'They were planning on suing the professor': Vandals get served instant justice when they meet an engineering professor's indestructible mailbox

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Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Feb 7, 2024 7:00 AM EST

This first-class internet tale is a literary masterpiece, complete with classic themes of right and wrong, unstoppable forces, agents of chaos, and a savvy professor teaching his students the rewards of critical thinking—complete with the bad guys getting their just deserts in the end. It has echoes of some of the greatest literary classics and is one of those stories, an almost urban legend, that you hear a version of every now and again passed as something that happened to a friend of a friend of a friend in conversation. Heck, I'm surprised there hasn't been a cinematic adaptation yet starring Tom Hanks as the wily professor… "Tom Hanks is Professor Mailbox in "Professor Mailbox," coming to theaters near you this fall."

Redditor u/AQuietBorderline originally this story to Reddit's r/ProRevenge subreddit, telling about a group of college engineering students who were tasked with creating a mailbox that couldn't possibly be destroyed by anything short of an explosive blast.

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    600 1905 10 " କ 1955 0 WEL 215
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    Posted by u/AQuiet Borderline What Happens When Engineering Students Are Asked To Truck-Proof A Mailbox Yes, I know there are a lot of mailbox stories on here but I just learned this story from my Dad involving my Uncle Dale (family friend who passed away a few months ago) and figured you guys would get a kick out of it. Years ago, back when Uncle Dale and Dad were university students, their engineering professor came to their class with a problem that needed solving. His mailbox was getting
    via u/AQuietBorderline
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    broken by someone driving by every night. He and his wife had put up something like four or five mailboxes and all four or five times, the mailbox had been knocked over by someone driving a red truck. This professor offered extra credit to any group of students who could come up with a truck proof mailbox that not only fit with city regulations but within a budget of $20 (which back then was a good size chunk of change).
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    Well, if anyone here knows anything about engineers (as Dad puts it), they love solving problems. And if it's engineering students, they'll make it an experience to remember. Dad and Uncle Dale got together and got to work. They found a steel bar that fit within mailbox regulations (posts have to be a specific height, width and depth) and filled the inside with a mixture of concrete and steel rebars. Once the concrete had cured, they welded 8 rebars to the sides of the bar, bent them in half and
    via u/AQuietBorderline
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    As a finishing touch, they painted it brown and black (to look like wood) and put "the ugliest mailbox we could find on sale" on top, welding it down for good measure. They brought this monstrosity into class (more dragged it because it was so heavy) and told the professor to bury the bucket where the mailbox stood. Since they were the first to turn in their project, the professor agreed to give it a try.
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    That night...the professor and his wife were awoken by a metallic BANG!!!!! followed by a lot of cursing. They went outside and wouldn't you know it, there was that red truck speeding away, the mailbox still standing. At the base was a broken wooden baseball bat. Two days later, the professor gets a bill in the mail for a hospital visit. Turns out when the passenger hit the mailbox, he did some serious damage to his arm and shoulder.
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    They were planning on suing the professor but the professor hired a lawyer who basically told the plaintiffs "You're just going to admit that you were vandalizing the mailbox multiple times?" That shut them up. To the best of my Dad's knowledge, the mailbox is still standing. The other students who still brought in mailboxes had theirs gifted to different professors throughout the town and are also still standing.
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    MurphysFknLaw We solved this on my mailbox buy putting a large spring at the base. You could bend the post down all the way to the ground and watch it flail around afterwards. It was more for people backing into it than vandalism and it worked perfectly. 3.4k Reply Share
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    Donald Trurnp For accidental damage, that works way better than making the mailbox invincible, because you don't want to damage cars accidentally bumping the mailbox. You also don't want to hurt people who are exercising due care in their vandalism, just in case they aren't deterred by having to confess to multiple counts of mail tampering. 1.4k Reply Share
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    exzentriker77 Friend of mine got sick of having his box run over by drunk drivers, so he designed a mailbox made out of concrete/rebar with a wide flared base so that if someone knocked the box over, the base tips up underneath the car. This would basically total the vehicle. He bought a huge box for the post, painted a big bullseye on it with the words "bullseye" underneath. This was easily 20 years ago. That mailbox hasn't been touched all this time. 289 Reply Share ●●●
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    Dewhickey76 My husband is a mason in a beach town in Florida. He had created multiple"decorative" mailboxes that had block, concrete, and rebarb in the middle about a decade ago for a few homeowners whose homes he had done block and stucco work for on A1A bc people kept knocking their mailboxes down. Turned out it was drunk drivers. After a couple of totaled cars ordinances against hubby's creations (and similar ones as it was catching)started going up. 561 Reply Share ●●●
    via u/AQuietBorderline
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    Jabartik I have a similar (accidental) revenge story from my childhood. For reasons unknown, someone started hitting my parents' garbage cans with their car every week to knock them over. This was before there were readily available security cameras, and it happened at random times between 1 and 4 am. They sat up trying to see who it was several times, never caught them. Filed multiple police reports, nothing was ever done. I can't remember exactly for how long, but definitely over a month.
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    Then one week, after building a new shed there was a garbage can full of construction debris. Remnants of 2x4s, some cinderblocks, even some leftover cement from building the support pillars. They really took anything you put in the can in the old days. You can probably see where this is going.... Around 3 AM, there was a horrendous crash. We ran outside to see what had happened. The car was nowhere to be seen. The garbage can was still standing upright. There was half of a bumper and pieces of
    via u/AQuietBorderline
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    They never came back to reclaim their bumper, and for some strange reason from that day forward the cans were unmolested. EDIT: Wow, the paragraph order was all messed up. I have no idea what caused that. Restored! 425 Reply Share
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    RuneFell As a mailcarrier, I've heard a few stories, and have seen examples myself of mailbox ingenuity. One that stands out is an unusual and obviously very old box out in the country way back when while I was training. I asked the regular carrier about it, who told me that farmer on my route had trouble with one of his neighbor kids consonantly bashing in his box. So,
    via u/AQuietBorderline
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    finally, he bought the largest mailbox he could find, and put a regular mailbox inside of it. He then proceed to fille the empty space inside with concrete, so it looked like a normal large country mailbox, but when you opened the door, you just saw a small mailbox encased in the middle of a solid wall. As a final touch, he painted a big target on the side. The regular said that the neighbor kid tried to smash it just once. That thing outlived the farmer by years. Reply Share 587
    via u/AQuietBorderline
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    AQuietBorderline OP As a final touch, he painted a big target on the side. All that's missing is Clint Eastwood saying "Come get me, you dummies. Come on. I dare ya." 251 Reply Share jsat3474 Do you feel lucky, punk? 72 Reply Share
    via u/AQuietBorderline

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