Mailbox location on a rural road

JethroB · Dec 30, 2020

Hello all,

After years of having a rented PO box in town at the post office I am considering rural delivery. My concern is where is best to place the roadside mailbox in relation to my unpaved driveway so the carrier/mailman does not create ruts or potholes across my drive. I am on a paved county road with no curb. The post & box will be on my side of the road and I own several hundred feet on either side of my driveway. From looking at neighbors boxes and muddy trenches it appears putting it about 20 feet before he reaches my drive would be best. (He seems to have a long incoming glide path and a short exit path

). Thoughts?

stevewarner1957 · Dec 30, 2020

If you go to your local post office they can provide you the specs for mailbox turnouts along with the offset for the box and it’s height.

TheMan419 · Dec 30, 2020

Every box I see in our area is past the drive not before it. I do not know if that is some kind of requirement or just "the way things are done in these parts" kind of an answer. Since you do not have snow plows to worry about where you are that takes one concern off the table.

jaxs · Dec 30, 2020

Put your box 4 feet past your neighbor's box. The neighbor has 4 extra feet of rut,you have none and make's it much easier for carrier to mix up your mail. It also make's it convenuent to peek at one another's mail while picking up your own.

oosik · Dec 30, 2020

I've always had rural delivery. My mail box is 30 feet off the the side of the paved county road. I've graveled the heck out of the approach/exit. It's taken a couple years but now the access is rock hard and not affected by spring rains. It gives the mailman a place to pull off and not block traffic. It's an easy area to plow off the snow.

Oaktree · Dec 30, 2020

TheMan419 said:
Every box I see in our area is past the drive not before it. I do not know if that is some kind of requirement or just "the way things are done in these parts" kind of an answer. Since you do not have snow plows to worry about where you are that takes one concern off the table.

Must be just local custom. Everywhere I've lived the box was before the driveway, and just looking at neighbors it seems to be about 50/50. If the post office cared they'd say something.
Plowing is an issue here, but it doesn't really make much difference as far as that goes.

To the OP: why would you want to put your mailbox 20' away from the driveway? Don't see that it gains you anything, and it's further to walk to get the mail. I've never had any ruts caused by the mailman.

Deere Dude · Dec 30, 2020

I would put the box where you can drive to it easily and enter your driveway without backing up.

Cycledude · Dec 30, 2020

I live on a rural paved road and it’s at the end of the mail route so the mail person does a u turn using my driveway, no problem with my driveway but the shoulder on the other side keeps getting dished out from the mail vehicle front tire, I fill it in with about a 5 gallon bucket of gravel a couple times per year hoping to help prevent blacktop damage.

MF243RedTop · Dec 30, 2020

I spread gravel over the area and mixed in several bags of quickrete from box store.. nice level hard surface to pull in and out of.
Mines just 20 feet in front of drive on my side
Pull up check mail... Turn into drive.

MossRoad · Dec 30, 2020

All the mailboxes are on one side of the road here. It's located either before or after your driveway on the box side of the road, and it's located as directly as possible across the road from your driveway if you live on the non-box side of the road. So pretty much everyone who lives on the mailbox side of the road gets visitors looking for the people that live across the street, because their mailbox is probably directly in front of your front door.

Also, at one time or another, most of the people on the non-box side of the road will back out across the road and run their own mailbox over. :laughing:

Tinhack · Dec 30, 2020

I had to request an address from the PO. They came out and inspected the location to determine the address number based on where I would put the driveway. And since it was a state highway, the transportation department had to come out first to ok the location of the driveway. They then came out and put a metal break-away post in place across from the drive location. I had to use that post to mount my mail box. I also had to have a drainage pipe put under the driveway with concrete rip-rap facing. It had to be inspected by the state. Then, about 10 years later, the state tore it all out when they widened the road.

The replacement pipe is smaller but they paved my entrance up to the fence line. I have a 20' entrance to the property but with the flares at the road, it's about 30'. I've needed every bit of that on occasion.

The county couldn't care less. I have a side entrance I put in first so I could get onto the property. The side entrance is off a county road. The front highway access was too rough. There was little or no fence then so I just picked a spot that wouldn't let storm water drain into the property. I put my side entrance there. :confused3:

dougtrr2 · Dec 31, 2020

I would place it so I could get the mail without getting out of my vehicle. Since it is a rural road it shouldn't be a big deal to cross over the road, grab the mail, and then turn into your drive.

Any chance you could get the post office to install one of those lock box stations for you and all the neighbors? Keeps your mail secure and packages can be delivered also.

Doug in SW IA

Diggin It · Dec 31, 2020

My box is close to 200' from my driveway. It's where the old driveway was before I moved the driveway. The box is a lot closer to the house than where the new driveway meets the road, so I left it where it was and walk out to it. It's sort of at the crest of a hill so traffic from both ways can see the mail car when stopped.

3Ts · Dec 31, 2020

I live on a paved state highway. The county highway department provides the breakaway post, and we provide the mailbox. They will install the post and mailbox. The emergency crews want the mailbox with big numbers on both sides of the mailbox and "near" the driveway so they can find the house.

Previous place we lived, the post office wanted the mailbox on the side of the driveway since we were the last ones on the route and he used our driveway to turn around.

Frankenkubota · Dec 31, 2020

TheMan419 said:
Every box I see in our area is past the drive not before it. I do not know if that is some kind of requirement or just "the way things are done in these parts" kind of an answer. Since you do not have snow plows to worry about where you are that takes one concern off the table.

Here the same. I put mine before the drive and the gal very nicely asked that i move it over to the other side and put it down low enough so she can reach in!

If it ever stops raining, i'm going to put in a little gravel because when she scoots off, she throws mud all over my white mailbox. I really don't care but, it's amazing you can get a ticket for driving without a seatbelt but the rural carriers can drive their honda whatever from the passenger seat! That takes practice!

TheMan419 · Dec 31, 2020

Frankenkubota said:
Here the same. I put mine before the drive and the gal very nicely asked that i move it over to the other side and put it down low enough so she can reach in!

If it ever stops raining, i'm going to put in a little gravel because when she scoots off, she throws mud all over my white mailbox. I really don't care but, it's amazing you can get a ticket for driving without a seatbelt but the rural carriers can drive their honda whatever from the passenger seat! That takes practice!

Nothing can stop the mail! Well almost nothing.....

breadtrk · Dec 31, 2020

If a neighbor agrees, put it with theirs. Makes it easier for the mail person and does not tear more property up. 8 of us at one stop around here.

MossRoad · Dec 31, 2020

breadtrk said:
If a neighbor agrees, put it with theirs. Makes it easier for the mail person and does not tear more property up. 8 of us at one stop around here.

I share a single post with my neighbor's box. A large T, basically. The only problems with multiple mailboxes is it's hard to see the addresses on the side of any of them past the first one. Mailman doesn't care, but pizza delivery person at night has some issues. :laughing:

goeduck · Dec 31, 2020

There are 4 of us who share a common driveway, yet there are 13 mailboxes at the driveway entrance. Houses from side roads, not even near us installed their mailboxes at our driveway before we bought the place for whatever reason. The boxes are not in numerical order and not even in the same sequence (due to being in different roads). Makes for a heck of a confused delivery person.

mapper · Jan 1, 2021

After years of annual mailbox replacement due to vandals with baseball bats, our mail lady let us move it down our driveway near my shop. She just wanted a large enough area to turn around in without backing. Our neighbor who lives back of us and shares our driveway has hers there as well. My mailbox has a rather nice growth of moss and lichens growing on it now that it has been there undisturbed and undamaged for about 15 years now. We have been informed by our current mail lady that we are grandfathered in for that location and if we ever sell the new owners will have to move it back out to the county road.
The county road location puts the mailbox on the edge of a 6' deep ditch in soft and unstable soil. Not the best place to plant a post!