Thanks for that VERY interesting—and amusing!—bit of history. The main thing I remember about the BMC was how weird it was during Tour 1 when there were all these BMC containers moving around on rails with no one around. Always wondered if everything was being moved by a computer named HAL!
I remember those guys. One night after checking out a freight rail terminal in Omaha at 30 below zero we flew over to Kansas City and stayed at the Muhlbach Hotel a few weeks before it was knocked down.
Don never could figure out how to "stack" out of service BMC containers ~ plus, they were so heavy that when loaded with mail a single individual could not push them and had to hook them up to the towveyer before getting them into service.
My APC worked much better ~ because it was rectangular in shape (so it "stacked horizontally" and it was light enough to push that even full of mail a little bitty lil' gal could come over and just push it all over the place!
Then I went into the Infantry for a while. Then I came back and the APCs were just all over the place. It was such a good idea postmasters bought them out of operating funds. BTW, that all happened under the Post Office Department. I knew from the APC success with preferential mail in unimodal environments that it would kick butt at the BMCs too.
They kept them out of the BMCs for several years, but they finally had to give up because those BMC containers were too expensive.