Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Rural Mailbox thread

I couldn't figure out a good title so that will have to do.

Here's my winter mailbox (again). It's the green one. After my neighbor Brian and my mailbox were destroyed again by the snow plow last month (this is getting to be a yearly and at times monthly thing during the winter) this is the temp. solution that we came up with. Brian had a piece of metal roofing, and I had "T" posts.



This year, not only were our two mailboxes trashed (his was knocked off the post, my plastic one was in two pieces and unusable) the weekly blue sales flier mailboxes and post were mangled beyond fixing.

Two years ago Brian's 4x4 wood post was broken off at ground level, while my mailbox and plastic post were broken in half.





Last year both the mailboxes were blown off their respective posts, but we were able to salvage them.

We are going to figure out a permanent solution before the winter of 2016/2017.

6" dia. x 6' metal pipe.
18" dia. hole 36" deep
Put pipe in hole
Fill hole with concrete
Fill pipe with concrete
Mount mailbox on top.

I was having the same problem a couple of years ago. My mailbox was on a 4"x4" post right on the edge of the gravel road I live on and was snapped off three times in one year. I ended up installing a 6"x6" post about 5 feet back from the edge of the road and mounted a 2"x6" on top of the post out to the road with a brace on the underside. This basically cantilevered the mailbox out to the road. The snow plow wing now goes under my mailbox and nobody has run it over either. If they do run it over, they are probably going to roll their car as my ditch drops off pretty fast.

I will try to shoot a picture of our post. I made the post out of 10X10 elm barn beams. I have my neighbors mail box on it as well. I don't worry about the plow at all. The post is not concreted in at all. I just back filled with quarter chip.

Cheers Don.

Around here, everybody just has a pull off spot in front of the box for the mail jeep. Keeps the post well away from the snow plows. Downside is, every time they plow the road, I have to fire up the tractor and move the snow out of the pull off so the mail truck can get in. When the county repaved the roads this summer, they paved all the pull offs as well.

Neighbor has a pretty cool mailbox. I'll get a pic of it this weekend when it's light out.

It's a T-Rex metal type sculpture with it holding the box in it's mouth.

We have an old metal milk can with a 4X4 post centered in it and packed with gravel that our mail box sits on. If it gets knocked over no big deal, just stand it back up.

This isn't our mailbox but ours is similar.

After the last baseball bat incident a few months ago I thought about filling ours with candy to make a mailbox pinata. Not an effective solution however the irony of candy exploding out on the next whack would be humorous.

No baseball bats here, they used homemade explosives. Yep, they got caught

That's a federal offense.....

I built ours, still standing after 10 years.

I've done a number of ornamental iron mailbox posts when I worked at West Hill Iron Works, many, many years ago.

Yours is pretty cool Spark.

Not many of those places left.

Yep, they found that out when they got caught.

A friend I knew, his father put a mailbox on a cantilever loaded with a vehicle leaf spring. Theory was it would pop out of the way if a plow tossed snow at it. Instead it took the extention off of the plow. He got fined the cost of the plow repair.

do these work for you guys?

I don't know how they would work for 2 mailboxes, relatively close together.

Maybe mount a horizontal piece across the front of the swing arm and mount both boxes on it so, one post with two boxes?

Is there a reason the boxes can't be moved a little further apart?

If you watch the top video all the way through there is one with three boxes on it and at the end two above one and other.

Finally snapped a picture of our mail box post. It is back off the road about 3 feet from the roads edge. It is 10X10 barn beams. Starting to get warn but are some good old elm.

Cheers Don.