By WILLIAM WEIR | The Hartford Courant
February 18, 2009
Melissa Bentley, 18, of Allentown sits on a mailbox in Whitehall, Pa. the U.S. Postal Service has removed 114 public mailboxes in the Hartford area, leaving 499. (DON FISHER / MORNING CALL / AP / January 29, 2009)
Will the iconic public mailbox become a thing of the past?
If you find yourself looking harder than usual for a blue collection box to drop your mail in, there's a reason. Since the beginning of the year, the U.S. Postal Service has removed 114 public mailboxes in the Hartford area, leaving 499.
Maureen Marion, Postal Service spokeswoman for the Hartford area, says the removals were the result of a "density test." A mailbox's usage is monitored over five to 10 days. If it receives an average of fewer than 25 pieces per day, it gets marked for removal.
It's a matter of economic practicality. Fewer than 25 pieces of mail aren't worth the gas and time to drive to the box and pick up the mail.
And it's not just happening around Hartford. The blue collection boxes are disappearing nationwide. Marion compares them to phone booths and milk delivery boxes.
"The amount of correspondence is different from what it used to be," she says. "What we find is that while the boxes are being used less, people use their home boxes and the mailboxes at work more."
E-mail is another factor. And people are just busier and don't have time to stroll to their local box.
"People are not walking their dogs in their neighborhoods the way they used to," Marion says.
Sue Brennan, a national Postal Service spokeswoman, says collection-box usage has dropped 11 percent since 2006.
"The economy is hitting us hard," she says. "I think it's one of those things that people don't miss until it's gone."
Nationally, the Postal Service removed 13,790 boxes from September of 2007 to January of 2009. Of those, 1,438 were in the Northeast. Removed boxes are refurbished and used as replacements. (Brennan says the need for new boxes is infrequent but can arise with the construction of a new development or large building).
The public collection box has been around since the 1850s, the same time the government began issuing postal stamps. At the time, the boxes were hung from lampposts.
When people started mailing larger packages, the boxes were upgraded to their modern size in 1913. Postal officials decided they needed some jazzing up and painted the boxes blue and red in the 1950s. Eventually, they became the solid blue we see today.