Rural Mailboxes

[Jag]

Where I use to live it was old ball bats at night. After I lost the second mail box, the first one that I put up, I set a two inch pipe into the ground 30 inches, and mounted the mail box on a pipe down in it with a small collar so the mail box would spin. The box itself was on a 3/8 steel plate with the support pipe at the back. The I painted the whole works black. My neighbor's box was about thirty feet away up the road. He lost about five siver mailboxes before I moved. As far as I can tell mine was hit twice and only spun. One other nice thing about this set up I never had to stand on the road side to get my mail, just walk up behind it spin it around and get the mail.

 

[TomG]

If you wait long enough, the Post Office may solve the problem like Canada Post did. There is no home delivery here in most rural or new sub-urban areas, so there are no boxes. We pick our mail up at the store.
Sometimes the store sends parcels along with the school bus. What ever works. Actually, we have two addresses, one is for our camp. A group box (maintained by the Post Office) serves the area around the camp. If we took out a slot in the group box, the store would send the mail to either address to where ever we're staying at the time. Country life works that way around here.

I see somebody commented about the idea of creating something akin to road side hazards. I was thinking about that and wondered about suspending something high and lowering it when needed. Oh well, I suppose then it would make a great penota (Sp).

 

[W5FL]

Tom,

My wife will hardly get the mail out of the box when it is only a 1/4 mile away. If she had to pick up the mail at the Post Office which is 17 miles away, it would probably be an annual event. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[W5FL]

Muhammad,

Your concrete dual box is a great idea. I would have tried it if I had thought about it. I still have another box on the other side of the property to try that on. Thanks. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[W5FL]

Von,

Some kids don't grow up as fast as others. Sooner or later reality shows it's head. /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I gave up and got a PO Box. Kids were just too enterprising. And I echo the comments about liability. Unless you have made a big pullout and put your mailbox on YOUR property, I believe you are liable if someone (even someone just driving) hits your massive mailbox pole and gets hurt. If your mailbox is on public right-of-way 30 45 or 60 feet wide usually. It cannot be an immovable object. If there's room you can always make a deeper pull off to solve the liability problem. Easy for the PO to get to, and no reason someone could say they just hit it on the edge of the public road. I have a corner post for my fence near the right of way. I moved it inward after it was hit about 3 times (people in the dark or just not looking). I had put a concrete culvert sticking about 3 feet and buried a couple of feet, it was recently bent backwards almost hitting the my fence post (and yes it was painted white).

Now am going to stick a 6 foot length of bridge I-beam in the ground 3 feet, add cement around it, paint it fluorescent orange. It is on MY property, not on the right of way. Probably still get sued as no one is responsible for their own error and/or stupidity anymore.

You know the old story about burglars suing defenders of their property. Honest to god I actually had a deputy sheriff who came out once tell me if they get outside after being shot you better drag them back in and that you are better off if there is only one person around to tell the story. Usually those guys are pretty reserved with comments and I was shocked to hear him say it. I guess there's a little bit of justice left.

 

[RobertN]

About 15 years ago a guy who works with my Dad did similar.

Kids chained a 4x4 fence post on top of the truck bed, with a few feet of post sticking out. They cruise along whacking mail boxes.

Randy set a 4" steel pin in concrete, and filled the pipe with concrete.

A few weeks later, he heard a crash and squeeling. Went out, and found the kids and truck spun out in the ditch. Just about took the cab off the truck.

It never happened again...

RobertN in Shingle Springs Calif

 

[W5FL]

Great story. Hope there are many more like it. /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif /w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

 

[Anonymous Poster]

I had a similar problem as several of you fellows have described, with kids either smashing my mailbox flat with bats, or wrapping a chain around the post and pulling everything up. I also had a problem with our own version of "Earnhart" the plow driver knocking over a post or two each winter. My solution was to dig a hole down 4 feet, put in a 7 foot section of 18 inch sauna tub, and filled the whole thing with concrete. I then installed a mailbox made out of 1/4 inch plate steel on top. That was about 4 years ago. To date, I've found a half dozen broken bats on the ground next to it (man, that must hurt!), and "Earnhart", after catching his wing plow on it the first winter and nearly doing a 360 around the post (I wish I could have seen that!), now gives it a wide berth. I wish I hadn't had to resort to something like this, but if you've ever had to dig a hole down thru hard frozen ground in the middle of the winter to put in a new mailbox post, more than once, you get the feeling that enough is enough....

 

[ddl]

It is a federal crime to damage mail boxes since the post office owns them even if you pay for them. The post office have inspectors whos job it is to find such people who damage a box. If they refuse to do something, a call to your congressman should correct the problem. One must remember that they work for us. If you put up a Post office approved box, type nd location, you are not liable if someone hits it, they are liable.

If only the local cops would do something about people marking up road signs, but I guess they are to busy picking up speeders instead of solving real problems

Dan L