Painting postboxes

Callum Doolan-McCullough, from our property and facilities solutions team, is one of a cherished few, who take enormous pride in restoring our 115,000 postboxes and ensuring they always look their best.

Callum lives in the village of Allhallows, just outside Rochester. He started his working life by training as a painter and decorator before working as a contract manager with a cleaning company.

After a number of years, Callum decided on a career change and by pure chance, spotted a Royal Mail job ad for a ‘pillarbox painter’. Within just one week, he had started doing, in his words, ‘the best job I’ve ever had.’

‘My role primarily consists of painting the boxes’ said Callum. ‘My official title is 'street furniture engineer,' but no one has a clue what that is, so I just say I paint postboxes. I also fit, change, and fix locks, and blank boxes off if they’re out of use. And, I’m called if a postman or woman can't get into a box.

‘When I'm painting, I'll turn up to a box and “prep” it. This consists of scraping it down to remove all the old and flaking paint, and any protrusions, graffiti or stickers. I'll then rub it all down with wire brushes, wire drill attachments before using sand paper to make sure the box is nice and smooth before painting. Finally, I make sure the box gets an even coat of red paint; and black for the base. The paint is quick-drying, so it’s ready to use again shortly..  

‘I work all over Kent. The boxes are on a cyclical maintenance scheme and come to me in postcode groups. I might get a batch of jobs in CT11, and when they're completed, I'll move on to ME9 and so on. There’s obviously a wider team of maintenance engineers up and down the country, but on a day to day basis, I work on my own all day.

‘I love all aspects of my job. I love the freedom, and being outdoors, especially in the summer. I love that people come up and talk to me and ask questions about my job. It's quite an unusual job and you don't see too many postbox painters about, so a lot of people like to see me in action.

‘It's very rare that you can take such pride in something, but with this job, I can. I love making the boxes look brighter and tidier. I love being able to look at my work and know that I'm personally responsible for making them look nicer.

‘Since doing what I do, I've become fascinated. I've become a real nerd about postboxes. I like spotting old and rare boxes and I like to know the history behind them. I've got books on them, and I'm now even a fully paid-up member of The Letterbox Study Group. It's essentially a group of postbox enthusiasts, who study, talk about and “spot” postboxes. My work has even made it into a couple of issues of their quarterly magazine!

‘I'm really lucky that I have a job I enjoy so much. It's not for everyone, but it suits me fine.’

Check out Callum’s work on Instagram: www.instagram.com/the_postbox_painter/ or Facebook:  www.facebook.com/thepostboxpainter