Mailboxes

[Galaxiedan]

Heres a mailbox idea

https://goo.gl/images/qT6HzH

 

[Bull Barrel]

Large packages via USPS still go to the PO. They put a notice in your box you take to the counter.
My son used to live about 250 ft from his PO. The required him to have a PO box. Why? They said no mail trucks went down his street...i think every one of them did. Multiple times daily.

 

[Ale-8(1)]

Here, our UPS and FEDEX drivers will put stuff up on our front porch . . . and our rural USPS guy will, too. Yes, I realize we're blessed . . .

 

[Dan in MI]

Did the plow actually hit the box or high speed snow from the blade blast it? In the far northern regions I have seen blockers put up by the mailbox. Think of a narrow pallet on two 4x4's a foot away on the side traffic comes from.


My in laws mailbox would get creamed two or three times a year. EVERY year. After my FiL passed I got the job of putting it up. Like my FiL I just replaced it the first time. Before the second time was needed, I came over from a different direction. I noticed that although they were on a straightaway there was a tiny tweak to the road and he had been putting the mailbox right at the point closest to the road in that tweak. I moved it down the road 50'. Hasn't been hit in years now.

 

[protoolman]

I was thinking 6" steel pipe filled with concrete and set in concrete. Then 1/4" steel plate welded to the top for a base plate.

 

[RoninPA]

Curious . . . I have considered the PO box solution, but wonder how to deal with ordering things that cannot be or won't ship to the PO box.

:?: :? :?:

Where I live I am required to have a PO box as they do not have door to door mail delivery. For UPS or FedEx delivery, they go by your street address and as far as I know, due to 911 emergency services every building/house has a street address. I get UPS and FedEx deliveries just about every day and don't have any problems. For most of the Internet companies I deal with I have both my PO box address and my street address on file with them. If the package cannot be delivered to the PO it tells me when I check out and I just change the delivery address to the street address.

 

[Jeepnik]

Well, we don't have to worry about plows here. I did move mine from the front porch to the sidewalk to make it easier on the postman/postwoman (dad was one).

The only problem I have is kids messing with it. Been thinking about electrifying it but I'm afraid I'd forget to turn it off and zap the delivery person.

 

[mohavesam]

I drove a snowplow in a past life (Upstate New York) and the ROW was the law, plain and simple. Snow removal, not saving mailboxes, was a public-safety issue. Not done for convenience.

We took out many mailboxes (hey the drifts were 6-10 feet plus at night) and the town/county never paid or replaced a single one. A non-sequitur. Some tried - installing concrete or steel posts, etc. They got a bill from the county or worse, NYDOT, for snowplow repair, which one didn't want to ignore.

 

[gjgalligan]

All this talk about steel post, I - Beams, ect just might turn into a big civil lawsuit.
I would much rather replace my mailbox once in a while then to have a lawsuit or have to think somebody got killed on a steel post I planted in the ground along the roadway.

 

[k22fan]

Curious . . . I have considered the PO box solution, but wonder how to deal with ordering things that cannot be or won't ship to the PO box.

:?: :? :?:

The USPS has a fairly new policy to increase their business. For an address you can use your name and the post office's street address. You add the number of your P.O. box with # as a prefix. It is similar to adding an apartment number to an apartment building's address. UPS, Fed-Ex and other private carriers deliver the item to the post office's loading dock. Like all other packages, depending on the article's size and availability of lockers, the mailmen deliver it into your P.O. box, put a key to a locker in your P.O. box or leave a notice to come to their counter. A draw back is the process adds one day to the delivery time. The advantages are the service is free and you do not have to choose between staying home to receive the private delivery or risk it being stolen off your porch.

Here the frequently recurring problem is mail theft. We do not get much snow and the boxes have not been hit by a vehicle since they were moved further away from the main road 10 to 15 years ago.

My road has a dozen boxes on a long plank. Eight of them are $200 to $300 locking steel boxes. All of those have been pried open or their locks drilled out multiple times. The neighbors' repairs get expensive. All I have to do after the boxes are broken into is close the flap on my $4 mail box. On the other hand, the majority of regular business size envelopes that are not obviously junk mail are stolen out of my helpless box. When we ask the postmaster for help he refers us to the county sheriff who refuses to take reports of mail theft.

I only give banks and businesses my P.O. box. Each post master sets their own P.O. Box rent based on what their market will pay. The post office a half hour north of me charges about 60% of what the post office a half hour south of me charges. Unfortunately I usually drive south so I pay the higher rent.

 

[Fox Mike]

Large packages via USPS still go to the PO. They put a notice in your box you take to the counter.

Perhaps where you live but our rural carrier pulls her little Jeep in the driveway and walks the package right to our door.

 

[GP100]

My mail woman is so damned lazy, that she leaves a stupid little tag in the box for us to go to the post office 5 miles away to pick up a small package..

Keep in mind, my house is less than 75 yards away from the damned mailbox! But she's to frigging lazy to drive that little bit to drop it off..

Might chip a nail if she actually had to ring a doorbell.. And they wonder why they are losing money from the public. If they went out of business tomorrow I could care less.

 

[jimbo1096]

My ex-boss lived in a rural area and was having to replace the 4x4 and mailbox about once a month. He finally got teed off enough to drill a hole with an auger off his Bobcat and place an 8"pvc pipe about 8 feet in the ground with re-bar and wire cloth stuffed down in it, then filled it up with concrete. It looked ugly and had one of those very large oversize Rubbermaid mail boxes on it but there were a few pick-up trucks with smashed grills and bumpers after that, and last I heard the mail box was still standing.

 

[toysoldier]

After a pickup pulling a trailer knocked down my mailbox (the driver left a note, so I didn't ask him to pay), I took three pieces of conduit, curved them in a 1/4 circle, then passed them through two treated 4x4's buried in the ground. An oak board screwed to the pipes made a base for attaching the mailbox. This puts the base well back from the road, and the whole thing flexes quite a bit. It's held up for about 12 years now.

When I lived at Lake of the Ozarks, my house was about 100 yards from a two-lane asphalt road. Shortly after I moved in, some jackass hit the mailbox with a crowbar, severely denting it and putting two holes in it. I bought a new box, then beat out the dents in the old one, bolted the new box on the lee side, filled the old one with concrete, and mounted it on the post. While operating with an orthopedic surgeon, I described what I had done, suggesting that anyone repeating the stunt would get a broken wrist. "Oh no" he said. He'll get a spiral fracture of the humerus." Nothing happened in the two years I lived there.