Reader Alisha is vexed by a UPS driver who thinks a road to a working farm is her driveway. She’s afraid her stuff is going to be run over by trucks full of cows or god knows what.

I’m having a weird issue with UPS and I’m not quite sure what to do about it. This doesn’t happen all the time–I think it might just be one particular driver–but I’ve had at least 3 packages from UPS left, literally, in the middle of the road.

I live out in the farm country, at the very end of a dirt road that wends through my neighbor’s dairy farm. My neighbor has a working farm, and owns most of the land around my house. He drives his tractors and trucks practically to my doorway every day, although our houses are a good 1/4 mile apart. In other words, this road is NOT my driveway. It’s part of a working farm. I’m concerned that my neighbor (or more likely, one of his teenage farm hands) will drive over a package with something delicate in it. Because UPS keeps leaving them IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR ROAD. I could understand, given the weather we’ve had lately, that the driver might not want to bring the big brown van clear out to my house. But why leave a package where people will drive? Why not on our mailbox (which, as is often the case in rural communities, is much closer to the main road–1/2 mile from the house)? or with our neighbor, whose house is very accessible? Or call us and ask us to come to the distribution center?

I wanted to know if anyone else has had this issue. Also, if I called UPS, is there anything they could do, e.g. making a note in their database about how our house is ALL THE WAY AT THE END OF THE ROAD, that would prevent this problem in the future? Besides an apology, what action should I ask them to take?

You know, allegedly, you should be able to call UPS and they will make a note and tell the driver the road isn’t your driveway — but from what we understand the effectiveness of this method tends to vary wildly.

You can also put up a big sign that says, “This road is not a driveway, don’t dump packages here.” Or maybe provide some sort of container near your mailbox for UPS to hide the packages.

If you try the sign idea and it doesn’t work — please, please send us some pictures.

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