Deutsche Post, which operates almost all of Germany’s postboxes, recently changed the collection times for most of them. This was discussed on the German Forum starting 4th of April. I wondered if this could be seen in the database.

So I created this diagram:

It shows the activity on postboxes with collection times over the past year, based on the timestamp of the current snapshot. The black line shows daily activity, while the red line shows the 20-day average of the same data.

Large changes occured in autumn 2024 and February 2025. I am unaware of the cause of the former, but the latter was a revert in the region of Hamburg and Lower Saxony that was not related to collection times.

Ignoring these peaks, there were about 50 changes per day on average before the Deutsche Post changed the collection times. Since end of March 2025, activity increased to around 80 changes per day — meaning around 800 additional changes have occurred since then. (Which means: Yes, it can be seen in the database.)

But, this is much less, than I expected. There are about 60,000 postboxes with collection times, and another 22,000 without. Assuming that approximately half of the boxes have recently changed their collection times and the mapping activity doesn’t change much, it will take about 4 to 5 years (depending on how you calculate) for all boxes to be updated. But maybe mapping new collection times will gain more monumentum soon?

 

Where did the Changes occure?

I also wondered where these changes had occured, so I created a map:

This map shows all the locations of all the postboxes that have been mapped in Germany. Black dots represent postboxes without collection times, while blue dots represent postboxes with the last change occuring more than a year ago. Dots ranging from yellow to red show activity in the last year, with red dots representing the most recent changes.

The mass revert in the north of Germany is clearly visible. Additionally, some places with lots of recent activity are visible: Bielefeld, for example.

 

Which Changes Happend in the last 50 Days?

I also wondered what hat happened since the end of March, so I created another map:

This map shows the activity over the last 50 days. Some knobs are visible, for example in Berlin and Munich, as well as a lot of background noise. I was most surprised by the patterns in northern Germany: It looks as though someone drove along some routes and updated all postboxes along the way. It’s probably been done by someone who does job-related postbox visiting.