Smithsonian's excellent Flickr feed has become quite topical, most recently posting a brief series of great images of US Mail vehicles in adverse conditions as part of a much longer winter theme.

There are only five of postal vehicles up now, so to make it interesting I'm going to include their captions but leave the dates off – see what you can come up with. Smithsonian itself doesn't have them all nailed down, nor do they have makes and models, but you can visit the links to see what they think and to access ultra high resolution versions of the images.

The image above is #5. Postal officials encouraged Rural Free Delivery (RFD) carriers to replace their horses and wagons with the latest in transportation technology. This unidentified carrier painted his early electric-motored vehicle in the same paint and identification scheme as the RFD wagons of the era. He is, no doubt, only able to complete his wintertime rounds thanks to a snow-plowed road. Automobiles were not yet adequate replacements for horses, wagons, and sleds on rural roads.

Read the Whole Article