Like a letter or package deal that was regarded as misplaced however lastly will get delivered, and after greater than 10 years of planning, deliberation and infighting, the US Postal Service (USPS) has begun to problem its new electrical Subsequent Technology Supply Car to letter carriers.
The NGDVs are constructed by Oshkosh Protection, which gained the contract to make the automobiles in 2021. They’re being manufactured at a manufacturing facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and 75% of them can be battery-electric automobiles.
“Our huge expertise in delivering automobiles that excel in probably the most demanding circumstances positions us to offer reliability, security and maintainability for many years forward,” mentioned Tim Block, President of Oshkosh Protection.
To say the NGDV stands out visually can be a substantial understatement. The car’s design features a large windshield and a low-slung hood, the latter of which was designed to permit the motive force—regardless of peak—to see the highway, giving it the looks of a type of goofy mid-to-late twentieth century baseball- or baseball cap-shaped bullpen carts.
However letter carriers aren’t making enjoyable of the car or its seems.
The vans have a spread of 70 miles, greater than ample for the each day common of 12 to fifteen miles coated by a typical city letter service. Not like the automobiles they’re changing—the Grumman Lengthy Life Car, which was the primary metropolis letter service car for which the USPS developed specs versus shopping for off the shelf—they’ve air con, a characteristic that was roundly applauded by the half dozen nameless mail carriers who supplied suggestions on the car.
The brand new automobiles even have extra space for packages, a nod to the Amazonification that the postal service has undergone, as letter carriers at present ship way more packages and much fewer letters and magazines than they did through the twentieth century.
Whereas the Grumman vans needed to be unloaded from the rear, which resulted in just a few accidents and the occasional loss of life after they had been hit by oncoming automobiles, the brand new vans have the cargo door on one aspect, permitting packages to be unloaded immediately onto the curb.
Letter carriers participated within the strategy of designing the specs for the brand new truck, which started in 2014. A few of their solutions—together with non-skid surfaces, lights on the doorsteps and a 3rd solar visor for the windshield—had been integrated into the ultimate design. The vans even have the identical primary security options that new autos at present characteristic, reminiscent of airbags and driver-assistance applied sciences reminiscent of automated emergency braking and a collision-avoidance system.
One letter service, Larry, who drives a battery-electric hybrid to work in New York Metropolis from Suffolk County utilizing the HOV lane, predicted to a reporter that the looks of the brand new electrical vans on streets will immediate the set up of charging stations that native workers can use as effectively, which was advisable by the Common Accounting Workplace in 2023. The chargers, he mentioned, would make it simpler for him to buy an EV for himself for his commute.
It’s clear that the NGDVs will allow postal couriers to serve with larger constancy, maybe in the future reaching the excessive aspirational normal of the Persian mounted postal couriers Herodotus described in E-book 8, Paragraph 98 of “The Persian Wars,” who “…are stopped neither by snow nor rain nor warmth nor darkness from engaging in their appointed course with all velocity.”
Supply: Oshkosh Protection
