Vintage Mailboxes?

[Stearmen]

I hope no one minds, but all this talk of mailboxes reminded me of this great painting by a local artist David Uhl. Yes, it is in the Rockwell style, because he very much admires the man!

 

[Fading Fast]

Don't forget all the parcels going thru the mail due to online shopping, eBay, etc. -- that stuff is bound to keep the Inspectors busy. Even with UPS and Fed Ex, the vast majority of parcels I get still come via the mail.

Great point, I wonder if (contra to my original thought) all the Internet shopping has led to more, not less, mail theft. I assume, from a legal perspective, that stealing a package off of someones porch that was delivered by the USPS is no different than going into a person's mailbox and stealing their mail? Growing up, we were taught that stealing mail was a much bigger crime than petty theft, so I would assume that would hold for those packages left on a porch?

That said, I assume something delivered by Fed Ex or UPS would not have the same legal protection?

 

[Talbot]

I can confirm that Postal services take mail theft extremely seriously. Community trust is recognised as a key indicator. So is service performance, but is more and more being squeezed by margin

In the main, postal staff at the operational coal face are deeply committed to the task at hand, but some (some) of these people come from the shallow end of the gene pool and can have an axe to grind. A very small minority.

The use of independant contractors to deliver parcels over 2kg (at least in Australia) also creates accountability problems.

Newer sorting centres rely on a network of cameras as staff have ways of knowing when the security guys are on site.

On the operational floor, parcel theft is harder than lettermail. Due to smaller size and higher volumes, letter mail theft is a more labour intensive thing to police. I know of instances where postal security staff have even placed cash inside sorting machines to test operators trustworthiness (you'd be surpised what you can find in and under sorting machines).

Generally speaking, if it has not been delivered, it has been lost, not stolen. If a parcel or letter is damaged and spills its contents in transit, it is next to impossible to reconcile the contents to a sender or recipient.