Utah businessman mailed thousands of bricks, forcing the US to rewrite postal rules

Coltharp exploited postal rates, shipping individually wrapped bricks in 50-pound boxes to build his Utah bank. In the early days of America's Parcel Post system it seemed everything that could fit within the rules was fair game for delivery. Farmers sent crops, families sent food and household goods, and businesses soon discovered that the postal network could be an unexpectedly cheap alternative to traditional freight. But in Utah, one businessman took the idea much further and used the mail to ship thousands of bricks for an entire bank.When the postal service was a shipping networkAccording to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, on January 1, 1913, Parcel Post officially began, changing the way Americans could ship items. The service was particularly popular with rural families who had to haul goods into towns with express offices before they could be sent on. The new system linked packages straight to rural mailboxes, and it was nearly instantly popular. In the first half of the year, some 300 million parcels were processed. The weight limits increased quickly, from 11 pounds to 20 pounds, then eventually 50 pounds.The service was not limited to normal household parcels. E...