Post Alert Mail Flag         No Post Alert Mail Flag

EASILY INTEGRATED INTO BRICK OR OTHER MAILBOXES  This mail slide is to be applied to mail boxes before the masonry or other material is put around the box.  This allows the mail slide to be easily integrated into brick or other types of mail boxes. STOP UNNECESSARY TRIPS TO THE POST OFFICE  The red slide easily alerts the postal worker of outgoing mail.  This can be useful for UPS and FEDEX pick up.

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Ideal for UPS & FEDEX Pickup

The Postal Service

The United States Postal Service (USPS) is the United States government-owned corporation responsible for providing postal service in the United States; it is generally referred to within the United States as "the post office."

The postal service was created under Benjamin Franklin on July 26, 1775 by decree of the Second Continental Congress. Based on a clause in the United States Constitution empowering Congress "To establish Post Offices and post Roads," it became the Post Office Department in 1792. In 1971, the USPS was reorganized as a government-owned corporation.

The USPS is the third-largest employer in the US (after the Defense Department and Walmart), and operates the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world, with an estimated 170,000 vehicles, the majority of which are the easily identified "mail trucks," as shown in the picture to the right. Some rural mail carriers use personal vehicles.

Competition from e-mail and private operations such as United Parcel Service, FedEx, and DHL has forced USPS to adjust its business strategy and to modernize its products and services. The Department of Defense and the USPS jointly operate a postal system to deliver mail for the military known as the Army/Air Force Post Office and the Fleet Post Office.

Mail Boxes

Wall boxes are a type of post box or letter box found in the UK and commonwealth countries. They differ from pillar boxes in that, instead of being a free-standing structure, they are generally set into a wall (hence the name) or supported on a lamp-post or other stable structure. (Note: a few wall boxes are, confusingly, free-standing, such as that outside Gloddaeth Post Office, Llandudno.)

In the UK and the British Commonwealth, a pillar box is a free-standing box where post is deposited to be collected by the Royal Mail and forwarded to the addressee. Pillar boxes have been in use since 1855, only 15 years after the introduction of the first penny post.

Post may also be deposited in wall boxes, which serve the same purpose as pillar boxes but are typically set into a wall. There are approximately 156 recognized designs and varieties of pillar boxes and wall boxes, not all of which have surviving examples.

Although the designs for pillar boxes soon became standardized to something very like the current design (a cylinder with a horizontal slit), the earliest ones were more experimental, including octagonal pillars or fluted columns, vertical slits instead of horizontal ones, and other unusual features.

Standard British pillar boxes are painted red. Following Irish independence, existing British pillar boxes were retained, and simply painted green. These can still be seen around the country today, still retaining the monogram of the monarch who reigned at the time of the box's installation. An Post, the Irish post service, continue to erect similar pillar boxes, albeit without a monarch's monogram.

A letter box is a slot in a wall or (more commonly) a door through which mail is delivered.

Almost all buildings in the United Kingdom feature letter boxes. They are commonly horizontal slots approximately 12 inches by 2, found in the middle or lower half of a front door. Most are covered by a flap on the outside to offer a degree of weatherproofing. The flap may by sprung to prevent it opening and closing noisily in the wind. Many letter boxes also have a second flap on the inside to offer further protection from the elements. There may also be a small wire cage mounted on the inside of the door to catch the delivered mail.

The British Post Office first encouraged people to install letter boxes to facilitate the delivery of mail in 1849. Before then, letter boxes of a similar design had been installed in the doors and walls of post offices for people to drop-off outgoing mail. An example of such a letter box (originally installed in the wall of the Wakefield Post Office) is dated 1809 and believed to be the oldest example in Britain.

A number of designs of letter boxes have been patented, particularly in the USA.

Front door away from street

To reduce the need for the postman to walk extra distances, when the front door is some distance from the street, letter boxes may be mounted on convenient posts at the property boundary. These boxes might have a slot to put the mail in, and a larger lockable door to take the mail out again.

In the U.S. letter boxes are fitted with a semaphore arm or flag that is raised or pulled out to indicate to the postman that there is outgoing mail in the letter box.

This article is licensed under the "GNU Free Documentation License".  It uses material from the Wikipedia articles "United States Postal Service", "Wall Boxes", "Pillar Boxes" and "Letter Boxes".