“The coaches were more comfortable [than freighting wagons] too. The Concord mail coach, the top of the line, was famous for its elegant design, its hand-tooled workmanship, and its suspension of heavy leather springs. Its models could seat six, nine, or twelve passengers inside; it could also accommodate as many as a dozen additional passengers on the coach’s flat roof in what the Concord catalogue called ‘relative comfort.’ . . .
Paying passengers quickly discovered that they were all second-class patrons next to the stagecoach’s most valued customer: the U.S. Mail. Although coaches carried little letter mail due to the high cost of postage, Congress in 1825 had authorized the free exchange of newspapers among publishers. This meant that frequently the ‘publication mail’ was so heavy and bulky that it was stacked on the floor of the coach, and the passengers had to arrange themselves among the mail stacks as best they could.”