The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They're tall and ungainly, with outsize windshields, thick bumpers and duck-bill hoods.

The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are vast. Their hoods resemble a duck bill. Their bumpers are enormous.

“You can tell that (the designers) didn’t have appearance in mind,” postal worker Avis Stonum said.

Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens are getting rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down — and even catching fire.

Within a few years of the initial rollout, the fleet will have expanded to 60,000, most of them electric models, serving as the Postal Service’s primary delivery truck from Maine to Hawaii.

Once fully deployed, they’ll represent one of the most visible signs of the agency’s 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who’s also renovating aging facilities, overhauling the processing and transportation network, and instituting other changes.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    121·
    2 months ago

    Love to see these, and I’m glad the people actually using them are liking them.

    Article could have done without this hand job for DeJoy, though:

    Once fully deployed, they’ll represent one of the most visible signs of the agency’s 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who’s also renovating aging facilities, overhauling the processing and transportation network, and instituting other changes.

    DeJoy had to be pressed to not go forward with the purchase of new gas-powered ones, so I would hardly attribute this to him:

    The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and climate hawk Democrats in Congress are pressing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to backtrack on the purchase of thousands of gasoline-powered U.S. Postal Service vehicles,

    The line about “renovating aging facilities”, overhauling the logistics network, and “instituting other changes” has quite a bit of whitewashing as well:

    Last March, the Postal Service unveiled a 10-year cost-cutting plan that would involve the closure of 18 mail-sorting facilities nationwide, consolidating the closed facilities’ services to other cities in their regions. The plan sparked outrage within the American Postal Workers Union, with leaders saying the planned cutbacks and consolidations would hurt service.

    https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/593413-democrats-press-postmaster-to-go-with-electric-vehicles/