The distance covered by Post Office motor vans runs into several thousands of miles daily.
Motor vans can travel much faster than the old four-horse coaches. Palmer's idea of the ultimate speed of the mail coach was 10 miles an hour. This speed was often attained before 1840, but no doubt the average all over the country was more like 7 or 8 miles an hour. And this was the average speed of the Parcel Post horse-drawn coaches. The usual rate of the motor coaches is 10 miles an hour.
Another advantage claimed by motor vans compared with horse-drawn coaches is that they can carry heavier loads. The larger night vans can take a load of 2¼ tons as compared with 1½ tons, the carrying capacity of the old horse coaches.
Most of these motor mail coaches travel during the night. In the case of the long-distance services, such as London and Brighton, two vehicles are used, starting from each end of the journey, meeting half way. It is remarkable how little the place of meeting varies each journey. De Quincey, in a footnote to his essay on The English Mail Coach, remarks upon this same feature in the early years of the last century. “One case was familiar to mail coach travellers when two mails in opposite directions, north and south, starting at the same minute from points six hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a particular bridge which bisected the total distance.”
These night motor coaches are timed to arrive at their destination so that the mails conveyed can be distributed by the first morning delivery. A guard accompanies most of the coaches, and in addition to looking after the safety of the mails and assisting in loading and unloading, he sorts parcels received from places en route for places served by the coach. These vehicles serve, therefore, a similar function to the Travelling Post Office.
The guards used to carry arms for defence in case of attack, but they are now only supplied with a truncheon and whistle.
The motor coaches are met at the more important cross roads by smaller motors and carts, with which they exchange mails. There is in this way a network of van services stretching over the whole country.
The silent highway is stirred into a sudden activity when the Post Office night motor van appears. Hundreds of haycarts make their way to London during the night-time along some of the Essex roads. The drivers of these carts work very long hours and often fall asleep. The horses sometimes stop and go to sleep also. These carts standing in the centre of the highway are often a source of danger to the motor mail vans, and we can imagine the feelings of a driver of one of the carts when awakened from a long sleep by the hoot of the motor, and perhaps realising that he is miles farther from his destination than he should be.
Hop-pickers in Kent frequently sleep at night with their heads under a hedge and their feet stretching into the roadway. Accidents have only been avoided through the alertness of the mail van drivers.
A great difference between driving a horse mail coach and a motor vehicle is that, in the case of the former, the horses can be trusted to find their own way if the driver dozed off for a moment. With motors, however, a similar lapse on the driver's part would spell disaster.