We are preparing for a 1 month road trip, our first that will be that long, and I'm wondering how other artists deal with the mail while on the road? I'm looking at some of the services offered to "snowbirds" to see if those would be effective. Our biggest concern is we have a couple of fall / winter shows that "snail mail" everything, getting in contact with them by email or phone is difficult. We don't want to miss a notification or booth payment deadline while we're on the road for our summer shows and 2 of them are due to notify while we're gone with relatively short windows to respond with the booth fee. Any suggestions?
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My aunt and uncle travel extensively by RV and they were telling us there are whole companies set up to deliver mail to where ever they happen to be. Check on the web for RV clubs or information.
I've investigated a couple of mail service companies that forward mail to RV travelers, appears it's not real effective if you are moving around on a weekly basis due to the amount of lead time they need to change the forwarding address, etc. So I thought about just having a couple of mail deliveries while gone, contacted the local post offices to see if I could arrange a general delivery pick up and it turns out not all post offices are set up for this, I was told by one that due to budget cuts, etc they no longer offered this service.
Thought I'd share what I've learned and am moving onto Plan B, hiring our friends teenager to check our mail, scan and email anything that we need.
We use Escapees mail service. They will open and read mail to you, and will forward using USPS, Fedex or UPS. We move often during the spring, summer & fall, and have been using them for 10 yrs. It just takes a little planning.
I used to have my local post office send me a weeks worth of first class mail in an overnight envelope each Monday. I paid them to do it in advance. It only works if you have a small town post office and a friendly postmaster. My postmaster used to collect letter openers so we brought him one from where ever we traveled to.
Do you have anyone you trust to send your mail. When we traveled I had my adult daughter send me our mail once a week.
Larry Berman > Ruth FinkenbinerMay 17, 2011 at 10:54pm
Someone asked the same question on the Sourcebook forum and I answered by suggesting that they send a letter to each show explaining the situation and enclose a check for the booth fee. Have them return the check if you're not accepted.
Replies
I've investigated a couple of mail service companies that forward mail to RV travelers, appears it's not real effective if you are moving around on a weekly basis due to the amount of lead time they need to change the forwarding address, etc. So I thought about just having a couple of mail deliveries while gone, contacted the local post offices to see if I could arrange a general delivery pick up and it turns out not all post offices are set up for this, I was told by one that due to budget cuts, etc they no longer offered this service.
Thought I'd share what I've learned and am moving onto Plan B, hiring our friends teenager to check our mail, scan and email anything that we need.
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100