Getting My Mail on the Road

[obiwancanoli]

Planning to do some travelling in 2021, a few days here, a week or two there, and technology affords me the opportunity to receive and pay bills online for the most part... but, when I will receive physical mail, using a service such as Escapees, or Good Sam, would seem to require me to be settled in for a longer period, to make sure I get the mail I'm expecting, since forwarding mail is a typically longer process...

Do RV parks accommodate such services when, for example, your stay is an extended one, say, a month? Can one have mail sent "General Delivery" to and be held by a local Post Office for pick-up? If so, how long will they hold it? I can imagine that when one knows where one is headed, and when, one can arrange for mail to sent ahead of time, for retrieval when I arrive, but for those of us who travel on the fly, fluidity is key when a specific date one would arrive isn't yet known...

Is such a dilemma easily handled? Or will I encounter a challenging issue here?

[dedmiston]

Not to downplay your request at all (I think it's a great topic), but how much actionable mail do you receive in a typical month? We've switched all of our bills to either auto-pay or at least paperless, so we don't get any bills in the mail that we need to pay except for regular things that we can anticipate, like car reg and property tax.

We went on a 10 week trip last fall and had our mail held. There's a limit to how long you can hold it, but we broke it into two waves and had a neighbor hold onto the first bucket of mail.

[valhalla360]

Some parks will and others won't.

If you will be returning home regularly, do you really need it forwarded. Once our bills were moved to online...we don't get much mail that we care about or is time sensitive.

I forget the name of the company but one of the online ones will scan and email you the mail that comes in...then if something critical comes in you can have them physically forward it.

You still have the issue that most are set up to be longer term (months not days or weeks)

[Old-Biscuit]

We FTd for 7 yrs...traveling WEEKLY/BI-MONTHLY

Our Mail Forwarding Service would hold our mail until WE requested them to send it
It would be sent USPS Priority Mail and would typically arrive in 3 days after requesting

Many CGs would accept mail delivery
If a CG did not we would have it sent 'General Delivery' to Local Post Office
**We ALWAYS called the Post Office and verified they accepted 'General Delivery' (Found 'GD' was handled by MAIN Post Office so if area had more then ONE you had to use the MAIN PS and their Address for 'GD')

Mail forwarding service made it easy....
And you don't have to change your official address if you do not want to. Just use the Mail forwarding service as a Mailing Address
*Course you do have to use a ;change of address' to any business/person you want to receive mail from

We used On-Line Banking and reduced the amount of Snail Mail considerably

[PawPaw_n_Gram]

obiwancanoli wrote:
Do RV parks accommodate such services when, for example, your stay is an extended one, say, a month?

Many to most do not. Accepting mail for other persons gets a park into having to comply with US postal regulations on retention, security, forwarding, etc. Most don't want to bother with it. And it is a nightmare at times.

obiwancanoli wrote:
Can one have mail sent "General Delivery" to and be held by a local Post Office for pick-up? If so, how long will they hold it? I can imagine that when one knows where one is headed, and when, one can arrange for mail to sent ahead of time, for retrieval when I arrive, but for those of us who travel on the fly, fluidity is key when a specific date one would arrive isn't yet known...

Most US Post Offices can accept General Delivery, and it will be held for x number of days. I don't know the current number, or if it is across the entire system.

obiwancanoli wrote:
Is such a dilemma easily handled? Or will I encounter a challenging issue here?

I believe you are overthinking this.

First. Do you really want to change your official address every time you change campgrounds?

Which might impact your driver's license, your place of voting, your taxes, etc.

We changed our official residence and domicile from the home we sold in north Texas near Dallas to Escapees in Livingston, TX. We vote in Livingston, we pay taxes in Livingston, my vehicles are registered in Livingston.

We have had no trouble having mail forwarded in over 6 years of full-timing. But twice we had to make multi-hundred mile drives to pick up mail we have forwarded and had to change our travel plans - the first one for a mechanical problem with the truck, and the second for a funeral.

We have gotten post office boxes in two places, Big Bend National Park, and Thomaston, CT - when we volunteered for several months in those places. Used those PO for mail forwarded by Escapee's mainly for convenient access to the PO box rather than the locked mail rooms at both hosting locations.

Another friend spent five months in 2015 traveling from Texas to Alaska and back. They simply had their local PO hold all of their mail. Nothing important was expected and nothing was missed.

If your longest away time is an estimated month or six weeks - just have your post office hold the mail until you get back - provided you can go on-line and pay such things as the local water bill and electric bill.

Ask yourself if you really NEED to receive a particular piece of paper every month, or such. If the answer is no - don't bother with forwarding mail.

I'm also assuming you do not have anyone close who could come by your residence and pick up your mail, check on the place, every couple of days.