Pony Express Case Study

The rider’s horse were meant to carry saddlebags that contained mail that was sometimes very important documents between Sacramento, California and St. Joseph, Missouri. The very first trial westbound trip was made in 9 days and 23 hours. Then the eastbound journey was made in 11 days and 12 hours. The pony express riders were expected to cover approximately 250 miles on a hard and challenging 24-hour day. The distance was approximately 1,800 miles, and it took the experienced Pony Express riders to ride it in ten days, which was half the time the stagecoach required for the same journey. The pony express riders were given a uniform that was a red shirt and blue pant but the uniform was often discarded and replaced with buckskins pants …show more content…
It isn’t known how much exactly the service costed Russell. During this operation, the company only collected about $90,141, or the cost of purchasing horses for the service. The adding up of all accounts that the Pony Express got had lost $200,000 by the time it closed operations.
But as the Pony Express was never a part of the US Postal System, the mailing services faced the same threats as the USPS. With the decrease in the profitability and advancing technology it did an extreme hurting on both and even now. It isn’t profitable for the post really and rarely do they have a good year with little profit.
When Congress, in the 70s determined how or what the Postal Service of the Pony Express should operate on stamp revenue, instead of receiving funding from tax dollars, hurt the growth of the Pony Express. This put it closer to shutting it down permanently. With this decision put into action done in the past did affect them greatly. Another seemingly satirical option that plagued both the Pony Express of the Wild West and the US Postal Service of the 21st century was the update on