The U.S. Post Office allows its customers to mail many things besides letters. A customer can send plants, insects, some types of live animals (1) . A direct marketing research company once mailed a football, a hammer, and even a water ski, with just a stamp (2) , just to see what would happen. But the strangest thing sent through the mail was a bank. And not a child's piggy bank, (3) .
Of course, the whole bank couldn't be sent through the mail system, (4) . But the next best thing was mailed – all of the bricks used to construct the bank, all 80,000 of them.
Mr. W. H. Coltharp, a young businessman in the town of Vernal, Utah, wanted to build a bank (5) . The bricks which he selected for the building were made by a company located about 120 miles away from the town by straight line, (6) . Coltharp's problem was that the cost to transport 80,000 bricks from Salt Lake City to Vernal was too high, so he decided to mail the bricks to the small town through the cheap parcel post service.
He had the bricks carefully packaged in boxes, each of them weighing less than 50 pounds, the upper limit of what the post office permitted. News reports show (7) , equivalent to one ton.
Finally, all the bricks were delivered, but the postmasters got so angry (8) . From then on people could only send or receive a total of 200 pounds of goods in a single day. The Bank of Vernal was built (9) "The Parcel Post Bank" by some people in the town. The building still exists and is still used as a bank.