Rural delivery service, formerly known as Rural Free Delivery (RFD), is the service by which the United States Postal Service delivers mail directly to residents in rural areas. Prior to its establishment, the residents of rural America had to travel to the nearest post office to get their mail or pay private companies to deliver it.

RFD started in October 1896 as an experiment, 33 years after free delivery in cities had begun. It became an official service in 1902, and was expanded in 1913 with the introduction of rural parcel post service.

The rural delivery service uses a network of rural routes traveled by carriers to deliver and pick up mail to and from roadside mailboxes. An address for mail to a rural delivery address includes both the rural route number and the box number, e.g., "RR 5, Box 10."

The first routes to receive RFD during its experimental phase were in Jefferson County, West Virginia, near Charles Town, Halltown, and Uvilla.

Canada Post uses a similar structure for rural mail delivery. A rural route address in Canada may or may not include a box number depending on the community.

External links

• Rural Free Delivery celebrates a milestone, from the USPS website
• History of Rural Free Delivery in Farmington, Minnesota, from a GeoCities-based ad-supported site of the Farmington Area Historical Society
• 100 years of Rural Free Delivery in America, a 1997 research report from the Smithsonian Institution
• Rural mailboxes, from the National Postal Museum website
• USPS Glossary of Postal Terms (Publication 32), in PDF format
• USPS Domestic Mail Manual, Chapter A010, Standard Addressing Formats
• 1903 film of carrier receiving RFD mail to deliver in Westminster, Maryland, from the Library of Congress

United States Postal Service | Canada Post