postal

Nobody wants to put their package in a grubby, sticky box that's clearly been recently used – but many an excellent box is made unappealing by an untidy exterior. That's where Box Refresh – the worst-named product of 2024 – hopes to make a difference.

Over the past couple of years, the UK's Royal Mail service has been exploring the potential of drones to service remote corners of the nation, and is now pressing ahead with its plans for automated aerial delivery.

In what it hails as the most dramatic modernization of its fleet in three decades, the US Postal Service has revealed the maker of its next-generation delivery truck, which will be built in both gasoline and electric powertrain variants.

​The US Postal Service (USPS) and its mail delivery operations are set to gain a helping hand courtesy of self-driving startup TuSimple, with the agency enlisting the company's autonomous trucks for a two-week trial.

​​When we think of the future of delivery our minds might wander toward airborne drones, but ground-based robots may play an important part in this, too. Among those is a new mail-toting machine already roaming the streets of Germany designed to do much of the heavy lifting. ​

Like most other privatized postal services in the world, Deutsche Post faced an uncertain future, but the national institution is now the dominant freight and logistics company in the world, and is looking to cement its future by developing its own fleet of autonomous delivery vehicles.

​Postal delivery in London is about to get a little bit greener, with Royal Mail launching trials of nine fully electric mail vans. The shiny new vehicles have been built to carry out inner city deliveries, and will begin ferrying packages around the city this week. ​​

Five-year old aspiring future astronaut Oliver Giddings asked the Royal Mail how much it would cost to post a letter to the Red Planet. The answer: £11,602.25 (US$18,003.40).​

The Gate smart mailbox is a 21st century variation on the old switch-and-doorbell mailbox alert setup that not only lets you know when the post arrives and prevent wasted trips to the curb, but is also intended to combat theft.

It's now over a century (101 years, to be exact) since ground was first struck to build the London Post Office Railway, which was the world's first driverless, electrified railway. There are now plans to turn it into a museum and part of the train line into a ride.