If you live in the rural section of your state, the need for protecting your mailbox from drive-by vehicle damage is very real and many a homeowner is known to replace their mail receptacles frequently!
Fortunately, there are quite a few steps you can take to avoid this costly proposition.
Protecting your mailbox from drive-by vehicle damage begins by measuring the distance from your mailbox to the road.
The United States Post Office has several clearly defined regulations with respect to the minimum and maximum amount of space that should be left between the road and the mailbox, and ensuring that you fall within these guidelines is the first step to cutting your mailbox expenses.
Next comes the question of snow plowing. If you live in an area where snow is plentiful and snowplows are a fact of winter, then there are additional steps you need to take to be adequately protecting your mailbox from drive-by vehicle damage.
After all, the plow may either shove snow into your box dislodging it from its pole, or it may actually get the edge of the plow itself snagged on the box and thus rip it off the pole.
Ascertaining the cause for the problem will be fixed most commonly by modifying the pole itself to ensure that there is enough clearance between the ground and the box.
Yet be careful if you opt for adjusting the height of the pole to begin protecting your mailbox from drive-by vehicle damage in the winter; the post office is very clear in its requirements when doing so as mail delivery by vehicle should not require the mail carrier to leave her or his vehicle and a heightened or lowered pole may actually affect just that.
