In the years leading up to the American Revolution mail routes among the colonies existed along the few roads between Boston, New York and Philadelphia. In the middle 18th century, individuals like Benjamin Franklin and William Goddard were the colonial postmasters who managed the mails then and were the general architects of a postal system that started out as an alternative to the Crown Post (the colonial mail system then) which was now becoming more distrusted as the American Revolution drew near. The postal system that Franklin and Goddard forged out of the American Revolution became the standard for the new U.S. Post Office and is a system whose basic designs are still used in the United States Postal Service today.