Rural Stand Alone Mail Boxes

My neighbor took it upon himself to attach his new mailbox to my personal mailbox post. I have my mailbox on the left side of the post to protect it, and he mounted his new box on the right side of the post level with mine.

The neighbor did not even ask if I would agree to that, which I don’t. I removed the mailbox from my post and placed in on their back porch telling them to buy their own post.

Are there any issues with this? It was the first day his mailbox was on my post, and I am sorry I didn’t see him installing it.

Isn’t there some kind of law that would prevent anyone from doing that without permission and agreement of the owner?

Unless you share a “common mail area”, he should have to put his own mailbox up for his property, unless you somehow share an address.

Check with your postmaster. There are definite regulations about where mailboxes can be located, and they definitely prefer it if multiple mailboxes can be located on the same post, so that the driver doesn’t have to make as many stops.

Where was his mailbox before he put it on your post? Is it possible the mailman asked him to move it closer to yours?

That’s a bit mean, Bob.

Not sure of the arrangement present for the OP, but some streets locate all boxes on one side. Across from my home is untouched woodland, but if a house were put there, the owner would site a box on my property, albeit within the utility easement abutting the paved roadway.

An observation on a different level is that if a mailbox must be placed on the opposite side of the street, it should align closely with the driveway entrance and be properly marked with house number, as that’s a major assist to emergency responders attempting to find a dwelling.

I disagree. The neighbor should have asked permission.

I have an expensive, sturdy, painted aluminum mailbox pole with a heavyweight steel mailbox attached to it. My neighbors across the street have granite mailbox posts. All of us would be appalled if anyone touched our setups.

While the box is located in the public right-of-way (which extends 10 feet back from the curb), I am still obligated to install and maintain my own pole and mailbox. The neighbor needs to install his own.

The USPS has a lot to say about mailboxes, and nowhere in their information can I find anything that allows your neighbor to hang his/her mailbox on your post. Of course, it’s possible your neighbor doesn’t know this, Bob.

(If someone hung a mailbox up along with mine it would interfere with my Og-given right to have a concrete-filled decoy mailbox for baseball bat-wielding teenagers, so I’d feel quite comfortable removing it.)

Yeah, maybe. I think the guy should have asked but…

…I was thinking not so much of the above scenario but of a backwoods place where some guy has his box on a lump o’ wood (so not talkin’ granite or expensive exotic metals). I kinda saw “rural” and inferred "these are not urban types who would poison their neighbours’ trees to get a $10k property value increase because of the view, but they’re friendly country folk with mailboxes made out of milk churns on an old, rotted pole…

Frankly, were I the OP, I’d have been a little out of joint for the not asking aspect of it, but I wouldn’t have done the dumping-the-box-on-their-porch thing either.

I don’t know whether to :confused: or :D.

Me neither. I’d have left it in place and filled it with concrete. Or, after the mailman had made a delivery, bees.

TheLoadedDog - I live in the country and my mailbox is on a fairly solid post in an old milkcan. Do I win something? My neighbor has an expensive Rubbermaid mailbox that I sort of covet.

StG

And have to pay the view tax? No way!

Well, what about those lucky folks that live done the lane and their 10 mailbox’s are on a long plank 100 yards to 1000 yards from their houses because the mailman won’t go down the lane? Do you get mad if the next mail box is decorated in a clashing color and flower motif from your John Deer tractor beauty?

If I put up the post for my mailbox and the neighbor had ever seen me, he would not do anything with out asking, very politely.

There is a deference between faux rural and out in the country.

Maybe you could make enough money selling the old milk can to buy you a fancy Rubbermaid mailbox? :smiley: