In July 1954, the Post Office Department lined up delivery vehicles in Miami to find which ones could survive the American mail route. Suburbs were sprawling, mail volume was climbing, and letter carriers were walking themselves into the ground. The answer was to put carriers behind the wheel, which meant first figuring out what they should drive.
Three vehicle types came out of those tests with the Department’s interest, according to the Smithsonian National Postal Museum’s account of the era: the sit-or-stand van, the three-wheeled Mailster, and the Jeep. Over the next six years the Department bought more than 40,000 new vehicles, and by the museum’s own reckoning, many were Jeeps.
That decision is why a Jeep built for mail work has the steering wheel on the wrong side. One naming note: in 1954 the buyer was the Post Office Department. The Postal Service did not exist until 1971.
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