# Dumb question - Postal drop boxes



## Mik (Jan 2, 2008)

Any of you older fellows have a clue what year the USPS changed them over from olive drab?

I'm pretty sure they were still green in '61, weren't they?


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## jjwtrainman (Mar 11, 2011)

After a quick google search, they say that 1955 is the year that the USPS switched the color to red white and blue from olive.


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

I remember the olive drab boxes. I think you are right about the time frame.

At some point I remember the city put out trash cans of a similar size and color and there being a bruhaha over people that had been depositing their mail in the trash cans because they could not tell the difference between the two. Seems to me that was about the time they changed the mailboxes to a Blue with White lettering and maybe some Red on handles and such.

But there remained some darker color boxes that were not for the public to deposit mail but for the post office to store mail for the delivery person to pick up for their route (this was before every carrier drove their own little post office truck).


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## jjwtrainman (Mar 11, 2011)

My father was a US postal delivery man, and all I remember is that he didn't drive USPS trucks, but he used his own F-350 due to the climate of Minnesota


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## wchasr (Jan 2, 2008)

In the little "city" that i grew up in the city park across the street had an Olive Drab postal box that was used by the local carrier to pick up that section of his routes mail. A truck would come by early in the morning and drop off the "mail" into that box. It was shaped exactly like the typical Blue box but had no drop slot and a large door on the side. Honestly I think it is still there? I could look on the way home? 

Chas


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## rkapuaala (Jan 3, 2008)

I was born in 54 and don't ever remember them being green. I do have a very clear memory age 5 the first day I started school at Garfield Elementary in Peoria Il. Two mail boxes flanked the east and west borders of the school grounds and I spied an older kid dropping a bag full of something in the box. Don't know what was in the bag, but both boxes were blue and red.


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