Large but cheap Amazon "test" item?

[GreenSheep]

We're moving from a big city to a rural area. We'll be 1 mile from the nearest town (with post office), population 500, and a half hour drive from the nearest "big town" (groceries, etc.). We already order a lot of food staples and other household basics from Amazon, and I suspect we'll be doing even more of that after we move. We have the option to put a mailbox in the row at the bottom of our dirt road, or we can do what the sellers of our house did, which was to have a PO box at the post office a mile away. (Citing security, rain, large packages, etc.) They say that they were given an actual street address for the post office, so they were still able to get things from companies that don't ship to a PO box.

Given the fact that my husband works from home and I'll be RE in about 3 years, we'd prefer to have things delivered directly to the house. I'm not sure if they'd go up a 0.4 mile dirt road and then another few car lengths on our gravel driveway to actually deliver to our door, though. So we're thinking of ordering a few things that we wouldn't miss if they never arrived. Ideally things we'd actually use if they did arrive, but no big deal if we have to just donate them or throw them away.

Of course, if anyone has any experience with rural Amazon delivery in general, that would be really helpful, too.

[Padonak]

I would buy some water. Maybe a pack of 12 bottles.

[Spork]

I live in a rural area.  Our deliveries are really randomly unpredictable. 

It really depends on the drivers. 

==USPS==
When we first moved here, our USPS mail carrier was awful.  She was foul tempered and just could not get mail in the right box.  We got a PO box for the first several years.  It was a bit of a pain... probably almost 10 miles away.  But we got our mail.  At some point, they changed carriers and we relaxed and moved back to the box at the end of our driveway.  Our driveway is about 300 ft, paved asphalt.  When we'd get USPS packages, she'd bring them up and put them on the front porch.  Easy peasy.  About 2 weeks ago, we seemed to get a new mail carrier again.  This one has so far delivered our packages to:
* the cow pasture across the street... where they sat in the rain for a week before we noticed them
* just inside the open gate in the weeds
* drove all the way up the driveway and threw the package out the window onto the sidewalk
* We've yet to get a package delivered to the door.  Just yesterday I found an option on usps.com where you can give instructions to the mail carrier on where you want your packages.  I specified "front porch".  I have yet to get a package to see if this works.

==Fedex==
This depends on the driver.  One of them delivers to the front door (covered).  One of them delivers to the side door (uncovered).  One of them delivers to an outbuilding behind the house (uncovered).  We've even put a big plastic box out there when it was raining with "FEDEX: Put package in plastic box".  And they put it beside the box.

==UPS==
Up until a week ago, they've always delivered up the driveway and onto the covered porch.  Last week we must have also got a new UPS driver.  They're now tossing boxes out at the end of the driveway out in the elements.

[pseudoyams]

TP!

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk

[lizzzi]

Yes, a big order of toilet paper or paper towels.

[startingsmall]

Our old house, in a rural area, involved a looooong driveway lined with Leyland Cypress trees that were guaranteed to scratch any FedEx/UPS truck all to heck. Even so, they ALWAYS drove up the driveway and left the package somewhere relatively logical. Usually that was on the front porch (covered).... although sometimes, when we ordered dog food (big boxes), our UPS driver would place them in our detached garage if we had left the door open. That one surprised me a bit, but it was super-convenient once I figured it out because they were less likely to get wet in the garage and I could leave them out there until we were ready to use them.

[yachi]

Laundry basket!  I saw an amazon fail where a number of laundry baskets were ordered together but shipped in separate boxes instead of stacked inside eachother.

[chemistk]

Another one for TP. Cheap, and you'll definitely use it. Plus your carrier won't hate you if they do drop it at the door.

[GreenSheep]

Thanks for the ideas! TP... why didn't I think of that? And thanks especially to those who live/have lived in a rural place like this. It helps to know what we might be getting into.

[Jmoody10]

I'll second some of the earlier advice - make friends with the USPS/UPS drivers. Our items are delivered down a 3/4 of a mile dirt road.