How do I receive my mail living in Mammoth Lakes?

If you are a new Mammoth resident, then you most likely will need to be able to receive mail.  But if you look around at all the homes and condos here, there are no mailboxes.  Why is that?  Well the answer is really quite simple: SNOW!  That’s right…because of our favorite thing; fresh snowfall.  With this part of the Eastern Sierra able to receive over 5-feet of snow in a 24-hour period, the reality of having an accessible mailbox year round just isn’t possible.

So what’s the solution?  PO Boxes.  Yep, that’s right…you have to go get your mail instead of your mail coming to you.  So there are two places you can do that: 1. The local US Postal Service (USPS), and 2. Mammoth Business Essentials (MBE).  The USPS will provide you a free post office box with proof of home ownership or tenancy…one PO Box per household.  And if you own a business, you can pay a small annual fee to have a separate PO Box.  The Mammoth Lakes Post Office is open 24/7 to check your PO Box.  At MBE you can pay for a mailbox as well and they have different sizes and pricing plans.

And for those of you new here, be aware that receiving mail can take a day or two or seven longer than you would think in arriving to you.  This is especially true in the winter when we are have big storms.  So learn to be patient…after all, it’s just bills coming in, right?!

 

So how do I send mail to a Mammoth Lakes resident?

There is really two answers to this: 1. Use standard U.S. Postal Service shipping and be sure you are mailing to the recipient’s PO Box, or 2. Use an alternative mail courier (FedEx / UPS) and be sure you have addressed the package to the recipient’s physical address.  Don’t screw this up though because FedEx or UPS are not going to deliver to the PO Box and the U.S.P.S. isn’t going to deliver to your physical address.

The above is important to remember as a Mammoth resident when ordering items online.  It is necessary to research ahead of time if the company you are purchasing from will be shipping via FedEx or UPS or U.S.P.S.  In some cases they use both where the package may start with let’s say FedEx, but then end up in the hands of the Post Office.  To be safe I learned years ago to always list my shipping/mailing address with both my PO Box and my physical address, and then just put the more likely one being used on the top line, with the other right below it.  It’s not an absolute guarantee, but it seems to get package to you 99% of the time.

 

Where does my household trash go in Mammoth?

The two things in Mammoth that I’ve always seen very different from city life is mail and trash.  Unless you are in a condo complex with a shared dumpster, you as a homeowner (or tenant living in a single-family residence) will need to go to the town trash transfer station to dispose of your own household trash (and hopefully recyclables too).  This can be a big change for people who are used to pilling their daily trash into those big uniform trash bins the city provides, and then rolling them out to the end of the street once a week for pickup.  Well that is not going to happen here in Mammoth.  Instead you get the luxury of driving your own trash to a trash facility (Mammoth Disposal) and tossing it in a larger industrial trash compactor.  The trash is then transferred by Mammoth Disposal to the Mono County Landfill.

Written by Eric Leach / 949-690-5555 / eric@ResortPropertyRealty.com