My dad had a problem once with people driving down his street taking a baseball to mailboxes. After his was hit he went and bought two mailboxes, one of the regular size and one of the jumbo size. He put one inside the other and filled the gap with concrete. He mounted the whole thing on a 4x4 and set it into the ground with concrete. He noticed a scuff mark on the box at some point later and he likes the imagery that comes with picturing the jackass who made it.
As a kid, back on the farm, we had a neighbor who had his mailbox knocked down with a bat several times.
So he replaced it with a new box that had a chain on the back, going down to the ground, apparently stabilizing it. But the mailbox was on a pivot, and the chain wasn’t secured in the ground, just attached to a lead weight (an old fishing anchor). So when someone hit his mailbox with a bat, it just swung around on the pivot, pulling the chain out of the ground, and swinging the lead weight on the end into the back windshield.
It worked; he observed broken glass on the shoulder in front of his mailbox, and I actually observed the car in our highschool parking lot with a hole in the back windshield. When I told him about it, and about the kids gathered around looking at the car, I actually saw this dour old dutch farmer actually smile!
Any kind of cite?
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The previous poster asked about moving their mailbox from a group of four to a spot where their box was all alone. I used to drive a US mail route. People can’t just move their boxes to where they please. If 4 boxes are together, it is coded as such on my route (as one stop.) If someone moves one box, that creates an extra stop on my route.
I would inform the postmaster, and he would contact the owner. It’s not a good idea to be extra nice and allow someone to move their box, because then others will want to move theirs. Then what was one stop is now four stops, which is burning time and gas.
So when someone moves their box, the route driver is free to ignore it until hearing back from the postmaster.
There are only roadside rural mailboxes in my area but I rent a PO box in a branch PO a 4 minute walk away. I do not trust the roadside boxes and receive mosty unsolicited ads and promotional material there, plus mail for 4-year long gone previous tenants.Yesterday I received a thick envelope from the Social Security Admin for a prior occupant.(Returned to sender.) A few years ago there was a news story about the rural newspaper carrier/deliverer arrested for stealing mail out of dozens/hundreds of roadside boxes.
How is this relevant?
There are stories like this every year. With over 600,000 employees, it’s almost a certainty that some of them will stoop to theft. And it could just as easily be the ones who fill your PO Box as the ones who fill streetside mail boxes.
I grew up in a house with a curbside mailbox and delivery driver. We had that nifty flag on the box to alert the driver we had outgoing mail. Seemed perfect to me.
Moved out on my own to an apartment, which had communal mailboxes. You had to go to the building to collect your mail, and packages would be left in the office and a note in your box. Worked pretty well, though you did have to make a stop at the mailbox during the day. It wasn’t very far from my apartment, but some people had longer trips so likely stopped on their way home from work or something. Communal boxes for neighborhoods would be similar, and I’ve seen some of those boxes around.
A few years ago I bought a house that has the mailbox by the door. Mail carrier walks and delivers to the door box. Okay, they want to go to that effort, that’s fine, but what bugs me is there is no flag - no easy way to tell the carrier I have outgoing mail. So do I put the mail inside my box, and hope they can see it? Stick it outside the box and hope it doesn’t blow away with the wind or get rained on?
The mailbox I had was a top opening flat box. A prior owner had painted it up with flowers. Being a single man, I didn’t really want the decorative flowers, so I bought a similar type plain white one and replaced it. The new box was slightly larger, had a curved rather than flat bottom, and I found it more annoying to use. First, because of the size and curved bottom, it was trickier to remove mail from inside, and given placement it was harder to see into. Anyway, I decided what I really want is a front opening mailbox.
So I went to the store and did some looking. The standard curbside type would have been nice, but too wide to comfortably mount by my front door in the entryway. But I found a nice white top opener that was sufficiently deep and flat sided, and I mounted it with the door to the front. So I made my own front opener. It looks nice, is easier to slide mail in and out of.
Now I’m thinking of adding a flag. They sell conversion kits with flags. I bought one before, but couldn’t install it on the previous box because the shape and lid were not condusive to the flag. I think I pitched it eventually, 'cause I can’t find it. But the new one has flat sides and plenty of room, and the door doesn’t block the path of the flag, so I’m thinking of getting and installing one.
I had this very problem. I complained at the local post office and the postmaster came out and inspected my mailbox. He said my mailbox was perfect. He advised me that although he would mention it to the mail deliverer, Most are subcontractors and he had little control over them.
I ended up getting a PO Box and ripping out the mailbox from the street.
I live in an older neighborhood (most of the houses built between WWI and WWII), in which the mail is delivered by a carrier on foot. All of the houses have their mailboxes mounted on the house, near the front door. And, most of the houses have raised first floors – the first floor (and, thus, the front door) isn’t at ground level, but is several feet off the ground, meaning that there are usually 4 to 6 steps one must climb to reach the front door.
Within the past year, our post office had to lay off a couple of mail carriers, and consolidate several mail routes – as a result, we usually don’t get our mail until around 5pm. We recently got a letter from the local post office, requesting (but not demanding) that mail boxes be moved to “ground level”, to allow the carriers to deliver the mail without having to climb up and down stairs.
Where I used to live, all the mailboxes were next to the front door. Then the post office decided that they wanted the mailboxes to be by the street, but they grandfathered in current residents. So once the house got new residents, they had to put a mailbox by the street.
I moved in when my grandfather died (along with his grandfathering), and had to put up a street mailbox.
We used to have to do the clumping, but we all chipped in and got our road paved, so that we could have our mailboxes at the end of the driveway. I honestly don’t remember ever getting mail delivered to the house.
Magnet?