Post Office box

A Post Office box is a uniquely-addressable lockable box located on the premises of a Post Office station. Generally, Post Office boxes are rented from the post office either by individuals or by businesses on a basis ranging from monthly to annual, and the cost of rent varies depending on the box size. CBD PO boxes are usually more expensive than a rural PO Box.

Number of Boxes

The quantity of Post Office boxes in a station varies widely. Stations of small rural communities are often equipped with fewer than one hundred boxes, while stations in a metropolitan area may offer a combined quantity of over 100,000 Post Office boxes.

Numbering of boxes

Sometimes the numbering schemes of several Post Offices in the same suburb are combined so that say 1-999 belongs to the Main Office, 1001-1999 to the North Office and so on.

On other occasions, a letter or letters is used to separate post offices sharing the same postcode, thus

• PO Box K349 Haymarket, Sydney
• PO Box R1234 Royal Exchange, Sydney

• PO Box 349AA ? , Melbourne
• PO Box 1234RR ? , Melbourne

Mounting of Boxes

Post Office boxes are usually mounted in an external wall of the Post Offices, so that staff on the inside may deposit mail in a box, while key holder on the outside of the building may open their box to empty the mail.

If the Post Office runs out of wall space, then the ideal arrangement describe above will be compromised.

Reasons for using post boxes

• PO Boxes permit a semi-anonymous address.
• PO Boxes allow mail to be picked up when sorted, rather than when the post man delivers, which will be some hours later.
• In some rural areas, mail is not delivered, or is delivered on say three days per week. Here the rentals are often discounted.
• A mail user who regularly recieve large parcels or items that must be signed for may find it convenient to pick up all the rest of the mail at the same time.

Addressing of PO Box mail

The standard method of addressing mail to a Post Office box in the United States is as follows:

John Smith
P.O. Box 6789
Anytown, ST 12345-6789

Packages

If a parcel will not fit in a PO Box, then the postmaster will leave a note advising that customer to pickup that parcel from the counter. Notes will also be left in respect of COD and Registered mail that has to be signed for.

Locked Bags

Users receiving very large quantities of mail can use "locked bags", which are numbered like PO Boxes.

History

PO Boxes probably started as "pigeon holes" on a wall inside the Post Office. It is not known when this happened. The external locked PO box came later.

In Australia, wall-mounted PO Boxes come in three sizes, which are cleverly designed so that different sizes can be mixed almost at random on the wall.