The carrier’s Thursday cart

Text 1: By carrier to Ashby, by Henry Coltman

An original journal written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

The carrier’s cart leaves the Swan at seven on Thursdays and reaches Ashby, eleven miles off, by the middle of the afternoon. I took a seat in it today among baskets of eggs, a crate of hens and a widow returning from her daughter’s. Mr Dunnage, the carrier, stops wherever a hand is raised from a gate. At one farm he delivered a parcel of tea; at another he collected a letter to be posted in Ashby and a list of goods to be fetched back next week. Nobody seemed to find this slow. In these lanes he is post office, shop and newspaper together, and every halt gave him a piece of news to carry on to the next.

Give one phrase that shows the carrier is important to the people who live along his route.