[pct-l] 5 gal buckets bounce box

[edmond at mydogmeg.net (Edmond Meinfelder)]

At 10:09 AM 1/8/2004 -0600, Robert B Smith wrote:
>I have seen a few entries where hikers stated that they used a 5 gal 
>plastic bucket as a bounce box.
>Overall, how did this work out ?. How did the Post Office staff react to 
>the bucket ?. I like the idea and see how it could be a good 
>system.  Also, did you remove the handle ?.

If you want to re-supply on the trail at Muir Ranch 
(http://www.muirtrailranch.com/resupply.html) you need to use a 5-gallon 
bucket (and pay $45). It worked okay, but I was not happy about paying for 
the weight of a container that was larger than I needed. Because cardboard 
boxes are ubiquitous, I stuck with them.

If need a bunch, of cardboard boxes, I found the best place to get 
cardboard boxes are large comic book stores. Typically, comic book stores 
get most of their comic books from 1 distributor who ships all the comics 
in 2 sizes of sturdy cardboard box. the smaller is great for 1 person while 
the larger is good for 2 people. This beats a book store as they get often 
get many cheap, odd-sized boxes from different publishers.

The post office has wider latitude on unusually shaped objects than you 
might think. The following link shows an interesting experiment into just 
how tolerant the post office is:

http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html

Apparently, the Post Office will not ship helium balloons, but will ship a 
properly labelled can of split pea soup.

And because this question comes up so much, you can ship alcohol fuel, both 
methanol and ethanol, via USPS domestic ground mail. The package has to 
marked and shipped properly. And gasoline is not mailable via USPS. At 
least, according to: http://www.usps.com/cpim/ftp/pubs/pub52.pdf

And, if I read the above document right, butane gas is also mailable by 
domestic ground USPS, but I really just skimmed the document. You may want 
to check for yourself.

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