More E-mail, Fewer Mailboxes

mikesd81 writes "Over at the Baltimore Sun there is an article about the post office removing those blue corner mail boxes because of e-mail. From the article: 'As more people send e-mails and pay bills online, the decline in first-class mail is forcing the U.S. Postal Service to remove tens of thousands of underused mailboxes from city streets.' The article goes on to say that the boxes were an American icon: 'You recognize them in Chicago, you recognize them in D.C., you recognize them in Florida, you recognize them in Montana,' Pope said. 'It's a piece of American iconography that has a wonderful history behind it.'" What the article forgets to mention: they're like an American TARDIS for children.

Re:Mailbox Graveyard?

[Anonymous Coward]

They will melt them down for scrap. They won't sell them because thieves would use them for nefarious purposes, and outside of collecting mail they have little other possible use.

I know every hacker on slashdot will post and tell me how they can turn one into a wet bar, but I doubt if the post office will sell them unless its to somebody who will scrap them.

Character?!?

[RealGrouchy]

Yeah, I've seen the blue mail boxes that they have in the US. They look pretty flimsy and ugly if you ask me. Heck, the ones here in Canada do too.

You want a post box with character? Here [google.com] is a post box with character. Those red UK ones were made to last long after e-mail renders them useless. Heck, we have one in our downtown just sitting there because it wasn't built, it was designed.

- RG>

stop the drama

[dammy]

Oh please, spare us the drama. Zip *g* is going to happen when the last collection box is removed and sold for scrap metal. Except it's one less thing to do on a mail route then having to dismount the vehicle to go to the collection box and scan/service it. USPS still picks up letters from curbside deliveries (ie your typical mail box sitting at the street) and any given single or grouped CBU (Cluster Box Unit) has an out bound mail slot you can use, regardless if you have a box there or not. You want the mail to go out, USPS is more then happy to drive their carriers to exhaustion to keep you happy.

Now one thing that has nearly but all dissapeared are the green boxes. About the only place you will find those are in large urban areas.

Dammy
Rural Craft

TARDIS is quite apt...

[meringuoid]

For those that don't know, the TARDIS is the vehicle piloted by the Doctor in Doctor Who. Its use as a comparison here is quite apt: the TARDIS is disguised as a police box, which was once a common sight on British streets but which, as portable radios took over, fell into obsolescence. There are very few police boxes still around, but once they were so commonplace that a time traveller could disguise his time machine as one and expect it to go unremarked.

Now, it seems the iconic American mailbox is to fall into similar disuse...

Unless, of course, I've completely misunderstood the metaphor. Does the US postal service provide mailboxes which are far larger on the inside than on the outside?

Re:Canada

[Bombcar]

Just use <a href="http://www.example.com>this</a>

Re:Less mailboxes, more kiosks please

[BinaryOpty]

I know in my local post offices they have automated package centers that let you mail anything from normal first class letters to large packages without having to talk to a human being. It seems very few people use this service even though it can do most everything a human being at the counter can do. Also, the kiosk is open 24 hours as it's in the lobby with the PO Boxes so if you want to mail a package at midnight you can.

Re:No surprise...

[Skadet]

When you think about it, the first truly tech saavy generation (as a whole, not just a select few) is starting to come to maturation. Snail Mail will always have a roll...

And you inadvertantly proved an important point with your use of "roll" instead of "role": even with all the tech we have, kids growing up will still need to learn old-school fundamentals. I don't know of a spell checker that would have caught your error.

Re:The Problem With Mail, IMO

[telso]

Make it so that instead of just dropping letters, you can drop letters without postage and small to midsize packages. The letters have to be sorted anyway, so just add in a step of the process to have someone calculate the charge for me and bill me. Come to think of it, why hasn't this been done yet?

It's called a postage meter [usps.com]. It was invented in 1912 by Arthur Pitney, who went into business with Walter Bowes in 1920. They're used on pretty much all commercial mailings these days (when was the last time you saw a stamp on your utility bills?), and can be found under "Mailing equipment" in the Yellow Pages (which, by the way, is a telephone directory in nearly every building in the country).

Use L-Mail instead

[grandmofftarkin]

hmm ... have you checked out L-Mail [l-mail.com]? It is great for sending letters to old relatives who don't have email, without all the hassle you outlined. It is also good for writing to companies who still take letters more seriously than email/phone, which is great if you are having problems. It is more expensive if you are sending a letter within your home country (although IMHO the costs are tolerable). If you are sending internationally it is quicker and cheaper.