Make Sure They See You!
One of the best investments you can make as a rural mail carrier is to get an emergency warning or flashing strobe light to place on your vehicle. Many post offices will provide a standard light to rural carriers free of charge but after years of dealing with what I felt was inadequate lighting, I decided to do some shopping online and purchase my own light.
Forget those ads you see in the Rural Carrier magazine advertising for lights. They are basically the same as the free ones provided by the USPS and most of them cost over $80.
Luckily there are many options to choose from now online and the Beamtech Emergency Warning Strobe Light from Amazon is the model I choose to purchase. That’s a photo of it in this post on my vehicle. I’ve used it for the last 2 years and have been very happy with the light.
I was curious how well the magnetic base would hold up to the harsh weather conditions here in Minnesota but even in the coldest (-45F windchill) and 50+ mile per hour winds, it’s held fast to my vehicle. I like that you can adjust the strobe patterns and the 10 ft straight cable is long enough to use on many types and sizes of vehicles. The fact that the cable is straight and not curly is also a bonus because it won’t tangle like those curly cables tend to do.
The only negative I have to report on the Beamtech Strobe Light is that the light stopped working after less than a year of usage but when I reported it to Beamtech, they quickly sent me a replacement fuse free of charge and that’s all it took to fix the issue.
We’ve all been in situations where you find yourself looking in the rear view mirror at the car behind you knowing that they are not paying attention to the fact you are stopped along the shoulder of the road delivering mail. This type of light won’t prevent you from running into idiots on the road but it will definitely help your vehicle to be more visible on the road and hopefully avoid any accidents on you rural carrier route.