… or are there some remote locales where they get to you less frequently or you have to go pick it up yourself?
Nobody in my county gets delivery at all. You have to have a PO box
My office building is locked on weekends. Pretty sure that the USPS tables delivery until Monday.
Lots of businesses that are closed on Saturday don’t get mail delivery that day. If they remained open, though, the USPS would probably deliver.
My hometown is the same way except that it only applies to people living inside the city limits of the small town. Those outside of town get delivery. I always found it odd that they deliver to all but the closest people.
I’m guessing the original poster was talking more about whether there are only periodic deliveries to remote locations in Alaska and such though which has me curious.
We lived in Plaistow, NH for a few months when I was little. They didn’t deliver to our end of town between November and the end of March, so you had to pick up your mail at the post office those months.
Snailboy commented that people in his county must have P.O. boxes. This may not be totally true in some cases. If you do not have a delivery route that will reach your home or business, the USPS still must render you service at no cost to you. This can be General Delivery at your nearest P.O. Rental of P.O. box is not required, although many Postmasters don’t know this (or ignore it). The fees for boxes in small offices is not large enough to make customers complain so they pay up. Below is excerpt from “Universal Postal Service” via Wiki…
Some customers choose to use post office boxes for an additional fee, for privacy or convenience. This provides a locked box at the post office to which mail is addressed and delivered (usually earlier in the day than home delivery). Customers in less densely populated areas where there is no city delivery and who do not qualify for rural delivery may receive mail only through post office boxes. High-volume business customers can also arrange for special pick-up.[155][156]
Another option is the old-style general delivery, for people who have neither post office boxes nor street addresses. Mail is held at the post office until they present identification and pick it up.
Some customers receive free post office boxes if the USPS declines to provide door-to-door delivery to their location or a nearby box.[157] People with medical problems can request door-to-door delivery.[158] Homeless people are also eligible for post office boxes at the discretion of the local postmaster, or can use general delivery.[159]
I get six day delivery to my roadside mailbox.
The USPS recently announced they are phasing out Saturday delivery possibly beginning this Summer.
Actually, enipla said that. I said they wouldn’t deliver within the city limits of my small hometown. The same town’s postal service will deliver to rural areas and I’m not sure if other towns in the same county refuse delivery within their city limits. I may have been wrong that getting a post office box was mandatory as opposed to general delivery, however…
this line seems to suggest it might be. All I can say for sure is that everyone I know within the city limits has a PO box. Also, as far as I know, they never had to pay for it, so you may get one for free if you can prove residency by showing a copy of your water bill or something to that effect. I’m just guessing as I never lived there as an adult with my own address.
Also, no one has described rural mail delivery in Alaska.
There are several ancient crossroads towns in my community that still have post offices. None of them do delivery, so if you live right in the tiny town your house doesn’t get mail, although I guess it’s not any farther than a cluster box might be.
My home town has no mail delivery (except for rural routes). You go to the post office to pick up your mail. Same with most of the towns nearby; they’re all small and rural-ish. There are rural routes and rural free delivery outside of town, though I’m not sure if that’s six days a week.
The town I live in does not do street delivery of mail at all if you live inside the city limits. My store is in town, so I have to use a P.O. Box, but my house is a few miles outside of town, so I get delivery to a mailbox at the road about a half-mile from the house.
People with addresses inside the city limits do not have to pay for their P.O. Boxes, by the way.
Oh, and to answer the original question, we do have delivery six days per week at the moment, but I believe they are dropping Saturday at some point soon.
If I want mail I have to have a P.O Box (I am given a box, whereas a few years ago I had to pay for a box.)
The P.O. is only open a few hours in the morning, then again in the afternoon and is closed on the weekends.
Our post office is closed evenings, nights, Sundays, and so forth, but the lobby with the P.O. boxes in it is always open.
One of the more cited examples of unusual delivery methods is via mule train to a community at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Looks like that is daily delivery per the USPS Postal Facts site:
emphasis mine.
Much of the mail going to rural Alaska bush communities accompanies Bypass Mail. (Bypass Mail is a system of preferential rates that allows shippers to send palletized cargo at more affordable rates. The shipper delivers the pallet direct to the airline in Fairbanks or Anchorage, thus bypassing handing by USPS personnel.)
The delivery standards for bypass mail require the mainline airlines to deliver the pallets within two business days. The most remote communities are then serviced by a bush pilot, who must deliver by the end of the next business day after receiving the pallet even if that requires multiple flights to the same rural community.
There are provisions to waive delivery service requirements if unsafe weather or flight conditions make delivery unsafe.
The Bypass Mail system is how rural bush communities get basic household goods and groceries from the Outside. As a practical matter the volume of bypass mail requires daily delivery. USPS mail rides along on these bypass mail deliveries.
All of the above is very interesting…especially the free PO Box part. Thanks!
My question was based on the news about Saturday delivery . I was wondering to what extent the USPS is free to make those kinds of “business” decisions on a smaller scale rather than across the board.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:14, topic:653360”]
Our post office is closed evenings, nights, Sundays, and so forth, but the lobby with the P.O. boxes in it is always open.
[/QUOTE]
Same here. It’s usually not a problem. But it can be tough when ordering stuff on line and they don’t tell you if it’s shipped USPS, UPS, or Fed-X. Except now I think the USPS will accept and hold UPS stuff for you.
As a hijack–
I hate Fed Ex.
I hate Fed Ex.
I hate Fed Ex.
I hate Fed Ex.
I hate Fed Ex.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:14, topic:653360”]
Our post office is closed evenings, nights, Sundays, and so forth, but the lobby with the P.O. boxes in it is always open.
[/QUOTE]
I’m pretty sure that’s how most US post offices operate.
And this is interesting. Do Fedex and UPS also use this system to get stuff to the bush communities?