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Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

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Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#91

Post by incanus77 »

daveslash wrote: post #57

I had never seen a USPS vehicle until I was a legal adult and moved to college. I grew up in a very rural part of New England, America - on a dirt road. Winter had plenty of snow and plowing wasn't a guarantee at all . Considering the USPS Creed "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" -- Snow is the first one ! Our "mail lady"** drov…

Same for me — rural town 30 years ago. A classmate's mom was the mail carrier for the whole town and used a station wagon similarly fitted (RHD, sign on the back).

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#92

Post by organsnyder »

29083011397778 wrote: post #77
Robotbeat wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally just need a 120V outlet. You can’t tell me that exterior outlets are rare or expensive. The fuel saved in a single year would easily exceed the price of putting some exterior outlets in a parking lot.

I would assume they're already in half the parking lots in the North - block heaters would require outlets, so anywhere that gets below -20C would likely be able to have electric vehicles today.

Block heaters are only needed for diesel vehicles or areas with really low temperatures. I live in Michigan and the only block heaters I know of are used for school buses.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#93

Post by marshmallow_12 »

diggan wrote: post #10

Why have a specific design anyways? In both Sweden and Spain, the cars carrying mail is typically just a normal half-truck (not sure about the correct name) with the post office branding. Here are two examples: https://c8.alamy.com/comp/DA5TW8/yellow-correos-spanish-post... - https://st2.depositphotos.com/3982569/5739/i/950/depositphot... Seems to work fine. Packages gets carried in bigger trucks, but still just busi…

in uk all the services drive boring old Transits or whatever. At least Royal Mail have some respect for their Postman Pat legacy and paint their vans red. But there is one outstanding exception: UPS. I don't even see so many of them around, so i'm not pure why it's economical for them and why only they use custom vans, but i respect them for that.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#94

Post by jccalhoun »

daveslash wrote: post #57

I had never seen a USPS vehicle until I was a legal adult and moved to college. I grew up in a very rural part of New England, America - on a dirt road. Winter had plenty of snow and plowing wasn't a guarantee at all . Considering the USPS Creed "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" -- Snow is the first one ! Our "mail lady"** drov…

I grew up in a rural area too and the mail carrier drove their own vehicles. In fact, when I was a kid my parents bought a stick shift from someone and the person said they were selling it because they got a job as a mail carrier and needed an automatic.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#95

Post by Spooky23 »

meepmorp wrote: post #34
lisper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA actually explains all this pretty well: "The requirements dictated the step-in height, the glass height (including the low side glass), the vision angles, the internal height, and the maximum roof height," wrote Kahn in a tweet. "That was all locked in." Other constraints included the ability to reach the mailbox while in the seated position, and the requirement to see the ground around the vehicle...

I saw that, but those constraints don't seem to be necessary for postal vehicles in other countries. The person I was responding to was wondering why other countries seem to just fine with regular looking vans that have postal branding. It's worth asking about, isn't it? Just because those things are spec'd as they are, that doesn't mean they need to be.

At scale it makes sense to have control of part supplies and have consistent service processes. UPS and to a lesser extent FedEx also use custom bodies.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#96

Post by uptown »

tpmx wrote: post #2

No mention of increased crumple zone, which was probably the entire reason for the redesign in the first place? Sheesh. I assume the article was written entirely based on a press release together with a nice pack of product photos. The previous models were injury/death traps.

"No mention of increased crumple zone"

Can't they just write "DO NOT BEND" in sharpie on the side?

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#97

Post by maxerickson »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #87
maxerickson wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My rural carrier had no problem putting mail in my mailbox from a modified jeep. They would stop and get out for packages of any size (putting them by the house). In town here, it's all walking routes. I wonder what the numbers are on curbside vs walking?

Your rural mail carrier selected the vehicle based on a known defined mailbox height.

Yes, that was my point, they were able to buy an (apparently) suitable vehicle 'off the shelf'.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#100

Post by jcrawfordor »

meepmorp wrote: post #34
lisper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA actually explains all this pretty well: "The requirements dictated the step-in height, the glass height (including the low side glass), the vision angles, the internal height, and the maximum roof height," wrote Kahn in a tweet. "That was all locked in." Other constraints included the ability to reach the mailbox while in the seated position, and the requirement to see the ground around the vehicle...

I saw that, but those constraints don't seem to be necessary for postal vehicles in other countries. The person I was responding to was wondering why other countries seem to just fine with regular looking vans that have postal branding. It's worth asking about, isn't it? Just because those things are spec'd as they are, that doesn't mean they need to be.

Quite a few national postal services use custom or semi-custom vehicles, e.g. Deutsche Post. For those that use more "off the shelf" vehicles they are probably still custom orders specifying an exact feature set. But at the end of the day, it just becomes a matter of cost/benefit. The USPS is enormous, and that large scale makes it financially viable for them to purchase a custom vehicle since the quantities are so great. This allows them to get exactly what they want which gains some operating efficiency.

Oshkosh is also a very well established manufacturer of vehicles for the government and holds substantial military contracts for custom vehicles such as the highly recognizable HEMTT. So the Oshkosh purchase is fairly low-risk in that Oshkosh has a proven track record of delivering vehicles for government fleets.

UPS and FedEx also make use of largely custom vehicles. They are based on off-the-shelf step vans, but to a large extent OTS step vans no longer exist in the US and nearly all of them you see are contract designs for fleets. There's a bit of a cyclical relationship here as the modern step van is basically defined by UPS and FedEx, which purchase their trucks custom to specification from body-makers like Utilimaster and formerly Grumman-Olson. Grumman popping up here again is not coincidental - the USPS and UPS formerly got their custom trucks from the same manufacturer, but Grumman-Olson is no longer nearly as important of a player as it once was.

The short answer: USPS is contracting for at least 50,000 vehicles. When you buy 50,000 of just about anything you gain a lot of leverage to customize.

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