A clear mailbox, is an accessible mailbox. Highway contractors delivering mail aren’t permitted to leave their car, or enter through a gate, when delivering mail. If your mail box isn’t accessible from a car, then your mail will be waiting for pick up at the Post Office.
A clear mailbox, is an accessible mailbox. Highway contractors delivering mail aren’t permitted to leave their car, or enter through a gate, when delivering mail. If your mail box isn’t accessible from a car, then your mail will be waiting for pick up at the Post Office.
Inclement weather, ice deluges, unplowed roads — there’s a lot getting in the way of mail carriers trying to deliver parcels and letters.
Despite all the obstacles, White Salmon Post Office Postmaster Susan Gross has yet to cancel a delivery route. “My requirement is, that they do go out and run the route, and they do deliver within the guidelines: the mailbox is clear, and the roads are plowed,” Gross explained. “I’ve never canceled a route. We try really hard to get it to the customer, every single day.”
Residences with mailboxes have to either have a 30-foot swatch of cleared road leading up to a mailbox, or a cleared driveway with car-accessible delivery in order for mail to be administered — and no garbage cans blocking access.
“For us, it’s full access,” Gross noted. “We’re not authorized to go through a gate. If the roads aren’t plowed, the instruction I’ve given them [mail carriers] is ‘don’t go down it.’ If the mailboxes aren’t plowed out, basically a 30-foot swath, and they’re aren’t able to get up to the box without getting out, they don’t deliver.”
Gross stresses residents with mailboxes can’t just dig a path to their box and expect mail. “Some people are just digging a path into [the mailbox], and we’re not to get out of our vehicles,” she said.
“We really want to give the customer their mail, we really do, because it’s a lot of work for the clerks that don’t know the case to go back and find their mail,” explained Gross. “So, we work really hard in getting it all delivered every day, but they’re just in this snow.”
When a mailbox is snowed in, or “plowed in,” mail carriers hold the day’s delivery and bring it back to the White Salmon Post Office. Currently, the storage area of the Post Office is littered carts of packages waiting for a clear mailbox, or plowed road.
Each address has a designated slot within the Post Office, when mail can’t be delivered it’s held in the reserved spot until the resident picks it up, roads are plowed, or access to the mailbox is cleared. Addresses are grouped by route, like the Snowden route, Glenwood, or Loop Road.
Gross said people generally know they’re not getting mail delivered because their box is plowed in, “That’s pretty typical this time of year,” she said.
Before arriving at the White Salmon Post Office, mail is routed from Portland, Ore., to The Dalles, and then arrives in town. The past week’s timetable has been an issue. “It’s been delayed every day this week,” said Gross, “except Saturday.”
When mail is held due to mailboxes being inaccessible, there isn’t necessarily a hold limit although it depends on whether the customer is new to the area, Gross noted. “That is a knowledge the carriers have,” she said. “They know that customers there, they know that they’re either snowed in, or they’re a snowbird. We don’t send the mail back. A new customer coming in, we hold it for 20 days and they have 20 days to come in and say ‘we’re here, we’d like to get mail.’”
However, individuals requesting a mail hold have to request the hold for a minimum of three days, and can extend the hold to a maximum of 30 days before retrieving mail.
For those whose mailboxes are plowed in, mail can be picked up at the Post Office during operation hours Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Gross says the Post Office’s five highway contractors who deliver mail are at full force, and will deliver if a box meets all accessibility requirements.
“We’re really pretty good,” Gross said with a laugh. “I’m not bragging, I’m just saying.”
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