LEHI, Utah — A man living in Lehi is concerned after his letter carrier told him he must move his mailbox immediately or his mail will stop being delivered.
“We’ve been here for a couple of months… and receiving the mail just fine,” he said.
He wanted to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution but told FOX 13 he was working on his newly bought house one day when he received the news.
"'What I need you to do is move your mailbox either to the sidewalk or the curb,'" he says the postal worker told him.
He has been working on his house for a few months — a fixer-upper he was excited about, but moving the mailbox from the porch to the sidewalk was not on his list. Instead, he hoped to fix the one on the porch.
“This is totally random, totally out of the blue, and so I kind of just didn’t know what to say, and [the postman] just said... 'Talk to my supervisor about it,'" the man said. “I’ve tried… I’ve tried to call the post office, like, several times, and they just don’t answer.”
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The United States Postal Service is very strict about the height, depth, distance from the curb and other factors when placing a mailbox, so residents have to be very precise when installing one.
Most of the homes in Lehi also have mailboxes on porches unless they are new builds. In those cases, they move it to a curbside box.
The USPS did not respond to FOX 13's request for comment, but according to section 631.23 of their regulations: "Door delivery may be provided to boxes located at or near the door of a business or residential delivery point, or through a door slot, only with prior approval from the District Manager, and only if the box or mail slot can be efficiently, safely, and conveniently served by the carrier.
"Door delivery will not be available for new delivery points, except in very unusual circumstances as determined by the Postal Service in its sole discretion."
But his mailbox isn’t hard to get to. In fact, it's only about 10 feet from the curb.
“I’ve provided a safe path for the mail carrier to get here," the Lehi resident said.
His address isn’t new either, so while he may be new, so it isn’t a “new delivery point” either.
All of this back and forth has left him scratching his head, and while he wants to do what's right and lawful, he just wants to know what that is before making the changes.
“His mailbox has been here for probably 80 years, and so I don’t understand why me alone needs to move my mailbox. Probably 90 percent of the homes have their mailboxes on the porch,” he said. “I’m kind of at a loss. I want to follow the law. If there is a federal code that says I need to move my mailbox, then I will move my mailbox, but I can’t find any laws or policies of any kind.”
