Vandals

[Farmer]

Vandals have struck again and have gone up our country road and mashed a pile of mailboxes. This is the 3rd for me . No more playing around, a friend said to get one of these new indestructible plastic ones. Plastic just does not sound indesructible to me. So I decided to make a close copy of the one they wrecked, except I am using 1/4 inch plate. Can't wait till the little punks try using a baseball bat or pipe to mash this one down.:rolleyes

[haybine]

watch out for a liability lawsuit when one of them "little punks" hits it and hurts themselves or their car. those big homemade indestructable mailboxs are a lawsuit waiting to happen. there was some mailboxes made of drill pipe and plate in my area and the post office refused to deliver to them because they are not approved by the postmaster general. a real problem but no good answer for the vandalism problem.

[Guest]

Haybine brings up a good point. You could get around that by building an open-ended box or frame around the regulation mail box...ya just make it so's they can't smash it with something and the post-person can still use it in the normal way. On their website, I think they give dimensions for mailboxes.

[bluesman2a]

Actually I saw a good solution for this back when I was in college...

Take one of the large industrial size mail-boxes, set it up on end. Fill it 1/2 with concrete, insert small residential size box inside and situate properly. Complete fill with concrete. Let cure. Mount on appropriate stanchion.

[Franz]

The skin of my beaten mailbox fit perfectly over a modified piece of square guardrail after I finished pounding the dents back out. The guardrail also made a perfect post that I welded to a 1000-20 filled with water.
I'm gettin too old to chase the little busturds down and drag em back to the mailbox, and leave em tiewrapped by the neck till somebody comes along and cuts em loose.
I used to have one on top of a railroad rail that tore a car or two up pretty good, and I collected for repairs every time one of the little pukes decided they could mow it down. The whole trick is to sue them first. Last time around, I got $500+ from the punk's insurance carrier, it's just amazing what an augur truck and welder bill out for. The town judge must have got his mailbox smashed too.

[ChadRat]

I like Rocky's idea. Some punks smash my Mom's mailbox. I fixed it for her but it they do it again then I will build a big roll cage around it.

[morpheus]

there's a mailbox out by me that is a regular sized mailbox that is sitting inside a BIG piece of thick walled pipe which is welded to a post. it's not going anywhere ...

- jack

[INTP]

Many of my neighbors have their mailboxes (USPS approved) mounted inside a stone or brick enclosure. It looks nice and would certainly do the trick. One of them got hit a few months ago, and from the pile of rubble, the car couldn't have fared too well.

[JTMcCracken]

I've never had the problem of mail box hoodlums but one time in the 80's my boss did, they were mowing the mailboxes down by running them over with pickups. He was a general contractor and decided to sink an 8" wide flange in 3' of concrete, and disguise it with a boxed in covering of fir 1X's. Anyway, the mailman saw their devious plan and they got in trouble with the postmaster who said all boxes on the roadway had to be able to breakaway in the event of a car collision. That took all the fun out of the endeaver for my boss and his neighbor. Don't know this first hand, but you might want to check on what you legally can do, nobody wants to kill some lady and her kids in a mini van just because they ran off onto the shoulder.

regards,
JTMcC.

[Arc Burn]

Note to self--Stay the **** away from Franz's mailbox!

[cope]

Originally posted by Arc Burn
Note to self--Stay the **** away from Franz's mailbox!

Arc Burn, you are in the right neighborhood to worry.

[Arc Burn]

LOL,Who knows,maybe i'm one of those little "busturds" are Franz would say
Just kiddin there Franz ol'buddy

[Suburban_Guy]

You know, I'm not really that old, but I miss the good old days when you didn't get sued for every little thing you did. My Dad was a rural delivery mailman and one of his "customers" took some 12 inch pipe with a flap to put the mail into it and then mounted it to a steel post attached to some sort of heavy duty spring. Imagine the boing when that thing came back up and smacked the side of your pickup. Take that smartie pants!!

Harley

[ryanevans]

There's stories of a guy in Ohio making a mailbox on a pivot. Had an arm on the other end that would hit whomever hit it with a bat. Supposedly some kid hit it, the arm came around, and broke his arm. The kid sued and won. Like I said, it was a story going around but quite a few people have heard of it.

[Royal Fe]

Well, I grew up in a very rural community in Tennessee and there were problems with boxes getting smashed. Our neighbor was the Postmaster and he approved the homemade boxes people put up that were not store bought.

Remember one kid in school, name was Seemore, that got caught by a homeowner. He chased him down and took him to the Post Office and made him turn himself in. Seemore worked the summer for the Postmaster repairing and replacing all damaged boxes on the RR#1 and #2. He had to pay for them all and was out most of his hard earned hay haulin and tobacco choppin money. That was over twenty years ago when you were held responsible for your behavior and Lawyers were out of the picture. Guess now that punishment would violate his civil rights but Seemore never smashed another box that we heard of.