Police, Postal Service Spend Sunday Picking Up Mail Along Interstates

The Missouri State Highway Patrol and U.S. Postal Service spent Sunday morning picking up mail that was scattered along 70 miles of Interstates 270 and 55.

Cpl. Jeffrey Wilson with the highway patrol said they got the call around 7:30 a.m. Sunday of letters and parcels along the road. Wilson said the trail started around St. Charles Rock Road and continued down to Ste. Genevieve County.

U.S. Postal Inspector Dan Taylor tells Patch the mail fell from a contractor's truck, but he is not sure how yet. Taylor said he is not releasing the name of the contractor as the postal service works to determine whether a truck door was left open or opened during the drive. Taylor said several hundred letters were recovered and most appeared to be mailers from companies to residents on the west coast, by way of Memphis.

The driver realized the truck door was open in Ste. Genevieve County and stopped, but Taylor said he is not sure if the driver noticed the mail was falling off the truck or if someone notified the driver.

Taylor said most of the mail was concentrated at Dorsett Road and I-270, then trickled down to Ste. Genevieve County.

Cpl. Wilson said most of the mail was picked up by 10:30 a.m. He said no accidents were reported due to the trail, but since tampering with mail is a felony, the highway patrol's priority was securing the mail.

"We're never going to know if we got everything, but we're confident we've got the vast majority of what came off the truck," Taylor said.