Where does the post office deliver your mail?

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Every year Mo's school's PTA has a holiday home tour to raise money. We live in a really cool, old neighborhood with some really beautiful houses so this tour attracts people from all over the city (and beyond). All of the houses in my neighborhood have mail slots on the door or on the house where the mail is dropped in every day.

This year I was a "greeter". I stood inside the door of one of the houses for a few hours. As a greeter I had a minute or two to chat with each person/group as they came in. I absolutely couldn't believe how many people asked me if the mailman really came all the way to the door and dropped the mail in.

In my 50 years of living in probably 20 different houses/apartments I have only lived in one place where the mailman didn't come to the door and drop the mail in. In that neighborhood each house had a mailbox by the curb and the mailman drove around putting the mail in each box without getting out of his car.

Now I know that many apartment buildings have a central mailbox in the lobby. And I know that in Texas it seems popular to have this odd kind of neighborhood mailbox thing. But I thought as a general rule that the mailman walked up to the house and dropped the mail in a box or slot.

I'm curious about this so I'm asking: what type of dwelling do you live in and where does the post office deliver your mail?

Thanks!

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@boomerang,

I live in one side of a duplex type "town house". There is, in this neighborhood, a system where every x number of feet along the street there is a multi box contraption set on a pole: probably 2o boxes, plus two large boxes with keys to open them put in your box if you have had a package delivered.
Egads, I hate this kind of mail delivery.

My last two houses, covering a span of 35 years, were old craftsman homes. The first had no mailbox but I set one on the porch - I think that was a P.O. no no, but it didn't matter - mail was delivered there, and I got to be friends with the two mail deliverers over the years. The second craftsman had a glassed in front porch with a drop slot, a system I really liked. Also got to be pals with that delivery guy. With both of these situations, there was plenty of room for all kinds of mail. With the present multibox system, the boxes are nearly silly in their smallness.

I cringe, as I used to specify those kind of systems for housing tracts, back when I was designing for a housing development client.

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I'm in Texas, and the mailman comes up to my porch and puts the mail in the mailbox that's attached to the porch rail. Saves him/her from going up the steps.

The mailman goes up to the house of everyone on my street.

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@ossobuco,

I guess that group box system is not just in Texas!

It's funny that you mention befriending the letter carrier. Our mailman, Jason, is so cute! All the neighborhood women have a crush on him. He' adorable.

On a more practical point, I always thought having the mailman come to the house was kind of a public safety thing -- they noticed if something was "off". I someone wasn't picking up their mail they notified authorities.... that kind of stuff.

I know the post office is suffering form lack of money -- that people don't mail things much anymore. That probably accounts for a lot of the neighborhood box type deliveries.

In Oregon we vote by mail. I was talking to Jason before the election and he was loving it -- all the ads, voters guides and ballots were keeping him busy.

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@chai2,

I think it works like that for my sister in Houston. All my Austin clan have neighborhood mailboxes -- even my sister who lived on the fancy golf course.

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I live in an old area of my city, we get door to door service. I have a old fashioned replica mail/newspaper box at the bottom of my stairs, so that the mail carrier can't slip and sue me. Newer areas of the city have the communal box.
Mail carriers here also participate in the "Cities is bloom" where they nominate beautiful gardens for an annual prize.

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I have a PO box in the little tiny post office, over in the next town.

I check it about every two weeks, unless I have a paycheck coming...

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@boomerang,

I've told the story on a2k before.. I had moved north but was visiting LA, and bought a book from my old favorite art/photog/arch bookstore - Hennessey & Ingalls - for an architect associate up north, quite the huge and heavy tome, thus I went to the Marina post office (not my old one, but close by) and was ferreting about near the side tables that sell packaging. It was fairly crowded that day. A woman yelled, Stop That Woman!!!, and everyone in the room looked at me. Hilariously, it was E, our olden days mail lady, who had recognized me from the back room.

Of course now that would be a major no no, I'd probably have been shot.

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@boomerang,

Well, when I was doing that housing tract land design it was back in the mid eighties. I managed to wiggle out of that and get into other types of design as I had problems with lakes of lawns insisted on by cities and clients in semi arid desert or even real desert. But the group box system was very common in southern california then. (That client was one of the top developers in the country. Top in this case meaning big in production.)

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@boomerang,

When I worked as a casual carrier in Framingham, I had both walking and rural routes. Of course rural routes meant driving from curbside mailbox to mailbox rather then what the title suggests that Framingham had any geography that could be defined as rural.

The farther the spaces of the houses (less dense population) meant that the houses had to have a curbside mailbox. They were the easiest routes to do if one was lucky to get them. Still a very stressful job.

I hated many of the walking routes involving apartment building mailbox sets. So stressful as we weren't supposed to deliver mail to nonresidents who didn't have their names on the box and so many immigrant residents and their large collected families lived in these buildings while only a handful of names could fit on each of the mailboxes name plate.

Our mailman has a door to door walking route and our mailbox is in between our two front doors.

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@boomerang,

Up until we replaced the front door a few years ago, we had a mail slot. It was great. Drove the dog crazy, though. Now we have a mailbox on the porch. There was some talk a few years ago that everyone would have to have a mailbox out at the curb so the mail carrier could just drive down the street plonking mail into boxes. Nothing ever came of it as far as I can tell.

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@Swimpy,

The mail needs them right hand vehicles to drive and deliver curbside mailbox deliveries. Perhaps your post office couldn't afford to get a whole fleet of them to carry out this new policy so they scrapped it....

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@tsarstepan,

listening, tsar..

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@ossobuco,

Not much to say other that I worked for the USPS for 9 months in a nonunion position as a casual carrier. A casual carrier is someone who takes over a regular mailperson's routes on their days off, their sick days, and during their vacation.

It is particularly stressful as one has to bounce from mail route to mail route and never get to learn where certain unconnected roads in a particular route and who lives in which apartments and who moved out long ago but still gets their mail to their old mailing address long after the forwarding address program expires.

It was good exercise and it paid well with its 50 plus hours a week shifts.

The most stressful part of the day was organizing the loose mail into those mail sorter cabinets without knowing the exact street geography and the address and street numbering isn't as simple as it should be.

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@ossobuco,

I'm rereading this, and it sounds very snotty.

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@ossobuco,

Snotty? Not sure what that exactly means ... if you mean snobbish then no. I'm assuming your former postperson just wanted to reconnect and talk with you but was afraid you were leaving too quickly so she wanted to recruit anyone standing near you to get your attention. Is my reading of your anecdote correct?

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Hey boomer. Just thought I'd let you know that in Tulsa's older neighborhoods, we still get "to-the-door" mail delivery. Some have slots, some have mailboxes attached to the house next to the front door (like me.) However, all the newer neighborhoods (1970s forward) have mailboxes at the curb.

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There are 112 mailboxes in the lobby of my building. This is not an especially big building. I wouldn't be surprised of the high rises have the mail carrier in the building for at least half a day--or more.

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@tsarstepan,

Woo, listening, Tsar I am nobody in my mailbox, not to whine again. but that is from here.

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@tsarstepan,

Yes, true.

sometimes I overview myself, and so get into various takes on behavior.

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Where does the post office deliver your mail?

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