Welcome back to Half as Listeresting, a brand-new subsidiary channel of WatchMojo where we just
list things as quickly as possible and you sit there slack-jawed while we churn your
life-force into sweet, sweet adsense money.
Today we’re listing ZIP codes––or postal codes as they say in the old country.
Here’s the ZIP code with the highest income per capita.
Here’s the ZIP code with the largest population.
Here’s the ZIP code with the highest ratio of women.
Here’s the ZIP code with the highest percentage of people who bike to work.
Here’s the ZIP code that looks most like a boat.
Wait, hold on—that is a boat.
Okay, screw this list, we have kinda interesting content to explain!
Now, in order to understand how this tiny, 45-foot boat got its very own ZIP code, we
need to take a little trip back in time.
You see, before the United States figured out how to make money by designing websites
that gave people depression, we had to support ourselves by building cars out of metal from
the ground and selling them to people for money.
Primitive, I know, but hear me out: America’s auto industry was huge throughout the 20th
century, and the epicenter of this manufacturing boom was here, in Detroit, Michigan.
With so many raw materials being shipped into Detroit—and a massive flow of new cars out
of Detroit—the Detroit River quickly became one of the most trafficked waterways in the
United States, next to the Mississippi River and New York City’s subway system.
While the American auto industry has since declined, and Detroit was ravaged by a giant
lizard named “90s-era American Foreign Trade Policy,” the Detroit river is still a crucial
shipping route for the thousands of freighters that operate in North America’s Great Lakes.
Now, you know the classic adage: “Where there are lots of large boats, there’s also
sometimes a small boat.”
It’s not a very useful adage, but it does apply here—that’s where the J.W.
Westcott Company comes in.
Originally, this one-boat operation served as a “ship to shore” service in the late-1800s,
before the advent of radio.
Essentially, if a shipping company had a message they needed to deliver to their ships—like
if there was a change in weather conditions or if their cargo full of stovepipe hats had
suddenly gone out of style—the J.W.
Westcott Company would send their rowboat out to tell the ship to dump the stovepipe
hats into the water before they embarrassed themselves.
As the country began to industrialize, however, a new problem arose: the freighters passing
through Detroit didn’t have time to send or receive mail.
Ships that served the Great Lakes throughout the auto boom—and up until today—tend
to carry highly-valuable cargo—often raw materials like coal and iron ore.
This means that cutting down on shipping time is absolutely essential, and modern freighters
working the Detroit river are put on tight schedules that only leave them enough time
to load and unload their cargo—there’s no wiggle room for the mariners to pick up
their recreational iron ore at the local post office.
So, in 1895, the same year that radio killed the rowboat star, the J.W.
Westcott Company pivoted to mid-shipment mail delivery.
Basically, if a ship on the Detroit River needs something delivered, the J.W.
Westcott mailboat will idle up next to it, using the suction from the ship’s wake to
stay aligned, and—while both boats are still in motion—will send up the ship’s mail
using an ingenious invention called a “bucket attached to a string.”
“But Sam,” you might be saying, “If you don’t talk about ZIP codes soon, I’m
going to report this video for promoting terrorism.”
Well, okay, fine.
Let’s talk about ZIP codes.
You see, while the J.W.
Westcott Company makes a lot of their deliveries independently—things like groceries, or
nautical charts, or mistresses—they also have a contract with the United States Postal
Service dating back to 1948 as the proprietor of an official US mailboat.
When ZIP codes were implemented about fifteen years later, though, this unique arrangement
presented some problems.
Basically, in the early-60s, every address that could receive mail was assigned to a
local ZIP code—this made it easier to automate mail sorting, since AI will never be advanced
enough to know that you were trying to spell Schenectady, New York.
This even applies to things like aircraft carriers—each got assigned their own ZIP
code, so that when the military needs to overnight a couple of nuclear warheads for Christmas,
the mail-sorting algorithm knows where to send them.
The freighters on the Detroit River, however, couldn’t be assigned a ZIP code, since there
was no post office floating in the river.
So, to remedy this, the USPS granted the J.W.
Westcott mailboat the rank of post office and gave it its very own ZIP code: 48222—essentially,
the ZIP code of the Detroit River.
So, if you’re feeling lonely and you want to start a correspondence with a random freighter
captain, all you need to do is address your sad little letter to the ship’s name, Marine
Post Office, Detroit, MI 48222.
Of course, if you want to get the attention of a freighter captain, you should probably
just send them a bunch of emails.
But if you really want to stand out from the crowd of people trying to befriend freighter
captains, your email address should stand out too—like what about coolguy@normalbehavior.rodeo?
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