The U-S Postal Service is putting out a plea to Iowa businesses for the return of purloined mail bins. The white corrugated plastic tubs have built-in handles and Postal Service “Hawkeye District” spokesman Richard Watkins says they vanish from routes in Des Moines alone at the rate of one-hundred a week. He says the Postal Service had to spend about 20-million dollars on the bins last year alone and Watkins says they cost more than three-dollars each. He’s hoping people in Iowa businesses who have appropriated the tubs for holding personnel records, plants, compact discs –or whatever– will give them back. He says there won’t be any “box police” out looking for the boxes. He says they will however pick them up if you set them out for the mail carrier. With the holiday season fast-approaching, Watkins says the bins will be in high demand as mail volume increases radically before year’s end. Watkins says it’s a crime to abscond with the plastic bins. Stickers on the side of the bins make it clear that anyone who takes a bin could face a fine of up to one-thousand dollars and three-years in prison.
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