A mail van or mail truck (also sometimes known as a Post Office van) is a delivery vehicle that is used to distribute mail.

Evolution

John Hollingshead

John Hollingshead

John Hollingshead was an English theatrical impresario, journalist and writer during the latter half of the 19th century. He is best remembered as the first manager of the Gaiety Theatre, London...

's article "Right through the Post", written for Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

' All the Year Round

All the Year Round

All the Year Round was a Victorian periodical, being a British weekly literary magazine founded and owned by Charles Dickens, published between 1859 and 1895 throughout the United Kingdom. Edited by Dickens, it was the direct successor to his previous publication Household Words, abandoned due to...

magazine in 1859 and published in issue number 8, narrates the journey of a registered letter through the postal system (from the point of view of the letter itself) and describes mail vans as follows:
As described by Hollingshead, mail vans in the United Kingdom were originally horse-drawn, operating in conjunction with the railway network, including Travelling Post Office

Travelling Post Office

A Travelling Post Office was a type of mail train in the UK where the post was sorted en-route. The last Travelling Post Office services were ended on 9 January 2004, with the carriages used now sold for scrap or to preservation societies....

s, carrying mail between railway stations and places distant from them, and between sub-post offices and sorting office

Sorting office

Sorting office or Processing and Distribution Center is any location where postal operators bring mail after collection for sorting into batches for delivery to the addressee, which may be a direct delivery or sent onwards to another regional or local sorting office, or to another postal...

s. Some of these vans were of the Brougham type. In the 1880s the General Post Office began hiring larger enclosed box vans from McNamara & Company. These vans had elliptical spring front suspension, semi-elliptical spring rear suspension, a double driving seat, and mail coach

Mail coach

In Great Britain, the mail coach or post coach was a horse-drawn carriage that carried mail deliveries, from 1784. In Ireland, the first mail coach began service from Dublin in 1789. The coach was drawn by four horses and had seating for four passengers inside. Further passengers were later allowed...

 style headlamps. These were frequently called mail coaches, although unlike actual mail coaches they carried no passengers. At least six regular long-distance, i.e., not just to and from local railway stations, mail van services out of London existed in the late 19th century. A London-to-Chatham mail van service ran until the summer of 1908, and one mail van service ran from London to Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

 until 1909.

During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 such horse-drawn McNamara mail vans were reintroduced, because of petrol rationing, but only for local work. These vans were drawn by a single horse, had pneumatic tyres, and were painted in the Post Office livery colours. A few of them were still in service in the early 1950s.
Horse-drawn mail vans were replaced by automotive mail vans. These were commercial vans. For example, over almost two decades the U.K. General Post Office purchased 50,000 Morris Minor

Morris Minor

The Morris Minor was a British economy car that debuted at the Earls Court Motor Show, London, on 20 September 1948. Designed under the leadership of Alec Issigonis, more than 1.3 million were manufactured between 1948 and 1971...

 light commercial vehicles for use as either mail vans or telephone engineer vans. These Morris Minor vans became a familiar sight, and at least one survived until 1982 to sport the livery of British Telecom. The GPO vehicles were special order vehicles, and not quite the same as the commercial Morris Minor LCVs. The early series vans had one seat, no heater, and headlamps fitted to the front of the vehicle on rubber wings. Later series adhered more closely to conventional LCV norms, but differences remained. The Series III GPO Morris Minor van, for example, had a Yale lock on the driver's door.

Similarly, in the United States automotive mail vans used by the United States Postal Service

United States Postal Service

The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...

 were modified commercial vehicles. From June 1929 to March 1932, for example, the Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...

 sold Model A and Model AA

Ford Model AA

Ford Model AA is a truck from Ford. As the Model T and TT became obsolete and needed to be replaced, Henry Ford began initial designs on the Model A and Model AA in 1926. Basic chassis layout was done rapidly and mechanical development was moved forward quickly. Body design and style was...

 chassis to the USPS, whose regional garages would then outfit them with mail van bodies (in oak or white ash) painted in the USPS colours. These bodies came from five companies: the York-Hoover Body Company, of York, Pennsylvania

York, Pennsylvania

York, known as the White Rose City , is a city located in York County, Pennsylvania, United States which is in the South Central region of the state. The population within the city limits was 43,718 at the 2010 census, which was a 7.0% increase from the 2000 count of 40,862...

; the Mifflinburg Body Company, of Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania

Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania

-Education:There are no colleges or universities in Mifflinburg.The Mifflinburg Area School District has a number of its schools located in the borough. It has the high school , the middle school and the Mifflinburg Area Intermediate School which opened for the 2006 school year...

; the August Schubert Wagon Works, of Syracuse, New York

Syracuse, New York

Syracuse is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States, the largest U.S. city with the name "Syracuse", and the fifth most populous city in the state. At the 2010 census, the city population was 145,170, and its metropolitan area had a population of 742,603...

; the Metropolitan Body Company, of Bridgeport, Connecticut

Bridgeport, Connecticut

Bridgeport is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. Located in Fairfield County, the city had an estimated population of 144,229 at the 2010 United States Census and is the core of the Greater Bridgeport area...

; and the General Motors Truck Company, of Pontiac, Michigan

Pontiac, Michigan

Pontiac is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan named after the Ottawa Chief Pontiac, located within the Detroit metropolitan area. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 59,515. It is the county seat of Oakland County...

. In total, 400 such mail vans were built on the 1929 Model A chassis, 400 on the 1929 Model AA chassis, 1,000 on the 1931 Model A chassis, and 2,500 on the 1931 Model AA chassis. One such 1931 Ford Model A mail van can be seen exhibited in the National Postal Museum

National Postal Museum

The National Postal Museum, located opposite Union Station in Washington, D.C., USA, was established through joint agreement between the United States Postal Service and the Smithsonian Institution and opened in 1993. The museum is located across the street from Union Station, in the building that...

 in Washington, D.C.
The first door to door mail truck was manufactured by the Twin Coach Company of Kent, Ohio, in 1954. It was first used by the Warren, Ohio, Post Office August 4th,1954, under Postmaster Sam Verlenich
who posed with five carriers next to their trucks,for the historic photograph on the front page of the Warren Tribune Chronicle.
The mail van used by the USPS for local deliveries since the late-1980s is the Grumman LLV

Grumman LLV

The Grumman Long Life Vehicle or LLV is a light transport truck designed for and primarily used by the United States Postal Service.In the United States, it is the most common vehicle used by letter carriers for curbside and residential delivery of mail, replacing the previous standard...

, pictured at right. This is a custom-made mail van manufactured by Grumman Corporation, whose US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

1.1 billion contract with the USPS was for 99,150 vehicles in 1986. They were originally intended to last for 24 years, three times the lifetime of the mail vans that they replaced. Production of the LLV began in April 1987 in Grumman's plant in Montgomery, Pennsylvania

Montgomery, Pennsylvania

Montgomery is a borough in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The population was 1,695 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Williamsport, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area.-History:...

. The vehicle is built on a General Motors chassis, is 175 inches (444.5 cm) long, weighs 3000 pounds (1,360.8 kg), can carry up to 1000 pounds (453.6 kg) of mail, and is driven by a 2.5 litre General Motors four-cylinder engine. In 1991, Grumman was awarded a further US$555 million contract for a further 43,500 vehicles.

There is a common belief that a United States Postal Service mail truck has right of way over emergency vehicles; this is untrue.