[TheForge] Crush proof mailbox

[Jerry Frost]

It is true a mailbox has to be of an approved design 
but the specs relate to height and distance from the 
driving surface rather than size, shape, color, etc.

The real thing you have to think about is liability. If 
you put ANYTHING in the right of way YOU are liable for 
damages and injuries caused by idiots hitting it. Some 
things like standard approved mailboxes are covered as 
they come from the store and liability is the 
manufacturer's. However, if you build one from steel 
plate, fill it with concrete, set it on a section of 
well casing, etc. and someone hits it at 50mph or rips 
their arm out hitting it with a b'ball bat at 70. 
You're IT and your insurance company isn't likely to 
have any sympathy for you let alone covering it for 
you.

What I like are the plastic fall apart mailboxes. They 
just come apart when hit so there's little to no 
satisfaction in bashing them and you the home owner can 
just snap them back together in the morning.

If it were a problem here I think I'd hang a video 
camera and let the postmaster general prosecute the 
little felons. Yeah, it's a felony to interfere with 
the US mail.

Frosty
-------------------------------
If it ain't forged
it ain't real.
Wrought iron is.
The FrostWorks

Meadow Lakes, AK.


From: "Peter Hirst" <saltydog335 at aol.com>



> Depends on how by-the-book your letter carrier is. 
> They are  supposed to deliver only to US Postmaster 
> approved boxes, but if you have a little flexibility 
> in that regard,  you can fabricate a facsimile of the 
> arched shape top of the classic letter box out of the 
> heaviest guage stuff you can roll, or get rolled, and 
> then mount  the door from a real one on that.  It 
> will look just like the approved cheesy aluminum one, 
> but it will stop a baseball bat dead at 40 mph. 
> Commercial versions are avaialble for 100 bucks and 
> up.ANother approach we see around here is to put a 
> conventional box inside a slightly larger shell of 
> the same shape.  i saw one of these one morning 
> knocked slightly loose from its moorings but 
> otherwise completely intact.  There was probably some 
> kid somehwere trying to explain the rebound injury to 
> a parent.
>
>