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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

#341

Post by jonfw »

Larrikin wrote: post #180
ping_pong wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they looked too good, the sad fact is that they might be targeted for being stolen.

People would not steal nice looking federal government vehicles for similar reasons as they didn't steal wasteful spending on those Dodge Charger police cars. You're committing a crime where the government has the maximum amount of incentive to hunt you down and charge with the most number of crimes. Stealing a regular person's car and crashing it isn't of much concern if you don't kill anyone.

And a charger is still a consumer automobile, where if you registered it under a different VIN (from a totaled charger probably) you would be able to drive it around without raising eyebrows.

What the hell are you going to do with a stolen mail truck? Everybody who sees it will know exactly where you got it

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#342

Post by jonfw »

chrisseaton wrote: post #303
dangerbird2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mail trucks have pretty drastically different requirements than a parcel delivery truck. Mail trucks are designed for a right sided driver and lots of stops on every block, so good visibility to avoid crashing into oncoming traffic or hitting pedestrians in the front is obligatory. Amazon, UPS, and friends have much more infrequent stops. USPS also needs vehicles that can last for decades with much lower maintenance…

> requirements ... obligatory ... needs ... Yet other countries' mail services manage without all these things just fine?

The US is unique in it's low population density and enormous scale of it's postal service.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#343

Post by Sanzig »

makomk wrote: post #306
clort wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

also: In my city (in UK) the lamp posts date from a long time ago. Only a few years ago all the sodium lamps were replaced by lower power LEDs, which presumably means that much of the cabling is now massively redundant.

Don't underestimate the efficiency of old-fashioned sodium lamps, they're pretty close to that of LEDs from what I understand. I think part of the reason places are so keen to install LED streetlights is that on paper they have a much longer lifespan than the bulbs in the sodium lamps they're replacing. Also, they're more modern and everyone knows how efficient they are.

Low pressure sodium vapor lamps are also very yellow [1], whereas a modern LED is much more broad-spectrum and thus looks nicer.

Unfortunately, it does mean that LED lamps are a greater hazard for light pollution.

[1] Low-pressure sodium vapor lamp spectrum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-vapor_lamp#/media/File:...

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#344

Post by delecti »

Evidlo wrote: post #236
tolbish wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that the term "mail lady" offends anyone. It doesn't. The point is that singling out her gender is needless, and kinda seems a bit strange if gender was never really pertinent to the story in the first place. "Cancel culture" would be going through high school recommended reading lists and removing books that focused "wrongly" on gender or something.

> It's not that the term "mail lady" offends anyone. It doesn't. I think that's too generous. I've definitely met people who just enjoy feeling indignation at anything.

Lets be realistic, that's most people. Everyone thinks their pet causes to get offended about are justified. Even people getting indignant about cancel culture are enjoying their indignation.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#345

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #142
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…

For what it's worth, that's never been USPS's motto or policy. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/87770/neither-snow-nor-r...

I have official USPS "merch" adorned with that motto and the USPS mail trucks in a rural Colorado town I often visit have a portion of it written on the sides. It may not be their official policy or motto (likely for legal reasons) but it is officially associated with the service in some capacity.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#346

Post by kube-system »

sjwright wrote: post #311
kube-system wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking spaces in the US are, by and large, not commonly populated with dryer outlets or RV hookups. This is a common issue that affects EV adoption, particularly when people lease the property where they park their car. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/business/electric-cars-ci... You are entirely correct that the concept of an electrical outlet is not difficult. Commercial real estate is a bit harder, however. Be…

I still don't understand your point. For your argument to be valid, you'd have to assert that a factory can build new mail trucks faster than you could add charging points. There will be one factory pumping out cars on a specialised, serial production line. It will be competing with 30 thousand locations operating in parallel.

It’s an issue of distribution.

LLVs are past their expiration date everywhere and likely need replaced all over the country. But, it doesn’t make sense to add charging capability ad hoc for a single parking space in a lot when a new vehicle is sent out - the marginal cost of each space is not linear — you’d retrofit an entire parking lot at one time.

If 10 locations have 10 existing vehicles each, and all of them need to replace one failing LLV, going 100% electric for new vehicles means you need 10 vehicles but a retrofit for 100 parking spaces. It does not make sense to tear up a parking lot every year for one new vehicle over the next 10 years.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#347

Post by colineartheta »

dorfsmay wrote: post #233
colineartheta wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? AC is unrelated to the energy source of the drivetrain.

At the end of the day, you need enough energy onboard, and gas is much more dense. Hybrid cars turn the ICE engine on at intersection when AC or heat is on, to convert gas into electricity and avoid depleting the batteries completely.

Thanks for explaining energy density to me! Now explain why AC matters when the new contract is for ICE vehicles. You and the original commenter I was responding to seem to be worried about nothing.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#348

Post by rtkwe »

Robotbeat wrote: post #132

It's interesting that "cost" is the reason given for why these vehicles aren't electric, but... how could that be? Batteries for electric carmakers are not that expensive any more, maybe $150/kWh. LLVs are currently horrendously inefficient (fleet average of about 9mpg). They have a ~13 gallon tank for a range of about 120 miles. They drive about 18 miles a day on average (total fleet average, so some are idle and pr…

They would also need to provide infrastructure for charging the fleet, possibly multiple times a day depending on what the routes look like, which is a significant cost if they want to do more than one battery worth of a route in a day, even if they did have short enough routes that they could do overnight charging for everything that's still a lot of power draw and would need expensive electrical upgrades. Sticking with gas there's no further infrastructure investment required.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#349

Post by lordloki »

CathedralBorrow wrote: post #335
creato wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's annoying to have to constantly wonder if I'm saying something offensive when I absolutely do not intend that. In this case, I wouldn't have thought anything was wrong with "mail lady" and might have said the same thing if my mail carrier were a woman (which she is). Now I read this thread and realize that some people would think it is a problem. This cultural wave of making seemingly harmless language into probl…

It's easy to offend without intending to, so I don't get how your intentions are relevant. Yes it can be annoying and difficult to consider the impact of your words and how they might be perceived by other, different, people. It would be simpler if you didn't have to think about that at all. But is that really the argument? It's a big hassle and you'd rather not have to do it?

It is too big of a hassle. We should not have to overanalyze everything we say. It is not even possible. We don't speak in code, we speak in highly interprative languages. Many meanings and interpretations of a statement can be made. People from different ages, regions, religions, etc. will interpret things different ways. It is literally impossible to view everything you say through all possible interpretations. There is no way that any single person can know every possible interpretation of what they say.

Re: Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird

#350

Post by lordloki »

drewzero1 wrote: post #140
thepasswordis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Probably just because of the gendered noun? "Mailman" and "mail lady" having been replaced in general use by the non-gendered "mail carrier" or "postal worker."

I just call them all Clavins.
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