ROADSIDE POST OFFICES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1938, Page 7

ROADSIDE POST OFFICES

f SUCCESS OF RURAL MAIL-BOX SERVICE. ’ One of the effective aids in reducing the isolation of country dwellers is the rural mail-box service which takes the facilities of the Post Office practically to the farmer’s door. These boxes, a very familiar feature of the countryside, are made to a weatherproof standard design at the Department’s workshops, and for a moderate annual payment their users are provided with a miniature post office at the nearest practicable roadside point to their residence. It is a two-way service, as boxholders are able to arrange with the contractor to buy stamps and post outward letters, purchase money-orders and postal notes, and despatch parcels. Thus a number of things are done for the rural box-holder which the urban dweller must do for himself at the nearest post office. The finest testimony to the value of this system was its vigorous survival throughout the depression. During this period, the number of rural mail boxes actually increased year by year, the service being one which the country dweller was not going to do without even in bad times. The boxes totalled 19,338 in March, 1929, and increased by 5,385 during the worst years of the depression. Since then the rate of expansion has accelerated until today rural post boxes total 29,341, an improvement on the 1929 figures of just over ten thousand.