Mailbox Knocked down!

Came home at 3:50 a.m. from work to find my mailbox in the road. Screwed onto 6 x 6 treated lumber with timber screws. The post leaning over at about a 60 degree angle, & the chunk of post the box was attached to ripped off the post, still attached to the box, & not a dent in it! No tires marks either which means a wide piece of equipment I think. Got a feeling a neighbor farmer owes me a post! That would be just about right for a tractor axle. What ever it was I think was slow. Box was only about 6 feet from the post. Could have been hay equipment too. Hitting that post had to damage something, & bad too. It would be about like hitting a corner post I would think.
 
Many people just put the mailbox too close to the road fellow on my road gets his knocked down all the time as the front of the box is even with the pavement.I have a little pulloff so the mailbox is about 6ft off the road helps the mail carrier too.
 
My dad had trouble with metal mail boxes getting beat up so he bought a thick plastic one.Later that summer someone set it on fire.I saw the post smoking and the box was melted to the ground.
 
The mail carrier turns around at my place, so lucky me the mail box is off the road. I thought this would be great no mailbox damage. Yea right first a tree limb fell on it, then a succession of drivers have hit it. Might as well paint a target on them. joe
 

Sure does happen. My mail box is on a post made from front coil springs from a 55 Ford car, since coils springs fold over it has rebar welded inside. Someone wiped it out, so I had to put more rebar in at the bottom and dug a new hole for the concrete. New mail box also. Oh, the springs weren't damaged. Don't know what it did to the car,

KEH
 
My mailbox is 1/4" steel. On a square tubing post. No damage yet.

I believe the mailbox must be off the road by 9" or so. There are postal regulations that determine all that.
 
I live on a four lane limited access highway and have no problems with farm equipment hitting mailbox . I do have problems with snow plows taking them down. The plows them selves don't hit them but they go through so fast the snow and ice take them out.
 
never hit one myself, but i have needed a new seat cover in the truck trying to miss them, once over in rural texas i wound up hauling a 100,000lb dozer sporting a blade 12'6" wide down a fairly busy 2 lane road which narrowed to 16 foot wide lanes with a mailbox in front of every property,i had escorts,and speed was kept to around 40 to 45 mph, absolutly no way i could let the edge of the dozer blade wander into the oncoming lane,i made it perfectly but still it was a eye opener i expected to see the old dukes of hazzard mailbox mow job any minute
 
Its not tractors or implements that have trashed our mailboxes a couple times, its darn kids with baseball bats or something grrrrrrrrrrr

John T
 
We asked the local Post Master about doing that. Told no, for whatever reason. Talked to our mail carrier, and he liked the idea. We put it in. Only had it damaged once since...by a drunk driver.
 
We live in a semi-rural area just west of Minneapolis on a hobby farm. Some years ago some kids took out our mailbox with bats or whatever.
Re-installed it and life went on. About 2 years later--we get a postal money order for $12 with a note saying it was for damage to our mailbox. Seems the cops found the culprits and made them pay everyone for the mailboxes they damaged. There is a god!
 
I remember back in the early 70's I lived in a suburb of Seattle, not rual but not in the city. Neighbor's mailbox kept getting smacked by the local kids and drucks so he wraps it in barbed wire which didn't stop anything. Then the same crowd started hitting mine, which set right beside it. Got a little old after the 3 or 4th replacement so one Sunday morning when I had to replace box and post yet again I a couple of old 5 gallon garbage cans and buried them one on top of the other full of concrete with a steel 4X4 tube for a post with the box attached to a 1/4 inch steel plate about 4 feet in the air. Then water settled the dirt around the garbage cans. That stopped the lose of mailboxes and it stood for close to 20 years and only had to replace the mailbox itself once.
The county finally wanted to do something to the road and removed it--with a backhoe.
 
Consider one of those long arm swing-a-way mailboxes like you see along busy highways in heavy snow country. If a snow plow or something else hits it at high speed it gets pushed to the side, but is rarely damaged. They beat hunting for a downed mailbox under a heavy snow or setting a new post in frozen ground.

Years ago, my uncle had his mailbox mounted on an old milk can. It set into the ground a few inches so the wind would not knock it over. Some Halloweens when all the neighborhood mailboxes would get knocked down, it only took him a minute or two to pick it up, drop it in its hole and line it up again. He was even a little proud of it.
 
Cute little cheerleader neighbor girl managed to knock down our neighborhood bank of mailboxes (about 8 or so)- not malicious, she's a good kid, but misjudged the clearance. She and daddy were out that weekend, fixing everything- she did most of the work, daddy pretty much just supervised, as it should be. They both gave me a big smile and wave when I went by, I couldn't help but smile back.

She later got a softball/ academic scholarship somewhere. She's a neat kid- and will go far, methinks. Even if she's "no bigger than a minute", as Grandma would have said.
 
Few years ago a couple citizens decided for some nighttime entertainment. One guy drove the vehicle, other guy whacked the mailboxes with a golf club. Don't know how many they got, but they quit when the shank of the golf club broke. The head of the club and the partial shank came back to hit the guy in the neck. The busted shank severed the artery in his neck---he bled to death.
 
Yes, the swing out ones help with the snow plow getting under it and or pushing snow up against it, but it does nothing for kids smacking it or machinery hitting it. The pole swings out good but the box usually gets nailed. I just put on the second one in about 2 years. Box was about 15 feet away from the pole. Don't know if it was kids or large machinery that took it out. But yes, they do help some. Highway department put up mine.
 
I think some of you need to make a lifted mail box. Saw one down the road one day. Has a pole on the other side of the ditch(not wide ditch) with a long pole that reaches the side of the road. On the road end of the pole is a rope, on the other end is a weight heavy enough to pull that end down and the rope end up. Mail box is mounted at rope end. When it is all the way up it is around 12-15 ft in the air and the rope is hanging about 6 feet of the ground. Nothing can hit it and I am sure the rope would do no damage to anything and not likely to get caught on anything either as long as no knots in it. Pull rope down and fill let rope go ,pull down rope and empty, pretty simple
 
Back in the early 80s we had some kids take out several dozen boxes during a night of "fun". They were caught and sentenced to go to every house apologize, pay $25 and obtain a signature on a log to turn into the judge. Once word got out on this punishment this type of nonsense became very few and far between.
 
I went through that a few years ago, they ran over every box in 3 miles. was a Sunday morning, went to Menard's for a new box and post, was trying do dig a hole in about 150 years worth of compacted gravel on the side of the road and some damn dumb county cop stops and wants to know if I want to press charges if they catch them, could of hit him in the face with my spade.
There's a box culvert with the tapered cement flares about 100 feet past my mail box and he somehow missed that by less than 2 feet, that would have taken a lot of the fun out of it for the kid.
 
Definitely something that happens from many causes.

In this town, the Town's road specification, directly conflicts with the Post Office specifications for the installation of a mail box on a post, its been a long time since I've read and compared the 2 but the town clearly states there shall be no obstructions, with dimensions from center line of road, or within the right of way from center, and of course the post office states a distance from the pavement or roadway, certain height etc, so all the mail boxes are in violation on town roads, no one enforces it. Probably not wise to set a W or H shape steel beam or column, you may be liable, as it can't shear off. I have seen steel like that used in a county north of here on a road, several people did it, probably still there.

Prior, and long time neighbor lady, I believe had trouble with alcohol throughout here life, more so after he husband passed away, she was great without the alcohol, I used to clear the driveway in winter and generally tried to be helpful whenever possible. She was still driving and though sometimes she may not have known where she was or what time it was, she still drove, one morning 6 am sharp, I got home from out of town the night before, planned to sleep in, I hear this crack/bang! She backed right into it and it was offset way far enough from her driveway across the lane, southern yellow pine is brittle, so the treated post just sheared off, and both our mailboxes on the cross piece on top, were literally upside down. A relative stopped in, to help right the situation and I said to him, Marge's drinking ain't doing you, I or the mail box any good LOL ! I dug up the concrete base eventually, and the hole was more than I figured, kept running back to the hardware store for bags of concrete and the darned clerk thought I was stealing, using the same yard ticket ! I informed him otherwise, lousy $2 bags of concrete, really ? LOL !
 
I"m pretty sure you can"t build a mail box post so sturdy that a dozer couldn"t knock it over. If mine were to ever start getting hit by passing cars regularly, I"d build a pedestal that would allow the upper part of the post to break off, but the lower part would tear the heck out of the under side of the car...
 
here is one i built with 8 sacks of concrete had kids come by with baseball bats in a 4x4 truck the ones they couldn"t beat off they would push over with the truck
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Originally there was a township road that ran right in front of our buildings so the mail boxes were located there. The county rerouted the county road so that we were the only ones on the township road so it was abandoned by the township. For about 25 years after that the mail man would still come down the same road which was now out private drive. About 10 years ago we were informed that postal service would no longer come down the drive and we had to relocate the box to the county road which left it right in the middle of a curve. The road has a wide shoulder so the box is located about six feet from the pavement. I average about once a year that the box is either knocked down or damaged. I had own blown to pieces by explosives and a couple more times probably damaged by a bat. A couple times by farm equipment but the most is by the snow plow. This past winter is the first one in several years where it did not get knocked down. The winter before it was knocked down three times in eight days by the plow. It must of been a rookie driver that had trouble judging distance on the inside of a curve. The first time that winter about half the boxes in a five mile stretch were knocked down with the first snow.
 
Your mail box in a public right of way is a privilege.
Not a right. So if it is leveled by base ball bats or snow plows
It is your own responsibility to repair. If you fortify your mail box and not install it as a break away device you could be liable for any harm caused by a collision with it.

Wouldn't you be the first one to call foul if you hit a stop
Sign that was set in concrete and mounted on an I beam.


Russ
 
A guy I used to work with had the same deal, in town adjacent to a mobile home park, lots of mail boxes in a row. Kids knocked them all over with some kind of vehicle a couple of different times. We worked in a manufacturing facility with lots of steel available. He took home a chuck of scrap 4" shaft and set it in the ground about as far as he could and put his box on it. Next Saturday nite all got knocked over right up to his.......still setting with a few car parts beside it. Never happened again.
That was years ago before the crybabies of today cry foul when they do something wrong and blame YOU for it.
Irv
 
When I was in High School the word got out, don't mess with Mail Boxes...it's a federal offense. Many ways to try to make them idiot proof but remember if you succeed in making something idiot proof the world will respond by making better idiots. I have only had problems with one of my own mailboxes. The first house we had in Wisconsin was an old (1849) farm house, the village grew and encroached the farm, eventually the farm was subdivided into lots. We bought the farm house, we were one of the first to move out into that "subdivision" the village wasn't very good at getting the developer to build the darn roads. He wanted to wait until the lots were sold then spend the money. We ended up setting a mailbox before the road and curbs got set. Even had about a year with curbs but no blacktop, this required re-setting the mailbox so the mail driver could reach the box as he couldn't drive up on the curb/pan. First winter after it got reset (and about 4-6 weeks after they paved the road)the village snow plow driver took it out. Village president said they wouldn't pay for it cause it was on the right of way and not where it belonged. We got into a shouting match, finally told him I was appealing my taxes has we didn't have a road and according to the village and the mail man there was no way for me to get mail all year and my taxes were based on a hard top road and full services. The DPW installed the new box the next day, the beautiful part was they installed it, if they hit it again they couldn't claim it was in the wrong place, never had problems after that.
 
As a kid we had the worst, rusty mailbox along the county highway. We gave dad a new mailbox which took him several months to get around to installing. Well dad attached a big long pole that stuck way out the back side like he was going to attach a sign on it. The first week the new mailbox was installed someone hit it. The mailbox swung around and took out the guys back window. Dad only had a sixth grade education, but was no dummy.

A guy at work told of a neighbor that install the biggest mailbox you can buy and installed a small one inside filling the void with concrete. He was sitting on his porch one night and heard a car coming down the road with the familiar sound of mailboxes getting smashed. When they got to his there was a lot of screaming and he later found a piece of broken baseball bat. Problem solved!
 
I was a rural mail carrier for over 21 years. As mentioned mailboxes should be on swinging or breakaway posts, but a lot of them aren't. I also had a couple of the homemade, vandal-proof, plate steel boxes on my route. Technically, they are not legal, but we let them go. As mentioned, the owner is liable for any damages if someone were to hit one.

It seemed that the vandalism would run in streaks. And usually the snowplows do not hit them. Most of the time it's the wet heavy snow coming off the plow which takes them out. And then it usually was the ones which had not been properly maintained to begin with.

In my years on the route, I saw just about everything!
 

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