Security Mailbox

What a beautiful mailbox! Did you have any issues with it needing to be postmaster approved?

Mine is the opposite to yours, it is a swingable mailbox. It would swing to the side if hit by a car or a snowplow.

No, my mailman loves it. I just made it the correct height and distance from the curb. I do not think I'll need to worry about snowplows hitting it here in AZ. If a car hits it, it will do some serious damage to that vehicle! Interesting number on your box! Jim

From the USPS web site: "All mailboxes must be approved by the United States Postal Service®. Custom made mailboxes will be approved by the Postmaster if they meet established standards."

This is probably one of those "Don't ask, don't tell" things that won't be a problem. Unless you have a chicken-shit postman and postmaster.

Bob

That's nice to not to have to worry about snowplows, they hit our mailbox once (N Illinois). They were good at coming back to fix it, though. Now there are flowers etc around the mailbox. The nice thing about it is that it easily takes two USPS flat rate Priority mail shipping boxes, I simply leave them there when I ship stuff via priority mail.

This looks real nice.

A couple of ideas however, you could have made the deposit slot a little smaller to reduce the size of nom mail objects that can be placed inside (cats) also you could have made a parcel access door that the post office could have mounted one of their "arrow" locks. This would have given the carrier the ability to deliver parcels.

If you would have installed a flag, a place to allow the carrier to get out going mail, and marked it "US Mail" I think you would have met all the requirements for postmaster approval..

I wanted the "in door" to be large enough to accept the standard sizes of priority mail boxes. Since the plan is to hold mail for possibly 2-3 weeks at a time, I did not want anyone else having keys.

Mail pickup from mailboxes is not something I desired as the drug users grab mail from boxes with the flags up. They pull out the checks, clean them, and rewrite them for amounts they want. If I want to mail something, I'll hand it to the mailman or take it to the post office. Mail theft is a very real problem. If it has not yet hit your area, it will. I had to close out a checking account I'd had close to 30 years due to mail theft. A flag is not something I wanted. Sine the USPS can not guarantee the safety of my mail before removing it from the box, I'd love to fight them over the lack of a flag. Jim

Talk to your local postmaster, The "arrow" locks are proprietary to the post office and if you supply a container to their specs they will install the lock. That way you could have the convenience of having the flag and your outgoing mail would be secure.

Being from Arizona as James is, I can attest to the mail theft problem here. Only place I drop off mail is at my work or at a post office. #1 issue in AZ is meth heads taking mail (incoming and outgoing) to get anything they can convert to cash. (CC numbers, checks etc.) to finance their habits.

My mailbox drops the mail onto my garage floor and the mailman has to walk up to the door to deliver. (Gotta love grandfathered route mailboxes!) When I updated the drop slot I used the same trim so the mailman wouldn't think I modified it!

Bart D. Hull snipped-for-privacy@inficad.com Tempe, Arizona

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Roger Shoaf wrote:

I just wondered. Across the street from my house is a large mailbox serving an entire townhouse complex; they have a secure outgoing mail slot for letters. I use that, and only mail stuff from my mailbox when I don't care very much.

GWE

Nice job!