Here's a story of a man that used a P.O. box for his permanent address and got away with it

[Jim D]

I was told by someone at Escapees that Nevada allows a mail service address on Nevada drivers licenses so I went looking to find out. Nevada won't allow any P.O. boxes no how no way. All the Nevada DMV states is that you have to have a permanent address and you can't use a P.O. Box because they are not permanent. I'm still looking but I ran into this guy's story.

I didn’t have enough money to get an apartment, so I started to sleep in my car.

I knew that what I really needed was a permanent address, but in my sudden new position in life there was no way I could get one.

Here’s what I did …
I went to a post office (PO) box rental company and rented a box.
Instead of putting down my address as “Box 12” when I was filling out a form, I put down “Unit 12”.

Not once did I ever get a complaint from the mailbox company or the post office.
All my mail arrived without a problem, including government mail.
It’s a really good way to maintain a permanent address if you’re moving around a lot or are temporarily living in your car.

It can even help you to improve your credit rating because it appears like you’re in a stable location for a period of time.
The other thing that I did was I got a gym membership. I’d go to the gym every day to take a shower.

The PO box cost me about $35 dollars a month, and the gym membership was about the same.

So, for less than three dollars a day I was able to stay clean and appear, at least on paper and to everyone else, to be stable.

I lived in my car for eight months before I was able to find a job and then another four months before I was able to save up enough money for first and last month’s rent and get myself into a small apartment.

Would you believe that no one ever found me out? It’s true! No one ever knew!
One of the first things I did after I got my PO box address was to try and get credit.
Of course I was declined, but the address went on my credit rating nonetheless.
I am absolutely sure that the apartment rental agency that I applied to wouldn’t have approved my rental application had I not tried to use the PO box’s address as my own to get credit a year earlier.

To them it looked like I had lived for a year at my previous address and simply chose not to renew my lease. I even said as much when I was filling out my application.
During that year I spent another ten dollars a week at the laundromat to keep my clothes clean, including the cost for laundry detergent.

Toothpaste, soap and other incidentals cost me around thirty dollars a month.
So basically my rent, water, electricity, laundry and personal grooming cost me about $150 a month, five dollars a day.

During the time that I wasn’t working I’d go to various public parks around town and remove soda pop and beer cans from the garbage cans.

When I had filled up the trunk of my car and then some, I went to the supermarket and put the cans in the recycling machines out front.

I got a nickel for two cans and two cents for a single can.
I was actually able to collect enough cans to pay the five dollars a day for my upkeep and also put two gallons of gas in my car so that I could drive around the next day.
Incredibly, I was also able to collect enough cans to buy a liter of water and a package of Tang (powdered orange-flavored drink) every day.

There was even enough left over for a Hostess dessert pie for breakfast, a 7-Eleven microwaveable burrito for lunch and some bread, ham, cheese and fruit for dinner!
My food expenses were about seven dollars a day and it was about the same for gasoline.

So, I lived on a budget of $20 dollars a day for nine months.
Somehow, and I have no idea how, I was able to collect between 400 and 500 cans a day—and I survived!

I have no shame in it, nor in sharing it; it wasn’t my fault to begin with, but in no way was I going to give up. I’m too proud.

Sure, I could have sold my car to rent an apartment, but then how would I get to work or find a job?
By bus? Not so practical in San Diego.
So I did what I did in the way that I did it.

Today, I have a house on the beach and I will buy a second one soon. I have a new wife whom I love and who loves me and we have a wonderful son together.
I’ve worked for 11 years at the same company, so my life is stable once again.
But I’ll never forget that year; it was a true life lesson.
And you know what?

It wasn’t so bad living in my car collecting cans so that I could get through the day!
Get a PO box, get a gym membership, maintain a prepaid cellular line so people can call you, try to get credit, do what you need to do to find the $20 to $30 dollars a day you need and in the end you’ll be just fine!
Good luck!
Cheers!

Here's the link to the full Quora article:

If you live in a car, but your job needs a street address, what should you put?

Answer (1 of 71): One of the things that always got to me was the American obsession with street addresses. Many Canadians do not have street addresses, they have post office boxes. Many Canadians don’t live on streets, they live in the woods somewhere, or on an island with no roads. Many America...

www.quora.com

 

[mattvei]

I second that. When I was buying judgments, I rented a PO box but instead of showing PO box in any address I gave up I listed the physical address of the post office with a unit number which was my box number and the nine digit zip code which was specific to my box, Got a couple of nasty letters from the postmaster but as is typical with semi-government employees there was no follow-up, no consequence, I applied using a friend's address who I knew was moving so there was no way to find out where I was. Worked for 10 years until I gave it up.

 

[LargeMarge]

(reviving because I think this helps)
(but not at all because I have a vantankerous streak)
[vantankerous -- van combined with cantankerous. And 'yes', I was born this clever...]
.
We use post-office boxes exclusively.
Reason -- "We live near a school, we are afraid of pilfering from the mailbox. And we are afraid of bums... they set it afire, twice! We are afraid they will do it again!"
.
For some odd reason, the mention of 'fear' to any bureaucrat immediately achieves that 'common chord'... "Garsh! I'm afraid about everything, too! We should be friends! Here, let the bureaucracy protect you!"
.
During the 1970s, we were skip-tracers.
We have a 100% success rate.
Accordingly, these days, we prefer to be invisible.
Weird, eh?
.
Instead of 'getting away with it', we see it as keeping our legions of adoring fans safely at arm's length.
That would be much healthier for them.

 

[eDJ_]

My Grandfolks lived out in the country on a graveled & oiled dirt road. (common in Appalachia) One day there was a mailbox down the road that hadn't been there before with a man standing by it beside his car. When the Rural Rt delivery person was delivering he drove up by the man who told the delivery person that he was moving into one of the house trailers on this little drive way that led out to several trailers. All mail boxes were located on this main road and people had to walk out to get their mail.

The man would come by late in the evening and get the mail out of his mailbox and drive on. He didn't live in any of the trailers and the delivery person never knew the difference.

What he was up to was dating multiple women and having them to write him at that address. This was discovered when this woman pulled up in her car and opened the mailbox and began to rip the letters up and then threw a fit attacking the mail box and ultimately pulling it out of the ground. She then began to use it like a big sledge hammer pounding it against the ground and finally threw it into the bushes behind it. I think somehow she discovered his game.

But for a Nomad who just wants a dummy address and would put a pad lock on the mailbox so no junk mail could be put in it....this could work.

 

[Zerpersande]

But for a Nomad who just wants a dummy address and would put a pad lock on the mailbox so no junk mail could be put in it....this could work.

i could see how a padlock would keep out junk mail. I could aso see how t would keep out all mail AND raise some suspicions on the part of the mail carrier. How would this work?

 

[eDJ_]

The idea was that the owner wouldn't be getting mail there. Likely having a po box at a post office somewhere for anything really important. (Credit Cards would have that PO as the address where he received his statement....similar with taxes, insurances and all) My guess was he would have fed the mail carrier some line about traveling in his work when he set up the box. (so the mail carrier would think he was a construction worker, a tech repair person, transportation worker etc)

But mail carriers around here would see being curious about things like that as being above their pay grade. .....and if there was never any real mail to be placed in that box the carrier wouldn't worry about it.

 

[Zerpersande]

The idea was that the owner wouldn't be getting mail there. Likely having a po box at a post office somewhere for anything really important.

Ahh, gotcha’

But mail carriers around here would see being curious about things like that as being above their pay grade.

IDK. At some point in time people weren’t curious as to why somebody would only be interested in flying a plane, and not take off and landing. However, I could see people still their general level of stupidity.

As for the story, anybody doing this would likely live in the area. Drop by and clean out junk mail.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

..... One day there was a mailbox down the road that hadn't been there before ..... The man would come by late in the evening and get the mail out of his mailbox and drive on. He didn't live in any of the trailers .....

It's not his mailbox. The mailbox belongs to the USPS and is assigned to whomever is legally residing in the residence or the owner of the property.
Taking mail out of a mailbox that is not assigned to you is a felony:

18 US Code § 1708​

Multiple felonies in this story.

..... But for a Nomad who just wants a dummy address and would put a pad lock on the mailbox so no junk mail could be put in it....

I would not risk a felony for a dummy address.

..... But mail carriers around here would see being curious about things like that as being above their pay grade. .....and if there was never any real mail to be placed in that box the carrier wouldn't worry about it.

A mail carrier is supposed to report suspicious activities concerning mail. Encountering a lock on a mailbox would be considered 'suspicious'.

 

[eDJ_]

Yes, but it doesn't mean that they'll do that. (and likely have to fill out a score of reports) And how aware of all those legal details the carriers are may vary widely. My mail carrier just delivered my mail a few minutes ago and I was telling him about these replies. He just said...."yeah right" and laughed. He added, they are more concerned if we are stopped too long at any one place and slow to get the deliveries made.

While I agree that these may be the laws it doesn't mean people will obey them. There will always be those who will risk it.

.

 

[Zerpersande]

It's not his mailbox. The mailbox belongs to the USPS and is assigned to whomever is legally residing in the residence or the owner of the property.

So when I was a kid and my dad went outvand bought our mailbox, and the post it was on, and installed it, andvifbit ever was damaged or destroyed my dad would have had to repeat all of that, the USPS considered it theirs?And they never even sent a freakin’ thank-you note.

Taking mail out of a mailbox that is not assigned to you is a felony:

Yep, I try to keep those to a minimum.

 

[eDJ_]

When I spoke with my carrier earlier he mentioned that in this part of Ohio, if they checked a rural mail box to affirm it's legitimacy they would go to the public water system for records as a cross reference. But in this region most people don't have access to a public water system, natural gas, or even a city trash removal service. So using pubic records isn't as simple as it would be in a larger city with those municipal services. People here have water well's with electric pumps (or even mechanical pumps.....like down on the farm ya know) or cisterns and buy potable water from a family business that delivers with a big tank truck. There is no municipal sewage services either.

He told me that when he was in training many of these illegal boxes were explained to him. Most of them used in "Welfare Fraud" schemes.

But, as he said the USPS here is more concerned with getting the delivers made accurately and in a timely manner. Ferreting out fraudulent boxes as a sleuth really isn't their job. (and most of the carriers aren't qualified to do that anyway)

Thus, the fun and games with bogus mail boxes being used as home addresses.

 

[wayne49]

Every jurisdiction [and every jurisdiction levies property tax] has Property Tax info, with the owner's mailing address, if different from the property address.

 

[Scout80]

I second that. When I was buying judgments, I rented a PO box but instead of showing PO box in any address I gave up I listed the physical address of the post office with a unit number which was my box number and the nine digit zip code which was specific to my box, Got a couple of nasty letters from the postmaster but as is typical with semi-government employees there was no follow-up, no consequence, I applied using a friend's address who I knew was moving so there was no way to find out where I was. Worked for 10 years until I gave it up.

I've had the ladies at my local post office tell me to do exactly this - use the PO address plus the box number - when having someone send something that they refuse to ship to a PO Box. Also handy for the few places that I've dealt with that refuse to ship to a residential address for whatever reason, as the PO address shows as a commercial address (small packages too, so it's not just something like lack of loading dock for the trucks).

I've also gotten used to putting down my address as 1234 Main #567, which is also perfectly acceptable to the PO. A few times I've had things unexpectedly sent via mail, and if it has my house address on it, they won't even attempt to deliver it - it will be scanned in to the PO, and immediately flagged as "undeliverable, return to sender" as I don't have mail delivery to my very rural house. But if it has my box number appended to the address, they'll either drop it in my box or drop a pick up notice for anything too large to fit.