Mailbox placement

[strvger]

they're a little more loose on things up here. thanks to winter plow trucks, we have to set our boxes a little higher and off the road just a foot or so more. that keeps them from being blown apart by the plow blade. as long as the mail driver can reach them without having to get out of their vehicle, you're usually good to go.

 

[ZMan]

From a post on WeldingWeb....check out some of these mailboxes. One guy even went so far as to make a mailbox to spec using 5/16" plate, set it in concrete, and cabled it to a tree. Could you imagine the poor kid that tried to play mailbox baseball with that? LOL

http://weldingweb.com/showthread.php?t=36891&highlight=mailbox

I built a stout mailbox and set it concrete so the snow plow wouldn't take it out.

 

[Jim Oaks]

You have to be careful when making mail boxes "over to top". In my neck of the woods, the county is cracking down on brick and stone mailboxes. Apparenty my county in paticular has some rule that a mailbox has to "give" if it is struck. They have notified some people that I know that their mailbox is in violation of this rule and that fines will begin to be issues sometime in the summer. My one buddy just built a real nice stone mailbox last summer, now he has to knock it down and replace it with a cheap wood setup. Another guy has this nice steel setup (probaly 1/4" or 3/8" steel) and it is in violation. Apparently my county says that they can't be set in concrete either . . . gotta love the government.

Anyways, long story short, check with the USPS for placement and your local codes for any restrictions.

Back when I was a State Trooper I investigated a crash where a teenage kid drove off the edge of the roadway and struck the mailbox of an apple orchard. The orchard got tired of kids knocking their box off with bats, so they made one out of 1/4" steel plate. The top was even arched to look like a traditional mailbox. It destroyed this kids car. It came off the post and went up over the car and caved in the roof. I couldn't believe all the damage that was done to this car from the 'mailbox'.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Speaking of mailbox baseball... I remember hearing of a guy who got tired of kids bashing his plastic mailbox (the neighborhood he lived in required everyone's box to be the same) so he welded up a 1/4" liner for inside the box and bolted it to the wood post inside a brand new plastic box. A day or two later he goes to get the mail an notices that the plastic is cracked and there's the remains of a wood bat scattered around it, lol. Ouch.

At our old house the mailbox was there since before we moved in and we lived there for probably 15 years or so before we got a new mail carrier. They promptly put a note in our box that it was not in spec (something stupid like the whole 3/8" too low or something). Dad was like WTF, they carry a tape measure now? lol.

 

[MrE_Powers]

My Pop was in the air force and one of his buddies in the air force talked at a party. me when i was 16. he was bragging about stuff he did my age. he was into mail box lassoing from the cab with the rope tied to the bumper and ripping them out of the ground. well he was in a friends truck when they hit someone they had hit twice before and that time the ole guy cabled the mail box to a 80 year old tree. well my dads buddy said it ripped the rear bumper off the truck. the kid was hysterical but my dads friend calmly cut the rope and threw the bumper in the bed and told the friend to gunn it.