<P> Parcel Post service began with the introduction of International Parcel Post between the USA and foreign countries in 1887 . That same year, the U.S. Post Office (predecessor of the USPS) and the Postmaster General of Canada established parcel - post service between the two nations . A bilateral parcel - post treaty between the independent (at the time) Kingdom of Hawaii and the USA was signed on 19 December 1888 and put into effect early in 1889 . Parcel - post service between the USA and other countries grew with the signing of successive postal conventions and treaties . While the Post Office agreed to deliver parcels sent into the country under the UPU treaty, it did not institute a domestic parcel - post service for another twenty - five years . </P> <P> The advent of Rural Free Delivery (RFD) in the U.S. in 1896, and the inauguration of a domestic parcel post service by Postmaster General Frank H. Hitchcock in 1913, greatly increased the volume of mail shipped nationwide, and motivated the development of more efficient postal transportation systems . Many rural customers took advantage of inexpensive Parcel Post rates to order goods and products from businesses located hundreds of miles away in distant cities for delivery by mail . From the 1910s to the 1960s, many college students and others used parcel post to mail home dirty laundry, as doing so was less expensive than washing the clothes themselves . </P> <P> After four - year - old Charlotte May Pierstorff was mailed from her parents to her grandparents in Idaho in 1914, mailing of people was prohibited . In 1917, the Post Office imposed a maximum daily mailable limit of two hundred pounds per customer per day after a business entrepreneur, W.H. Coltharp, used inexpensive parcel - post rates to ship more than eighty thousand masonry bricks some four hundred seven miles via horse - drawn wagon and train for the construction of a bank building in Vernal, Utah . </P> <P> The advent of parcel post also led to the growth of mail order businesses that substantially increased rural access to modern goods over what was typically stocked in local general stores . </P>

Where does the post office get its money