Snow plow in Manalapan, New Jersey knocks down neighborhood mailboxes

MANALAPAN, New Jersey (WABC) -- One casualty of this week's nor'easter was a neighborhood's mailboxes in Manalapan, New Jersey.

Video captured a snow plow burying box after box in the town, in an effort to clear snow from the streets.

Now town leaders are apologizing and offering to pay up for some of the damage.

One sweep of the plow cleared the snow in front of Andrew Martung's Manalapan home, but it wiped out his mailbox too. His surveillance cameras caught it.

"My neighbor called me and said your mailbox is down. I looked at the camera and couldn't believe what I saw," said Martung.

His was not the only one, as boxes around the corner also got creamed.

"Well they just came through and just hit it with the plow, they just kept going. At least they got the snow off the road," said Manalapan resident Stephen Henin.

And we know nothing stops the US Postal Service. Manalapan has miles of roads to plow, many of them in front of 14,000 houses.

They say about 50-75 mailboxes were knocked down, but the DPW says it wasn't drivers just plowing down mailboxes, it was the kind of snow they had to move.

"The best way I can describe it is was like plowing wet cement and like a wave on the beach, what it hit it knocks over," said Manalapan Director of Public Works Alan Spector. "Most of these mailboxes were the simple mailboxes that have the 4 by 4 posts in the ground."

The plow drivers do their best, Spector says, to clear from curb to curb so mail trucks can deliver without problems. Martung says this is the second time his mailbox was damaged.

"I thought I re enforced it enough. Obviously it wasn't," he said.

The township has a plan already in the books to make good on all the damage.

"We have a township policy that's capped at $50 per occurrence," said Spector.

"We do feel bad for the people, we're even going a little further this time, our crews were out fixing them, simple fixes," said Deputy Mayor Jack McNaboe.

Residents can contact the township if their mailbox took a hit.