The Railway Express Agency whose distinctive green delivery trucks and green boxcars were long a familiar sight on the nation's streets and Passenger Trains.
The first parcel express agency in the United States is generally considered to have been started by William Harriden, who in 1839 began regular trips between New York and Boston transporting small parcels, currency and other valuables.
Other express companies followed, including Wells Fargo & Co. and the Adams Express Company in 1871.
REA ,or The Railway Express Agency was a national monopoly established by the U.S. government in 1917. When the United States entered World War I, the federal government was concerned about the rapid, safe movement of people and goods and so took control of the nation's railroads. At the same time, the government also seized Adams, Wells Fargo and the nation's other express companies and consolidated them into The Railway Express Agency. In 1929, the federal government finally turned it over to 86 railroads that operated it for the next 40 years, cooperating to speed parcel shipments and sharing the resulting profits based on the volume of shipments each handled.
At its peak,Railway Express Agency employed over 45,000 people in 23,000 offices and operated over 190,000 miles of railway lines. In addition, 14,000 miles of shipping lines, 91,000 miles of air routings and 15,00 miles of trucking lines were traveled by Railway Express Agency shipments.
Seventeen thousand trucks, handled over 300,000 separate shipments daily, ranging from small packages to carload-size lots. Railway Express Agency or REA, as it was known, used one of the largest fleet of trucks; owned and leased as many railroad cars as some of the largest railroad companies, but was not a railroad in itself. In the 1950s, green trucks would race out onto the aprons of airports, to waiting DC-6 airliners with shipments of “Overnight Air.”
Through the 1940s, Railway Express, with long strings of green refrigerator cars, would also haul oranges up from Florida to northeastern cities. Previously, in 1927, the airlines in the U.S. had started scheduled operations. By the eve of World War II, second-morning service was being provided from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Overnight service was offered between such points as New York and Chicago. Railway Express Agency functioned as a single orgnanition to the customer, due to its contracts with the airlines and vast network of truck and rail depots. But the years after World War 2 more and more parcels were shipped by truck rather than rail, and (REA)soon struggled financially. In 1969, after several years of losses, the railroads sold REA to five of its corporate officers. In 1975 REA Terminated Operations and filed for Bankrurptcy.
It is believed that with out government over regulation, and the transfer of US Mail Service to trucking, The Railway Express Agency could have survived to compete today
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