vehicles could travel; they are now used on the office’s longest delivery routes.
Royal Mail also tested a dual fuel motive unit at its National Distribution Centre in London. Preliminary data shows an average CO2e savings of 15 per cent. On this basis, the trial has been extended to include a second motive unit.
Driver behaviour
Changes in driver behaviour can also improve fuel efficiency and reduce CO2e emissions.
Royal Mail’s telemetry system tracks drivers and gives visible and audible warnings when moderate or harsh driving occurs, or strong acceleration. The system has been rolled out across 38 per cent of Royal Mail’s fleet, including approximately 1,800 of its 7.5 tonne vehicles (91 per cent of our 7.5-tonne HGV fleet) and approximately 13,000 small vans.
This data is used to direct training programmes, which promote driving behaviour that is both safer and more fuel-efficient. During 2015-16, Royal Mail rolled out driver training to over 4,000 of its HGV drivers. The firm’s aim is to use these systems and associated driver training to cut fuel usage for HGVs by five per cent, for the 7.5-tonne fleet by six per cent, and for small vans by 10 per cent.
In March 2016, Royal Mail joined the UK’s Logistics Carbon Reduction Scheme (LCRS) to further demonstrate our commitment to reducing carbon from road freight.
Paul Gatti, Royal Mail’s fleet director, said: “The scale and scope of our operations means that increasing the efficiency of our fleet can positively impact the environment as well as help our business performance. We are currently developing a new fleet environment strategy to help us address these challenges and are committed to ensuring that any changes we make in response to these new practises are the right ones.“
