Like a letter or package deal that was considered 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 concern its new electrical Subsequent Era Supply Car to letter carriers.
The NGDVs are constructed by Oshkosh Protection, which gained the contract to make the autos in 2021. They’re being manufactured at a manufacturing facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and 75% of them will probably be battery-electric autos.
“Our huge expertise in delivering autos that excel in probably the most demanding circumstances positions us to supply 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 automobile’s design features a big windshield and a low-slung hood, the latter of which was designed to permit the driving force—regardless of peak—to see the street, 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 automobile or its appears to be like.
The vans have a spread of 70 miles, greater than adequate for the day by day common of 12 to fifteen miles coated by a typical city letter provider. In contrast to the autos they’re changing—the Grumman Lengthy Life Car, which was the primary metropolis letter provider automobile 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 offered suggestions on the automobile.
The brand new autos even have more room for packages, a nod to the Amazonification that the postal service has undergone, as letter carriers right this moment 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 dying after they have been hit by oncoming autos, the brand new vans have the cargo door on one facet, permitting packages to be unloaded straight 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 ideas—together with non-skid surfaces, lights on the doorsteps and a 3rd solar visor for the windshield—have been included into the ultimate design. The vans even have the identical primary security options that new autos right this moment characteristic, comparable to airbags and driver-assistance applied sciences comparable to automated emergency braking and a collision-avoidance system.
One letter provider, 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 nicely, which was beneficial 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 better constancy, maybe sooner or later reaching the excessive aspirational customary of the Persian mounted postal couriers Herodotus described in Guide 8, Paragraph 98 of “The Persian Wars,” who “…are stopped neither by snow nor rain nor warmth nor darkness from undertaking their appointed course with all pace.”
Supply: Oshkosh Protection
