REA and Inquirer Drop Points - Pike Street, Frankford to Kensington Aves. - 1957

In memory from late Spring to Summer, there was this thing in transportation where by a truck or van is sitting around a point on the map to receive goods and to redistribute in a more refined or defined receiving marketing area. 

I probably remember from late Spring into Summer because of the light factor at end of day. And also not aware of the these marketing meet ups for distribution of goods and or packages to be redistributed further into another geographic zone in darker months around 7:30 PM and the school year as distractions from noticing this street commerce.  

There were these bunch, maybe two or three green REA Express vans aka (Railway Express Agency)  parked on Pike Street just west of Frankford avenue and on the north side of the street. The drivers on the vans were usually on their waits on the street out of their vans shooting the breeze with the other drivers or taking a smoke. Then the arrival of the main vehicle, no difference in design, handing out packages to the assembled caravan in wait and then all present starting their vans up and the street being emptied of their presence.  

The image of a cast iron toy truck is an image I remember that most resemble the vehicles in my memory. That REA went out of business in 1975, followed almost immediately by an older, smaller firm UPS which had started in Seattle and finally settled into Hartford Connecticut to take up the slack and demand for express packaging off the railroads in the wane of their importance in the American industrial scheme of things. I almost imagine that UPS Brown just painted over used REA vans picked up for a song at the bankruptcy sale. 

Also about the same time on a little traveled street back then of E. Pike Street between Frankford Ave and Kensington Ave, that on Pike Street next to the back track space of North Catholic, about 7:30 PM every night was a big blue Inquirer truck arriving to distribute the 8:00 PM "early edition" of next day's newspaper to smaller vans and autos for redistributing the newspapers regionally into the growing Northeast.