Bids open for new USPS Mail Trucks

The comments on that article are a great read

If they try out for it, Mitsubishi might finally get some sales numbers on their i-MiEV. They only sell a couple hundred a year, but keep bringing it back every year. They've shown a cargo concept a few times in other markets.

Would you want the government paying Tesla prices especially when they haven't produced anything in the quantities the government buys? Generally if a large order is placed for an experimental product from an inexperienced company things tend to go pretty badly wrong and get very expensive to fix.

I have a feeling they are going to go with an American company. They could possibly go with a foreign company, but we'll see.

I don't think Tesla is happening.

Does this mean the market will once again get flooded with limited slip Postal rear ends? The Dana 44s found in the old Jeeps are the bomb, but they are getting hard to find. Anyone know the rear track on the LLV and what rear end is in there.

Some LLV rear ends are LSD, some are not. I have no idea why they are not all equipped with it. My old LLV had an LSD in it but when it when in for a major service at the Vehicle Maintenance Facility, it came back with a new but open rear end. Predictably, it sucked in the snow after that. My current LLV has no LSD either but I'm on a different route and I don't need it as much-lots more city streets vs residential ones.

What's killing the USPS right now is the proprietary nature of the LLV. Most parts are all specific for it which means paying specialty places to custom make replacement parts or refurbish old ones. Plus, they have no rear windows, back up alarms or cameras so careless drivers tend to run over a lot of stuff/people every year. They're also just too small to carry the amount of parcels that are being shipped through USPS these days. We really need at least double the cubic feet of cargo space to meet current needs and more than that if USPS keeps the new vehicle in the fleet for the projected life of 20 years.

An off the shelf mini van would be idea, but only if it were RHD. We simply cannot use a LHD vehicle on most routes except the all walking (no curbside delivery) ones. LHD means that you cannot even go out and assist on a mounted route if we are shorthanded so an all RHD fleet is required. We've bought a lot of mini vans recently to get us by and they are severely restricting the routes that those carriers can actually work on.

All electric vehicles would suck because they'd never have enough heat in the cab on cold winter days. Plus the infrastructure needed to charge every truck every night would not work because a lot of post offices park their delivery vehicles in public alleys and parking lots. It wouldn't be difficult for somebody to unplug every truck in the lot around 7pm and cripple an entire Post Office for the next day. Hybrid gas/electric could work but straight gasoline powered is the easiest option.

The real plus to the LLV is the aluminum body. They never rust and that's kept them running for decades. A lot of frames have been replaced but that's still cheaper than doing rust repair on the Aerostars, Caravans and Windstars that have been purchased over the years. An off the shelf mini van (even and RHD version) is going to rust so the USPS will not be getting 20 to 30 years out of this new fleet. Maybe they can galvanize the sheet metal or set up a special assembly line and build bodies out of aluminum. All I know is that something has to be done to make the bodies more durable if they are going to last for a long time.

I really interested to see what they come up with.

I totally get having the RHD. It boggles my mind how these rural folks drive LHD cars. The two rural carriers here have a Park Avenue and a Colorado.

My old town had two RHD Cherokees and a RHD Subaru Legacy wagon.

Ford seems to have the best candidate for a stock vehicle.

I would love it if they came up with something like this:

or this (Rutledge Wood's awesome delivery truck):

Or perhaps some more modern re-imagined version. Anything but more of those horrid things with Oldsmobile Alero headlights.

Jimbob, I'm loving the comments about how these things are really used.

Thanks Keith. I deal with LLVs all the time. I was a mail carrier for years, then became a supervisor for a spell before taking a voluntary demotion back to a carrier so I could get my MBA. Before anyone asks, no the USPS wouldn't work around my class schedule to allow me to go back to school on my own dime. Since I graduated, I've been bouncing between carrier and temporary supervisor for a while so I know all the ins and outs of working daily with an LLV and dealing with repairs and maintenance.

Basically they are beat on. Hardly anyone drives them with any mechanical sympathy and repairs are usually deferred until they seriously affect daily use. Got no wipers? No flashers? No heat in the cabin? Too bad. Won't start? Call the mechanic. That sort of stuff. I take a lot of care of my assigned truck and it's always clean and driven with care. The substitute carriers that use it when I'm off from work pound on the poor thing. I honestly can't imagine an off the shelf mini van taking the abuse.

BTW. The picture that I posted was taken while my truck was parked, with the engine shut off and the ignition key in my pocket. My wife brought me lunch and wanted to snap a picture so I did something funny for her. I don't want anyone to think that I'm crazy enough to try to deliver mail like that.

Huh. My mail carrier drives a green LHD camry with a bench seat, and sits on the right.

In reply to edwardh80:

I think you're thinking of UPS trucks, we're talking about the Postal Service.

My wife once had a return label for a package from UPS. She took it to the post office and discovered that UPS is not USPS. She told them it was confusing and the USPS should change their name.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Those damn acronyms will get you every time.

mblommel wrote: If it's going to be a custom built vehicle anyways seems like it would make sense to go hybrid. For most of the delivery driving I would think electric mode would be fine. Off the top of my head this seems like a perfect project for Tesla.

Wrightspeed has actually been working on a hybrid system for delivery trucks for a couple of years now.

In reply to GameboyRMH:

I looked at their site. Looks pretty interesting. Glad to see somebody is working on this. Seems like it could make economic sense to fleets, how much fuel cost could be saved?

Fueled by Caffeine wrote: Why do I want to lsx one of these things. Turbo it and go make 600 hp.

You're not the only one. And I'd see if some circle track front suspension bits and changes to the rear leaf springs could make it corner too.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: In reply to Keith Tanner: Those damn acronyms will get you every time.

Oops. Too true. I missed one of the esses

With regenerative braking, I could see how a postal vehicle could benefit from a hybrid drivetrain. All that braking at each delivery point can be recovered. Maybe even a flywheel or supercap instead of a battery setup.

It would benefit all of us, because that's a pretty big fleet and it would bring down the cost of the technology.

I would think the Postal service would be a good test bed for new tech but I think all the good that would come out of it would be overshadowed by news stories about how the govt overspent X dollars on a minivan.

Keith Tanner wrote: With regenerative braking, I could see how a postal vehicle could benefit from a hybrid drivetrain. All that braking at each delivery point can be recovered. Maybe even a flywheel or supercap instead of a battery setup. It would benefit all of us, because that's a pretty big fleet and it would bring down the cost of the technology.

Hybrid would work great for a mounted delivery in a suburban setting or even light industrial/commercial. Rural not so much. One thing they surely need is more package space. The backs of those LLV's get jammed up at Xmas time due to all the internet shopping everyone is doing. I've seen the USPS using rental Uhaul vans when they cant use LLV/FFV's around here.

I associate those little LLVs with my area - call it suburbia. Drive for 150', stop. Drive for 150', stop. Rural would be different - but you're still stopping quite a bit. Coming to a full stop every mile or two then reaccelerating is still a good use for KERS. Interstate travel, not as good.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

Rural carriers around here purchase their own vehicles......and I'd love to see any proof of a hybrid drivetrain that has been relatively successful for 20 years. We aren't including diesel electric locomotives for this either.

What will happen, they'll overspend on something overbuilt and overcomplicated....then waste a few hundred billion trying to figure it out, only to continue using the older stuff....Ya know, just like that pile of berkeley known as the JSF.

I'm not sure the USPS has the same culture as the military, where all you have to do for increased funding is yell TERRORISTS AND WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA. And of course there's no proof of a hybrid drivetrain working for 20 years, as they've not yet been available in any numbers for that long. But that doesn't mean it can't work. They'll last through a 24 hour sprint race.

If rural carriers are running their own vehicles, then this is not for them. It's a replacement for a vehicle currently in service. The majority of which are likely running around more densely populated areas than Wyoming.