If you live around the Ross Barnett Reservoir, you’ve probably had this happen at least once: a package shows up at your house that belongs to somebody down the street. Or maybe your tracking says your package was delivered, but there’s nothing on your porch.
Delivering mail and packages around the Reservoir isn’t always as simple as following an address on a GPS.
There are neighborhoods with long shared driveways, houses that sit well off the road and groups of mailboxes that aren’t necessarily right in front of the homes they belong to. Add faded house numbers, overgrown shrubs and homes tucked behind trees, and it can be difficult for a driver who doesn’t regularly work the area to know exactly where a package should go.
Regular USPS, UPS and FedEx drivers often get to know their routes pretty well. They learn which driveway goes to which house and where certain addresses are located even when GPS isn’t much help. The problems are more likely to show up when a substitute or new driver is covering the route and has to rely heavily on the address and whatever information appears on a mapping app.
And this time of year, there are simply more packages to deal with. Fall shopping leads into the holidays, putting more boxes on delivery trucks and more stops on already busy routes.
There are a few simple things homeowners can do to help. Make sure your street number can be easily seen from the road, particularly if your house sits back from the street. If several homes share a driveway, clear address markers at the entrance can make a big difference. The same goes for mailbox numbers that have faded or become difficult to see at night.
The U.S. Postal Service also recommends keeping mailboxes clearly numbered and unobstructed so carriers can identify the correct address.
Of course, sometimes a package is still going to wind up on the wrong porch. Around the Reservoir, that often results in a photo posted to a neighborhood Facebook group: “Anybody recognize this porch?”
Most of the time, somebody does.
With package deliveries about to get much busier heading into the holidays, now might be a good time to walk out to the road and take a look at your address from a delivery driver’s point of view. If you had never been to your house before, would you know where to go?
