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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

#151

Post by briandear »

thepasswordis wrote: post #86
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…

Okay I'm genuinely curious why "mail lady" wouldn't fly today. ...why not?

Because people are so ultra-woke that the term would trigger people. Remember, we are in a time when the term “master branch” is considered offensive.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#152

Post by briandear »

njharman wrote: post #103
thepasswordis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay I'm genuinely curious why "mail lady" wouldn't fly today. ...why not?

Because of cancel culture. Out of millions of voices it only takes is 1 or 2 loud ones to be offended (really, mistakingly, or maliciously) for the bandwagon of ostracism to get rollin.

Not sure why this is downvoted. It’s a fact.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#153

Post by josho »

cialowicz wrote: post #139
specialist wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, this new design isn't nearly 'weird" enough. Why have a nose at all? Put driver's seat over the front wheels. Like the VW Vanagon (Eurovans). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Type_2_(T3) These are gonna be EVs, right? Might as well do it right.

Having a nose that crumples is helpful in case of accidents. Turns out that VW Vanagons are deathtraps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmixmEkfLu0

Did you watch the video? The Volkswagen faired as ‘safe as a car’. It was the other manufacturers that failed miserably.

My conclusion from watching is that it seems like safety is a design problem that not every mfg designed for.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#155

Post by nine_k »

chrisseaton wrote: post #37
marcinzm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same reason Amazon runs its own shipping network instead of relying on UPS or Fedex. At a certain scale it is cheaper to get a custom option that specifically fits your needs rather than retro-fitting something else. The USPS bought 100,000 of the last truck and, for example, one of the requirements was long service life. Building a truck you can use for 30 years is probably much cheaper than buying multiple lowe…

> The same reason Amazon runs its own shipping network instead of relying on UPS or Fedex. Amazon use off-the-shelf vehicles though. > one of the requirements was long service life I wonder how they require that. Does the manufacturer have to warranty them all for 30 years? That's extraordinary!

OK, both Amazon and Facebook (and likely Google, can't remember) order custom servers for their datacenters, instead of going with readily available Supermicro, Dell, HP, IBM offerings.

Same reasoning here: at such a scale, having a custom-built thing optimized for a bunch of your specific requirements, and made uniform, pays off.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#156

Post by zelon88 »

I've always wondered certain vehicles were chosen for fleets. However the original mail truck always made sense to me. It was small, durable, and simple with it's OHV engine and solid rear axle. But what about other civil service cars? When I was growing up the de-facto Police vehicle and taxi cab was the Panther platform Ford Crown Victoria. A rear wheel drive, V8, large, lumbering, expensive, complex luxury sedan that mostly lives in cities such as Boston and NYC where it snowed half the year and rarely could ever go faster than 50mph. Yet almost unanimously everyone decided to go with the 12mpg option that had almost twice the moving pieces in it's engine as the competition with smaller engines.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#157

Post by briandear »

Robotbeat wrote: post #76
imwillofficial wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things take time in the real world. Unfortunately there are whole supply chains to deal with. 10% is a solid start and shows intention beyond just a proof of concept.

That sounds like an excuse. They’re already using vehicles today. There’s no good reason that 90% of these can’t be electric.

There are probably a lot of reasons. You are assuming there is no good reason, but obviously there is.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#158

Post by raldi »

zelon88 wrote: post #156

I've always wondered certain vehicles were chosen for fleets. However the original mail truck always made sense to me. It was small, durable, and simple with it's OHV engine and solid rear axle. But what about other civil service cars? When I was growing up the de-facto Police vehicle and taxi cab was the Panther platform Ford Crown Victoria. A rear wheel drive, V8, large, lumbering, expensive, complex luxury sedan t…

NYPD uses Impalas

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#159

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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…

Rural USPS mail carriers will sometimes use right hand drive SUVs and minivans. There is also a bigger "ice cream truck" for packages.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#160

Post by kube-system »

Robotbeat wrote: post #147
s0rce wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the charging infrastructure isn't available?

A literal 120V exterior outlet? 83% of these vehicles drive in the city. They drive on average 18 miles a day (typical routes being about 45 miles). You don't need a 150kW Supercharger station, you just need a 1.2kW regular old 120V exterior outlet used for trimming the bushes. Even a cheap RV hookup would be overkill. If a federal government agency in the most powerful national on the planet can't take the most obvi…

Yes, there are probably very few outlets where mail trucks currently park. These things are parked in the middle of parking lots, not in garages. And you need more than one outlet, you need one for every truck that parks there. And I am sure no current USPS office has power service hooked up for several hundred amps of draw that was never anticipated to be used.

There's no way to do a project this big without phasing it in. The USPS has many tens of thousands of buildings.

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