Westcoaster Mailster
small three-wheeled vehicle used for mail delivery in the United States during the 1950s and 60s
The Westcoaster Mailster was a small three-wheeled vehicle used for mail delivery by the United States Post Office Department during the 1950s and 60s. They could haul 500 pounds of mail, including large parcels, versus the 35-pound limit of a foot carrier, and once represented one-third of the delivery vehicles used by the Post Office. Because of the population boom after World War II, the postal service needed a more efficient way to deliver mail, so in 1950 the city of Miami started to test three-wheeled scooters. The Westcoaster Mailster was inexpensive, and its popularity grew fast. By 1960, there were more than 5,700 Mailsters on the road of the whole country. The number of Mailsters in use peaked in 1966, at about 17,700.
Often known as "mail scooters", Mailsters worked best in areas with warm climates and flat terrain. The two cylinder gasoline-powered vehicle had a safe top speed of 35 miles per hour and a 7.5 horsepower engine. A Mailster could be rendered useless in just three inches of snowfall. Mail carriers often complained of frequent breakdowns ranging from clutch failure to broken front axles.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Westcoaster Mailster” as small three-wheeled vehicle used for mail delivery in the United States during the 1950s and 60s. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as small three-wheeled vehicle used for mail delivery in the United States during the 1950s and 60s. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7987288. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1950, 1960 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Westcoaster Mailster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.