Long Life Vehicle | Hacker News Reader

Long Life Vehicle

postalmuseum.si.edu

247 pointskeeganjw196 comments

My father was a postal delivery worker for some 35+ years (with a law degree, LOL) and I distinctly recall him loving his "LLV". He maybe took it a bit too seriously, but I also recall him occasionally getting "new" test vehicles and hating them compared to his trusty LLV (and it makes me chuckle to recall him often saying 'LLV' out loud & quite proudly; we just thought he was geeky, even if technically accurate).

He absolutely loved these vehicles though. The only consistent complaint he had was their winter performance -- they would get stuck extremely easily, and my recollection was that he'd have to be "pulled out" 1-3 times during most winters.

We were in the midwest, so typically somewhat moderate winters (perhaps a bit less so 20-30 years ago now), but just a bit of snow or ice and they could get hung up pretty easily. I recall the wheels being tiny, and the tires tending towards the bald side, so maybe was preventable but nonetheless they would quite quickly send someone to pull LLVs out any time they got hung up!

Edit -- They also have an incredibly distinct 'whir' sound when in reverse; it's truly unmistakable and 20+ years later I can still identify one by that sound. My father's route included our neighborhood so he'd have a "cookie break" when he dropped our mail off & take his lunch at home, too; the unique reverse sound was an instant giveaway that the LLV was backing into the driveway. Good memories. :)

Why did your father become a postal delivery worker if he had a law degree? Its a rather personal question so please don't feel like you have to answer, but it seems like a non-traditional career path.

I can't speak for his father, but knowing both lawyers and postal workers, I can say that the postal workers are infinitely more satisfied with their careers, hands down.

A cousin of mine went to school to become a patent lawyer. He couldn't land a job to save his life. He's now a stay-at-home father whilst his medical-doctor spouse pads the bank account [all of which is fine, I'm talking only to the law-degree-job points here].

Your favorite person can get the best most awesome degree possible and still work in the mail room. By hook or by crook, that may just be what they enjoy [and in "current year", what that job requires].

I know a woman who graduated from Stanford law about 5 years ago who accomplished her dream by getting a job in environmental law.

She despised the work, made too little money relative to her debt, and now works as an advisor at a law school specializing in helping graduates reduce and manage their debt through all means possible. She regularly posts links to things like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs-UEqJ85KE

A friend of mine practiced law as a public defender before leaving the profession and becoming an inner-city pizza delivery man.

It's fairly common for people with law degrees to either never use the degree, or quit law after a short time because they hate the work, just like it's common for people with humanities education to go into technology and engineering.

One of my fave guitarists, Robert Quine (Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Lou Reed, Brian Eno, Tom Waits, Matthew Sweet) was arguably the first punk rock lead guitar player. But before that he had passed the bar in Missouri and got a job writing tax law articles for Prentice Hall in NJ while commuting to Manhattan to play with the Voidoids on nights and weekends. After a few years, he hated working in law and eventually quit. He looked like a college professor, but he was a total animal on guitar (listen to the two solos he plays on the Voidoids' "Blank Generation" single). He talks about all that in this interview: http://www.furious.com/perfect//quine.html

I have no idea about this specific case, but at least historically it was a degree a lot of people fell into. Father and grandfather were lawyers at white shoe firm. Seems like a decent middle-class job. That undergrad classics degree only got them a low-level job at a publishing house. Maybe law's the way to monetize that degree. Or it just seems really interesting.

Then a lot of people discover they don't like actually being lawyers because associates at big firms work long hours and a lot of the work is very tedious. At least that's what I've seen with people I know. I'm sure the majority with law degrees don't actually practice law.

It's a good question, and one that I probably asked him on many multiple occasions. His answer was always multi-pronged, but the main points were approximately (in order of importance, as I perceived it):

1) Law = Higher stress career.

2) Office vs Outdoors; he loved being outdoors every day, especially loved talking to people -- most everyone on his route knew him by name and he strongly believed in [perhaps incorrectly, as things have changed dramatically] in mail carriers being very 'customer/service oriented'. He loved talking to people, he'd bring mail up to elder-aged peoples homes every day and talk to them for a few minutes, etc. Perhaps a bit Mayberry-esque, even. ;)

3) Moral reasons; a general dislike of bureaucracy (though plenty of that at USPS, and more towards end of his career, which we heard about over dinner ~nightly!); generally a preference for meritocracy (his 'sorting speed' was N times faster than the 'baseline', he would tell us); an extreme disdain for "schmoozing" for lack of a better term.

He never even took the bar exam, which actually surprises me a bit even today. As a young teenager I found it borderline insane, selfishly of course -- I can remember thinking "we'd be in the nicer neighborhood if Dad would just go be a lawyer!", and I remember wondering if my grandfather was upset by it but I was a bit surprised to not really get the impression that it was an issue.

He also had owned & sold a bar in his 30s, had the only home we lived in my entire life paid off in his ~50s, the USPS insurance & pension plans were great, and we lived quite frugally -- so he was comfortable, he carried our own route so he was home 2x each day, the rotating schedule was nice to get Saturdays off occasionally, and he was off work by ~3-4PM every day (except near holiday times when they'd have 20ft of mail and tons of parcels). I actually believe he initially began carrying mail just as a summer job while in college, and then probably kept at it simply because it was fulfilling for him.

He retired a bit early, with >2 years of PTO & Sick Leave time saved up; proceeded to get hip replacement surgery almost immediately -- likely somewhat attributable to walking up/down ~100 flights of stairs each for a nearby apartment complex on his route.

Unfortunately he passed away just 6 weeks after retiring. The funeral procession had ~50 (ish) LLVs in it, and I think he'd have liked it. It made me smile, on what was an otherwise cold day both literally & figuratively speaking. :)

I miss his advice tremendously, he was a very smart person and I often reflect on his decision to become a mailman, despite having a law degree. I have but a [honors!] GED, though more philosophically sometimes I wonder if more succinct & 'adventurous' job -- and a more frugal lifestyle -- might be more fulfilling. I respected his decision though, and as I've aged I definitely feel that I better understand it, as well.

Passing away only six weeks after retiring... man...

When your old a decrease in physical activity can be very bad for your overall health.

Many people live into old age being very active for their age, suffer some minor injury that leaves them bedridden simply because of age then their health declines and they die shortly thereafter. Ask anyone who works in a nursing home and they'll have plenty of stories of 90yr old ladies who were walking a mile a day until they fell and then wound up in the nursing home and died there.

Sounds like the person you're replying to's father got hip surgery right after retiring. I wouldn'd be surprised if the recovery was what killed him.

A heart attack ~10 years prior to death, had otherwise been in relatively good health though a little bit overweight.

I agree though and think you're generally correct; his route required a decent bit of walking/stairs and probably kept him in much better shape.

He became ill about 6wk post-op and passed the night before Valentines Day; an ice storm had just come through and the power was out at his house. Was quite sudden & unexpected, he had been doing well, walking & I'd been taking him to some of his follow-ups. He'd even left me a message on my "voicemail" (answering machine, hah) a few hours prior to passing -- jokingly chastising me for calling him the night before in the middle of 'the' IU college basketball game ("How dare you call me in the middle of...!" hah). Sadly, I've lost the recording since then. =)

An autopsy later revealed, from memory, something like 80-90% calcification of vessels within his heart. Is almost 15 years ago now, and probably only really come to grips with his passing in the last 5 years or so -- I wouldn't wish the experience on anyone, and definitely not something you want to go through as a young 'adult'.

The postal workers I have met take their jobs very seriously, and are generally very helpful. Customer-oriented.

Sounds as if your father had a really good life. Thanks for sharing hise story.

I think a lot of people do law degrees as a not-quite-sure-what-else-to-do professional degree, so they then go into very diverse things afterwards.

Perhaps the stress of law made him go postal.

My uncle was a lawyer up until he decided he'd rather do cattle ranching. Seems like he wasn't the only one to reconsider a career in law.

I don't know why he quit being a lawyer, though. Maybe the stress?

I once hired a lawyer who turned out to be a right cowboy!

The "whir" in reverse for most vehicles is caused by the reverse gear having different types of teeth than the forward gears. These gears (spur instead of the normal helical) are much easier to get into place, but distribute the stress less evenly, causing more noise and wear. Since most vehicles don't back up a lot, this is an acceptable trade-off.

Makes sense! I've definitely heard similar "whir" on many (most?) vehicles when reversing, but not quite the same as the incredibly distinctive sound an LLV makes. It's really an identifiable & unique sound on them specifically, probably just a certain gear/mechanical that's use for LLVs I figure.

Funny what sticks out so bluntly in one's memory, though! :)

Sounds tend to anchor pretty strongly in people’s memory, I think only smells have a tighter bond.

The cut of the gears could be a factor here, but the (lack) of sound insulation could be it too. Cars have aimed for a “refined” feel for decades, with minimization of unwanted noise being part of that. There are many words one could use to describe the LLV, but “refined” probably isn’t one of them.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV the LLV has a THM180 (3-speed automatic --- one of the lightest duty ones in the range, so a bit surprising to find it used here, but then again the engine isn't all that powerful either) which has a compound helical-cut planetary set, so it wouldn't have the characteristic straight-cut whine and only in reverse.

Do the other cars on this list have the same reverse sound?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo-Hydramatic_180

I suspect, as another commenter here remarks, that it's mostly due to a lack of noise dampening.

Also, straight-cut gears are better at basically everything except noise, which is why large truck transmissions, racing, and off-road heavy equipment still use them. They have no side-thrust unlike helicals, and can take far more torque; the only disadvantage is the noise (which some car fans admittedly like --- including me. :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMFeLvlzBwc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-k3YAjIQzI (much higher-revving engine and less sound dampening)

> straight-cut gears are better at basically everything except noise

Noise means vibrations. Which is why e.g. cheap lathes and similar machines have cheaper spur gears, while high end machines often have helical gears. This impacts surface finish, for example.

The whirr is likely straight cut reverse gear in a manual transmission. Used to be common ages ago but cars have moved to "helical cut" for noise reasons. The straight gears survived a fair bit longer for reverse since they're cheaper to make. They're still around in racecars since they're stronger.

My 98 saturn still made that cool sound, but my 2012 doesn't :'(

Straight-cut gears aren't really stronger, but that's close enough for most people to understand, I'd say. The downside of helical gears is they transfer some of the load axially, which transfers stress to other components down the line (bearings, for example) that will then fail faster than they would otherwise. Helical gears are easier to shift and, of course, much quieter, so at the loads that a street-driven car produces the additional axial loading isn't too hard to engineer around.

> Helical gears are easier to shift

Automotive transmissions are constant-mesh. The gears don't "shift" at all. Instead the shifter moves the locking collars that lock various gears to the shafts - but all forward gears are meshed all the time. (Yes, this means that when you're cruising down the highway in 6th, 1st gear is happily spinning along at X0,000RPM.

The career choice is not so surprising from the POV of my family. Several of my uncles went to MIT and ended up working at USPS in delivery as well. They were intelligent, motivated people; but, as immigrants, integrating into culture and climbing a corporate ladder was not really in the equation.

Does HN do comment of the year awards? I nominate this along with the reply about the LLVs at his funeral.

Thanks for sharing, this is the best part of the HN experience.

as an automotive mechanic by trade, these little suckers have always had a place in my heart. Bless the fleet teams that keep them running! the LLV is powered by one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Duke_engine

technically its a pontiac engine, but its powered a ton of stuff including the 92 Chevy Lumina. parts for this engine are almost free, and you wont find a cheaper fleet vehicle other than maybe Crown Victoria.

Mileage...people are complaining about 10mpg but forget to mention this is a V4 and geared at the mission to haul 1 ton of cargo. coming from the shop floor of our diesel engine repair building, 10mpg for a 4 cylinder iron block mail truck is good. freight trucks are often lucky to see 6.

Your lumina engine however is geared much more respectably and will see 18-22 city/highway.

10mpg with almost all stop and go is really not that bad. Most non-electric or hybrid cards would get terrible mileage doing mail routes all day.

Unrelated, but I really enjoy coming across your automotive posts.

>> V4 and geared at the mission to haul 1 ton of cargo

I’m sure you made an honest mistake, but a V4 is very rare - the Duke was an inline-4.

I had one in a 1984 Fiero, and even in a small car like that it was lacking in power. Not that it didn’t have bigger problems, like catching the damn car on fire, which they recalled them for.

Somehow that engine ended up in the even larger Firebird/Camaro...

If you're willing to do the maintenance, vehicles can last forever. Most cars will last a very long time if you keep up with the lubrication maintenance.

But the mail trucks are perfect candidates for replacement with electrics.

That’s true. But some vehicles are longer lasting than others. But it’s pretty common for taxi vehicles to hit a million kms.

Question from somebody who does not know jack about automobiles: would electric vehicles last longer? Tesla was boasting its powertrain's longevity and it got me wondering if that was normally a limiting factor to a vehicle's lifespan and whether electric vehicles were better off. I mean, I'm guessing you've gotta replace the battery a fair few times, but are they as promising as they sound for longevity?

It's hard to answer conclusively but early evidence is good. Their vague goal is a million miles on the drivetrain of the 3 but they warranty 100k miles, so the million is really an aspiration. There are people with 300k on their Ss already. No spark plugs, no oil to change. No fan belt, no transmission, no spark plugs or gas filter or muffler. Tires are the main thing people change. The early worries were about battery degredation. No degredation for me after almost 40k miles.

For the long term Tesla S owners, it looks like the battery degradation levels off asymptotically at around 90% and looks like the curve will stay mostly flat.

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/19/show-me-the-data-the-tr...

Is that battery running close to spec or does it have reserve capacity that it does not normally tap in to?

I wish I could answer. That's a better question for someone from Tesla.

Most Tesla owners charge the car only to 80%. The UI in the car for setting the limit encourages this by marking the zone from 60-80% as "Daily Usage" and the 80%-100% zone as "Trip".

When you purchase the car the default is also set to 80% and the delivery person tells you that you should usually have it set to 80% unless you are going to go on a long trip.

It's hard on lithium batteries to charge them up all the way and so Tesla and maybe some of the other car companies spreads the charge over more batteries to make their lives longer.

This seems amazing. Maintenance costs can easily overwhelm the average car-owner... if this is true, electric cars are more revolutionary than I thought they would be.

One major cost with Tesla is the insurance. I was quoted $380 a month on a model 3. I pay ~$700 for 6 months on 3 cars, 2 of them are 20 year old beaters and one is a new mini convertible.

Why is the insurance so high? I thought the safety features made it more safe == less insurance?

Anecdotally, my Tesla 3 costs the same to insure as my 2006 G35.

Just looked it up it’s $899 for the G35 and $913 per year for the Tesla.

It helps to not have had an accident or a ticket in over 10 years.

Same here - my insurance stayed exactly the same going from a 2010 Nissan Altima to a new Tesla Model 3.

Cost to repair and near absolute unavailability of non-OEM spare parts doesn't help.

It also seems like even moderate damage, which would NOT be a write off on an ICE vehicle, results in them totaling it because Tesla refuses to work on anything with even relatively insignificant damage (and they won't touch anything that has a salvage title, so never buy a used Tesla with a salvage title. Ever.).

A small part of it is the aluminum body panels, I think. Aluminum body panels can be repaired, similar to steel, but requires additional training/different tools. The Model S and X are majority Aluminum, whereas the Model 3 is mostly steel with a rear aluminum subframe. Basically if you get in a fender bender you need to go to a specialty aluminum body shop, which don't exist in high quantities outside of south bay.

Well, lower maintenance is the easy part, that's fairly obvious. The harder thing is making batteries at high rates and keeping them healthy and charging long term. One of Tesla's strengths is their battery heating and cooling system.

There are fewer moving parts in an EV, so I'd expect them to last longer with less maintenance. With moving parts, it's usually all about them being properly lubricated. Batteries are a problem, but they can be replaced.

What usually kills the body is corrosion. Eventually, fatigue damage will set in and the body will crack.

Honestly from my perspective as an ex-gearhead, older cars die from engine failure but newer cars just tend to wear out (assuming maintenance). The whole suspension starts to go (shocks, springs, ball joints, rubber bushings everywhere) and body welds, door joints, etc start to crack and sag. All of this is fixable, but at too high a cost. Thus electric cars won't really help this, to my eyes.

Although, it's very possibly a legacy of planned obsolescence (the good cost-saving kind) where the engine would last 200k so the rest of the car was only made to last 200k as well. Perhaps as engines start to last far longer, the rest of the car will be built to match.

> Although, it's very possibly a legacy of planned obsolescence (the good cost-saving kind) where the engine would last 200k so the rest of the car was only made to last 200k as well.

I think this is the answer. If a critical component of the car only lasts X miles, then building any other piece to last more than X miles is pure waste. As counterintuitive (and annoying) as it might seem, having all the parts of the car fail around the same time actually indicates that it was engineered perfectly.

A very fun poem on the theme by Oliver Wendell Holmes (the father of the famed American jurist): http://holyjoe.org/poetry/holmes1.htm

Because second hand parts are worthless?

Yeah, this. Right around 2-300k you need to replace almost everything rubber in the suspension all at one.

Is this because of the rubber drying out?

My understanding is that this is why tires need to be replaced after 5-6 years and are not safetiable thereafter. The dried out rubber is much harder than when it was first made and no longer grips the road as strongly.

If you drive 10-15,000 miles a year (about average), your tires will probably be bald anyway in 5-6 years

Yes, largely, the rubber hardens or has otherwise become worn

Tires actually dry rot from ozone exposure, theoretically, if you store a tire in an airtight container - it won't have a problem.

Even brake pads will last longer due to regen braking. A mechanic told me just today he's seeing Priuses in his shop at 80-100k with original pads.

Or Toyota just makes high quality pads. The pads on our Sienna lasted 92k miles over 6 years.

>would electric vehicles last longer? Tesla

Compared to something pre-a ton of electronics? Doubt it. All of those ICs and PCBs are individual failure points and likely to have fairly limited production runs. Then add in ever-changing battery technology...

Just look at Tesla, they will not work on (or provide parts for) anything with a salvage title and look at the first roadster, completely different batteries than they currently use that if allowed to discharge 'completely' are ruined and need to be replaced.

So for an EV you probably have individual computers/chips for anti-lock brakes, traction control, parking assist (if applicable), charging, multiple diagnostic chips, transmission, infotainment, ignition just off the top of my head. With Teslas you'll also have driver assist stuff, all of the chips involved with it phoning home and collecting/reporting data back to Tesla as well. Those are all failure points using components that are likely mostly in-house and not available from OEM sources with Tesla too.

I imagine Tesla has some control over your vehicle too if you attempt to circumvent some things not unlike how their power wall will disable itself if it can't contact the servers within a relatively short period of a few days (I believe it's a few, it might be 24 hours) so if they ever for some reason go out of business that may severely impact usability. The original roadsters are a different battery than being used in current-production Tesla vehicles and I doubt in 10 years they're going to go "Sure thing, we can custom make the 2 of you that are still driving your roadsters new batteries".

How often is IC & circuit board failure a thing in cars although? I've had 20 year old cars, and the only components that failed in that category were micro switches on boards for windows and the ignition, and I was able to buy new replacement parts for them. Another common failure point in car electronics are connectors & cables, another thing that doesn't seem that hard to replace or have clones made by chinese manufactures.

>How often is IC & circuit board failure a thing in cars although? I've had 20 year old cars,

The stuff in a car coming off the line today is generations more complicated than what was being put in a car 20 years ago.

I never had problems with anything electrical related until owning a 'modern' carn, my 2013 impala which has had multiple faulty sensors, a wiring harness that would randomly turn stabilitrack on and off while driving, would randomly fire abs while breaking, throws off 3 check engine lights from various emissions systems any time humidity is up, etc.

N=1 but most of the issues I've had with my Impala Chevy has had across multiple generations of multiple vehicles in the past decade from cars and trucks. One of the emission sensors that is faulty in my car is used in at least 2 generations of 3 different models and a search of one of the codes it throws comes up on a dozen plus forums.

A quick google on just ECM/ECU/PCUs make it seem it's common enough for them to fail in vehicles and those are usually programmed to your VIN. Looks like corrosion from moisture, cracked traces, vibration damage, etc are all common causes.

Hell, even TPMS sensors fail regularly enough and some of those can get a little pricey and will throw codes until you replace them.

I think your issue is you got a GM car, which has had a decades long reputation for some of the worse reliability and quality issues.

Except for a quick Google as previously stated brings up every manufacturer under the sun.

Modern vehicles are full of cheaply made electronics that fail.

Another quick Google query shows that the average age of a modern vehicle is 11.4 years. Sticking with Tesla, the vehicles are only warrantied for 4 years or 50k miles and the batteries and powertrain for 8 or 100-120k miles

And as I stated previously they've already completely changed their battery tech once meaning the supply chain for new batteries for the original Roadster is effectively non-existent and given they are now 10 years old, they are outside of warranty and Tesla has zero obligation to manufacture replacement batteries, with ICEs it's extremely unlikely diesel or gasoline will suddenly be controlled by one supplier and be cut off from the market.

With ICE cars you have multiple people manufacturing secondary market parts (even for stuff like ECUs), with the most well known electric car company you have the manufacture as the only one making parts AND they do not sell them to consumers and they will not work on anything with a salvage title.

Working on an EV is also not really something you can do yourself if you do have access to parts. ICE vehicle you can realistically work on any part of the vehicle yourself, at home, with rented tools and a repair manual or YouTube videos from rebuilding an engine or transmission, replacing ball joints, changing brakes, replacing fuel line, completely rewire the vehicle, anything.

Sure on an EV you could change a ball joint or a suspension, but you can't work on the powertrain. You can't work on the power plant. You can't really work on any of the wiring either. The most important parts of the car pose potentially fatal shock if start monkeying with them.

Barring a major accident, powertrain failure tends to be what actually takes a car off the road. You may not want a beat up 20 year old car, but if it runs well, someone will drive it. Yet once the engine or transmission fails it is done.

As for electric car reliability, this is a "theory vs practice" question.

In theory electric cars should be vastly more reliable due to their simplicity. Electric motors have 1/10th the complexity of an ICE, and electric drivetrains tend to be simpler.

In practice we have a lot of experience in building well executed ICE cars. Regardless of the complexity I would bet that a Toyota beats a Tesla for any test of longevity.

Not to mention that nobody makes an EV that isn't chock full of bespoke electronics. Eventually the sheer number of components and MTBF will just start biting you in the ass all the time.

My leaf has manual seats, manual headlights, no cruise control... my 10-year-older volvo has all of those, plus various transmission modes, oil control systems, exhaust management systems, engine timing controller, a whole vacuum pump control system...

which bespoke electronics do you mean which are unique to EV? and do you really think their failure rate compensates for all those ancillary systems made redundant?

You know, Teslas. Marketed to rich tech geeks resulting in a computer that also happens to be a car.

> Yet once the engine or transmission fails it is done.

One of my cousins owns a transmission repair shop, and from what he says at holiday gatherings he always has more customers waiting in line than he can ever hope to get to. Seems like some people out there are rebuilding their transmissions.

> Yet once the engine or transmission fails it is done.

This is often an irrational short-term optimization; while it's often much cheaper to get a used beater with a functioning (for now) powertrain instead of replacing engine or transmission, replacement will often last far longer and with lower operating costs and downtime.

Somewhere in the 2000's, cars became too computer-controlled. In the old days you had levers and dials and that sort of things, or even resistor boards and sensors. Too many HVAC systems can only be controlled by the touch screen these days, as well as all the other options of the car.

At least in the past, you could replace broken parts or rig them on/off, but now everything is controlled by a stereo or touch screen which is $2,500 from the dealer and good luck finding a replacement in 10-20 years.

Ya, I think early-mid 2000s are the sweet spot for cars:

The OBD port will tell you everything that went wrong, no SatNav and knobs/buttons everywhere.

I dunno, people have been saying this about electronics in cars for longer than I've been alive, and I'm not that young.

I mean, first? finding a weird part is finding a weird part... and you are totally right that the electronics are the new weird parts and that way too much of the system is in the head unit, but... there have always been weird parts... and if you don't have a machinist (or these days an EE) friend helping you out, if you have a car with a weird part, you spend time in junkyards. (or the modern equivalents. Ebay has made finding weird parts so much easier)

My impression is that this is all as it has always been, except that it is easier to find weird parts than it was, and that if you want to make/rig a part, these days, you call up your EE friend rather than your machinist friend (and I have far more EE friends than machinist friends)

Me personally, I'm more comfy swapping out broken electronics modules than I am swapping out bolted-on metal parts, but either way, it seems like a pretty similar sort of thing.

I fail to see how an EE would be able to fix the problem with a trashed ecu. Once it's gone, it's gone, and there is no way of replacing it with a similar element without the producer know-how. The SW in those things is huge and you have great interconnectedness between the different systems.

I also couldn't machine a part for your carburetor.

My understanding is that the ECU controls the fuel injector, though, and that most of the inputs and outputs are fairly well known; and I'm told that it's a pretty simple control loop with the oxygen sensor, the TPS and mass airflow sensor. All in all, if it came down to it, I think I'd have better luck building an ECU from scratch than building a carburetor from scratch, after having fixed carburetors and fuel injected systems. Machining to those tolerances is hard.

(To be clear, I wouldn't put money on me personally doing either one of those things. I fix computers for EEs, and I'm no machinist. I'm just saying, micro-controllers aren't that hard if you are trying to do a simple thing... machining to carburetor tolerances really is.)

My understanding is that most cars don't have any sort of encryption between the ECU and the sensors; it's all stuff that someone with basic ee training could figure out with 20 year old equipment. If you have a popular/fancy car, people will sell you aftermarket/performance ECUs that are not recommended for use by the manufacturer, so while it's possible that it's a lot harder to do than I think it is, there's existence proof for the possibility.

I work in automotive embedded. And yes, the field is bloated. Yes, things could be more efficient. But even if all those problems went away, I still don't think it's feasible building one-off ECU's for usage in a friend's car.

Those things take a great amount of effort and time. The complexity is pretty big. Granted, I mostly work on instrument clusters, and I believe they are one of the biggest systems in the car, but the complexity is huge. I found it hard to carry the mental model of the whole system in my head.

After-market ECU's are deff possible, because you do a couple thousands of units at a time. But doing it for one ECU, I think not. Not if you put an upper-cap on the effort you are willing to expend. You're probably better off just buying a new car at that point.

I'll put it this way, as we own both an electric and an ICE.

The maintenance costs we've paid keeping our ICE running would pay for a full replacement of our electric motor in about 3-4 years.

The maintenance for our electric so far has been new tires and windshield wipers.

What is the age/mileage of each?

That’s just an anecdatum. I’ve spent a fraction of that on my 20-year ICE.

Maintenance cost by brand: https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/the-most-and-least-expe...

(No data on electric vehicles - oh well)

Electric vehicles would have fewer moving parts so in theory it should be possible to make them more serviceable, however as others have pointed out the trend is to make cars less serviceable so it's an unlikely outcome.

Not really. The lifetime of the drivetrain will be about equal all told - 600k-1m miles. Long Term, I suspect repair costs will end up being equal, because battery lifetime is proving to be about 250-350k (based on Toyota hybrids), meaning by the time the vehicle is fully worn out, you'd have replaced the battery pack 2-4 times (at around 5k each) In addition, while an electric car saves on oil changes, it still needs some form of lubrication, it still needs tires, windshield wipers, brakes, body system repairs (gauge cluster, electrical, comfort systems, radio, etc), the you also need to consider suspension wear, which becomes relevant right around 300,000 miles.

In the short term, Electric cars win, hands down, they're cheaper to run per mile, but over a 20 year lifetime for a vehicle, I think ICE vehicles will tie or prove slightly better than an electric vehicle for costs.

Electric cars are going to have way fewer engine/transmission/brake issues. The nature of regenerative breaking means that you don't use the actual friction pads/rotors much. The nature of the electric motor means there's usually no transmission, and way fewer moving parts (and way less heat/explosive energy) than an ICE engine.

Battery issues are going to be way more expensive on an electric or hybrid car than an ICE car, which I think would be the primary downside.

It really depends on where you live. Rust will eat up your car in a lot of the world.

Sure you can replace a lot of the things that rust until the frame goes, but it starts to get expensive. Pumps, hard to get to filters, starters, alternators, struts and other suspension bushings and components, engine timing components, and transmissions are liable to just go well before the life of the motor is up.

If parts are dirt cheap and your wrenching is free it's doable, but kind of a headache. If you pay someone else to wrench I think it's not a great idea especially for some models and brands.

The frames on these were aluminium alloy - so no rust!

No. The LLV has an aluminum body on a tubular steel frame similar to the GM S-10 pickup.

Only the marketing department calls an S10 frame tubular. It's regular old C channel with boxed sections in strategic areas.

>Rust will eat up your car in a lot of the world.

Yeah, I live in the Northeast US and, with one exception, rust has been the proximate cause of retiring every vehicle I've ever owned (as well as a few expensive near end-of-life repairs I shouldn't have had done).

The situation is much better than it was 40 years or so again but, if you drive a vehicle in the winter around here, you're still looking at a realistic maximum life of 10 to 15 years before everything just starts falling apart.

I have a 20 year old Honda Del Sol I've garaged in the winter for about the last 10 years. Whenever I take it into the Honda dealer there are always mechanics that want to ooh and ahh over it because they said you basically don't see them around New England any longer.

I’m from Pennsylvania, and I’ve seen places that sell used cars that are sent there from down south, specifically to advertise the lack of rust damage compared to local used cars.

Hopefully they weren't from the coast or suffered water damage from whatever hurricane :-)

Yep. Midwest metropolis (out in the suburbs, but still fairly dense). It's the rust.

Well, and in a few Chrystlers and a Ford I've been familiar with, the trannie. Kind of a race between the two factors.

Right now, I have an older Subaru that would be good for at least a few more years, except the rust has compromised the gas tank. And dropping that means dropping the drive train. And you can get it back together -- but how many parts do you end up having to replace, because the rust has gotten to them too badly. And then you're closing in on the value of the car.

If/when we switch to composites (and/or aluminum), with an electric drive train maybe localized at the four wheels, or at least "compartmentalized" and swap-able (1), then maybe the rust factor and overall longevity will improve. Maybe... I'm waiting to see what creative means corrosion demonstrates to further its entropy under this scenario.

1. And for the record, I'd still prefer a "hybrid" design with backup on-board generation from some type of chemical fuel, at least until electric penetration is thorough and cold-weather capacity is secured.

Aluminum has some advantages--albeit at a price. [1] though it's not clear cut for a variety of reasons. It's also not just the structure but everything carrying fluids around or making up the suspension system. Corrosion is nasty--I used to be involved with the design and maintenance of offshore drilling rigs--and it's pretty much a constant battle that you never win.

[1] https://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/...

It makes me wonder what the designed and realized life times will be for new Fords with aluminum beds.

An aluminum car is kinda like a gold car: Higher up-front cost, but higher resale value when it goes to the crusher.

We're short-sighted to require cars to show MPG before purchase. They should all require a spreadsheet showing Total Cost of Ownership dependent on expected annual highway/city mileage as input.

What's gas cost? How much extra is the hybrid? What's the scrap value?

Though I guess you can lookup insurance rates to figure out the scrap value (some cars are worth more parted-out than running).

>The situation is much better than it was 40 years or so

Car's don't rust like they used to! One of my favorite childhood memories was seeing from my dad getting so mad at his '78 Toyota Celica (we called it the Rustola) that he kicked a hole in the door and got his foot stuck inside.

We had a similar aged Corona in the late '80s and that thing was like 90% rust. It even had some a steel plate riveted under the windscreen to hold the windscreen wiper because the windscreen wiper mount literally rusted off.

It's phenomenal how much improvement there was in rustproofing between even '70 and '90. If a '90-'00 car hasn't been crashed and not driven in very salty conditions, you can find them with essentially no rust even now.

Although I doubt it makes up for the harm from salt damage, heat can cause damage too.

Without UV constantly hitting your tires and interior, they last longer. Your electric water pump runs less/lasts longer. But that's all I can think of, but it's harder to measure the general impacts of ambient being, on average, 20C less.

I think we should just send every car from the NE down South once it's 6-8 years old to balance the wear. The rust process will largely stop.

The trick is body-on-frame light trucks with thick body panels and plastic fuel tanks. They are the most long lived in the snow belts and can last 25+ years with periodic maintenance as replaceable bits and pieces rust out.

I've personally had better luck with cars. The unibody construction doesn't leave as many places for rust on the underside where as truck frames tend to rust out wherever they can't easily be washed, particularly with newer boxed frames.

That said, none of my ~25yo vehicles are failing inspection for structural rust, they're all failing because the fenders rust out where the wheel sprays everything.

It really depends on where you live. Rust will eat up your car in a lot of the world.

All aluminum construction would mitigate a lot of that. When aluminum oxidizes, it tends to form something hard, as opposed to flaky rust. Electric vehicles could be optimized for delivery fleet use with a highly modular construction and a smooth underbody. The modules could be removed for repair while a spare one is swapped in. (This is currently done with M1 Abrams tanks.) Electric drive-trains also require less maintenance, and the open cargo space of a delivery van can facilitate easy access to mechanicals even though the underbody has no openings.

Aluminum is a lot more expensive to make, more expensive to make something out of and more expensive to repair than steel. It is lighter though, another considerable advantage when making a vehicle besides durability.

For something on the scale of the USPS fleet, economies of scale would come into play. If such vehicles were very highly modular, all of the modules could be removed and placed into another frame and the old one recycled. (Come to think of it, this is also somewhat done with Abrams M1 tanks.)

Aluminum is only ~2,300$ per metric ton, so the raw material cost is not that much of an issue. It’s material property’s is actually a significant issue as the cars vibration for example would likely cause cracks to form and propagate.

PS: Ford is moving the F150 to aluminum adding ~500$ per vehicle but also saving weight. Which should net to zero via added fuel economy.

That would be a terrible idea. Aluminum can only flex so much before the metal fatigues and fails catastrophically, steel does not (so long as the stress is below a critical threshold). Aluminum framed trucks would not last nearly as long.

There was talk of that 8 years ago[0], I wonder what became of it?

[0]https://www.wired.com/2010/01/ac-propulsion-mail-truck/

https://qz.com/1158107/the-german-postal-service-has-built-i...

Here's an article on the replacement process, which is held up in the general USPS review that should be released soon... https://www.trucks.com/2018/10/01/usps-mail-truck-decision-d... https://about.bgov.com/blog/postal-service-prepares-splash-m...

They have been using some electric vehicles in NYC: https://about.usps.com/what-we-are-doing/green/vehicles.htm

The VT Hackney option looks pretty cool: https://www.trucks.com/2018/03/15/new-photos-electric-mail-t...

This reminds me of the niche of electric vehicles that survived almost all the 20th century: milk floats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float

This I definitely not true, even with regular maintenance, and especially with new vehicles.

The reality is the cost of new parts and replacements becomes cost prohibitive. You’ll spend more continually on the upkeep versus purchasing a new car.

The poster said “can” not “should”.

> the FFV is a more fuel efficient vehicle, operating on a combination of unleaded gas and ethanol

Gasahol is not "more fuel efficient". It is a corn lobby subsidy that delivers less MPG than straight gas due to the lower energy density.

I agree, it's misleading marketing speak lobbyist crap

That said on a multi year timescale ethanol is far more efficient in terms of carbon output per joule since much of the carbon released was captured when the corn was grown so the only net carbon output is from the fossil fuel portion of the fuel. It's similiar to the argument for why heating with wood is better for the environment in the long term.

With the amount of stop and go, these things are begging for at least a hybrid power train. I’ve heard they’re very uncomfortable inside during summer temps.

Also, long live the Iron Duke!

Those little trucklings are durable as heck. A few months ago I saw one bounding across the desert scrubland between two remote ranches knocking tumbleweeds out of its way like it was channeling a monster truck.

Amusing a heck to me. Probably not to anyone on the receiving end of a package marked "Fragile."

Your description reminds me of our FedEx guy here on dirt/sand roads near Joshua Tree National Park.

He drives one of the smaller box trucks, from the sound of it I assume it's a gas V8. It's always towards the end of the day and he's clearly in a hurry to finish his final deliveries in an empty truck and it's like seeing a FedEx truck compete in a rally race. I can hear him coming a mile away with the taps wide open, and the thing is fishtailing and bouncing all over the place blasting across the desert at 80+ MPH.

None of the locals I've seen, not even the guys on ATVs, sustain the FedEx guy's pace.

Something about this makes me laugh uncontrollably. I think it's bringing up the very fond memories of playing The Simpsons: Road Rage (a lightly branded reskinning of Crazy Taxi for Gamecube) as a middle schooler and deliberately doing the most absurd stuff to see what the wacky physics engine would allow. The answer is: quite a lot.

The idea of a FedEx driver doing the same thing in real life just sounds goofy to me. I suppose the novelty must wear off after a while.

FYI, Simpsons: road rage was not a reskin, it was developed by an unrelated team (and Sega sued for patent infringement, the case was settled for an undisclosed amount)

No kidding! Just looked it up and found this: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/news051203segasuit

I was under the erroneous assumption that it was an officially sanctioned clone. Little did I know...

>None of the locals I've seen, not even the guys on ATVs, sustain the FedEx guy's pace.

Fedex driver probably doesn't own the truck.

Definitely not his own truck.

How am I comparing him to the average local? I'm comparing him to the fastest locals who shoot guns and drive ATVs every weekend. The average local is an elderly person, that's what you have in the desert, old retirees, meth addicts, and hooligans.

  that's what you have in the
  desert, old retirees, meth
  addicts, and hooligans.

Which one are you? :D

No comment.

Not the 18yo who launches his Ranger over the train tracks berm.

Do NOT do this! Also, if you try to crash through a snowbank in a Ranger. You do not get a majestic slow-motion explosion of beautiful snow like in the TV commercials. You get a missing bumper that you have to dig out from under your now-stuck Ranger.

Yes, I speak from experience on both.

Employee of mine did this to my Jeep Grand Cherokee while I lived in Canada. Of course not only did he not get the majestic slow-motion explosion of beautiful snow, he got the concrete barrier buried in snowbank for free. That was an expensive joy ride in the parking lot, years later I would still find damage related to that accident (Dana 44 cracked right down the middle...). Fortunately him and his gf were ok.

In the employees defense it was a POS aluminum D44...

Haha :) Happy New Year!

>If you try to crash through a snowbank in a Ranger. You do not get a majestic slow-motion explosion of beautiful snow like in the TV commercials. You get a missing bumper that you have to dig out from under your now-stuck Ranger.

I did this in my 90s F150. The snow bank was recently plowed powder. It was like piloting a dreadnought through rough seas. The snow all went "poof" upward then rained down on the hood. It was beautiful. It's one of those few images seared in your mind that you will never forget.

I now own a Ranger as well. I haven't had a chance to have much fun with it as well (mostly because I'm not comfortable enough with the manual trans to use it well off road). Bumpers are on the todo list so if I destroy them they'll just move up in priority.

In any case, the old beam axle Fords (E-series box trucks included) make a great platform for getting airborne. Back when my commute included some roads with speed humps/tables I used to get airborne twice daily. It was great. The front suspension just takes it and asks for more. Out back there's not much to go wrong with a leaf sprung rear axle.

Fedex driver probably doesn't own the truck.

That's implied by the word "FedEx." FedEx drivers don't own FedEx trucks.

Depends on the opco. Express owns their trucks but pretty sure Ground drivers, however, own their trucks. Don't know about Customs Critical but they are rather large sleepers so could go either way.

I've recently learned that Russian LiAZ 677 aka "cattle truck," which I rode almost daily through most of the 2000s, is already considered "retro"―because it was in production since '63 till '94.

It's quite jarring to see what was recently your daily ride, in a procession together with buses from the 50s.

To be fair when I rode LiAZ in 1980s they were already considered long in the tooth.

One thing that is not mentioned is the actual mileage of the vehicles in use is only 10 miles per gallon. Also rural carriers seem to be mostly now to be private vehicles sometimes with the magnetic sticker on the side indicating a postal service vehicle.

Postal trucks are based on the Chevy/GM S-10 platform. I wonder what is unique about them, other than the body shell, right hand drive and smaller wheels.

If you lower and shorten an S-10, reduce the tire diameter by something like 40%, and stick an aluminum body on it, you've created a very unique driving experience in terms of acceleration and handling. I bet they're a lot of fun to drive.

right hand drive too

I wouldn't bet on that. I owned a vehicle that had the same engine and was lighter, and it was a complete slug. Also, the tech underneath these is almost 40 years old, and was bad when new. These have no AC, so imagine driving one all day in 90F heat. I'm sure they all have a bazillion miles on them by now and are in poor repair.

Ouch, the venerable iron duke, probably pretty awful indeed.

Still, if it's optimized for the low-speed stop & go stuff it'll just suck to go on highways but I'd expect it to be decent on the surface streets.

That motor was a real heap though, damn the 80s were rough for GM.

GM was in a pretty bad spot for a long time. The car I had was in the junkyard by 80k miles, and it was well taken care of. I ended up in a same year Honda that never had a single malfunction in 120k + miles.

The smaller wheels are what really does it for reliability. You can't really hurt anything when you can't get the drive-line loaded up with tons of torque because you just peel out.

The Chevy 10b rear axle in those S10s is a complete turd. It's like the Toyota pickup frame or Ford 6.0 of rear axles. But with small enough tires and deep gears it's impossible to hurt them before you break traction.

Everything else is just an S10. The front suspension is pretty meh. Compared to every other small pickup platform on the market in the US at the time there is nothing special to recommend it. It's basically an 80s GM car that's been narrwed (G body IIRC??). For sheer durability what you'd find in a 90s Ranger or 1st gen Explorer far eclipses it (doesn't handle as nice though) in basically every way. When you've got a maintenance department replacing the seriously worn stuff it doesn't matter that much. The S10 platform isn't perfect in this regard but it certainly gets the job done. It doesn't have to go get airborne. It just needs to handle bumping over curbs at 5-15mph.

The engine is pretty reliable. It doesn't make enough power to hurt anything and it can't move enough air to spin fast enough to hurt itself and doesn't have any Achilles heels to make it unreliable. Same story as basically ever other domestic iron block and iron head OHV engine of the era.

From the transmission's perspective being in the LLV is a really easy life. The engine doesn't make much power the rear is geared deep and the stop/start duty cycle doesn't allow for much heat buildup. Pretty much any trans is going to be highly reliable in that setting.

In retrospect a 1st gen Explorer (basically the Ranger with a couple upgrades) would hand have been the better platform as far as chassis/suspension/axles go. Seriously, I can't over-emphasize this. The S10 has nothing to recommend it and a few strikes against it when it comes to all the components from the frame down whereas the Explorer is the undisputed winner in terms of chassis/suspension/axles from that time period. I think the GM options for 4cyl engines and automatic transmissions were better from a long term reliability perspective.

GM basically set out to use their parts bin to build the most reliable S10 they could and they're not idiots so they succeeded. The performance goals and acceptable trade-offs are totally different from that of a consumer vehicle so they had a lot more room to make compromises and make the system more reliable.

There are still some postal service rural vehicles. My normal carrier drives a red Jeep Cherokee with permanently mounted flashing lights, but what makes it special is its right-hand drive. Her subs tend to drive minivans, or sometimes a white Jeep, all with left-hand drive, magnetic stickers, and magnetic flashing light.

An electric vehicle with very good regenerative braking would probably be much more efficient, but I imagine that any internal combustion powered vehicle that accelerates and decelerates as often as a mail carrier is going to have terrible effective gas mileage.

The mileage probably has more to do with the use than the design, no?

Starting a vehicle, driving it 30 ft to the next mailbox, the repeating hundreds of times a day probably kills mileage for any vehicle.

Not for electric one ;)

Unless that vehicle is a hybrid. Hybrids’ mileage goes way up for start/stop unless it requires a complete cool down.

No reason today the fleet shouldn’t be mainly hybrid or EV.

They're all probably little Ships of Theseus by now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Grumman became informally known as the Grumman Iron Works for its rugged airplanes.

I find that interesting because every time I hear "Grumman" I think of the big brouhaha in the 1980's in New York City. The MTA ordered dozens? hundreds? of new "flexible buses" from Grumman and within months they all cracked down the middle. There was a transit shortage while the buses were sent out to Long Island to be repaired.

It was a very long time ago, and Google fails me right now, so I'm not sure what the exact problem was, or what exactly a "flexible bus" meant. The only thing I can think of is that was the term of the day for articulated bus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flxible_Metro

Thanks for that. Here's the relevant paragraph:

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), in whose buses where the first cracked A-frame problem was noticed in early December 1980 at their Ulmer Park Depot, yanked its NYC Transit Authority fleet for the first time in 1980 (a separate batch for MSBA was built with the problem rectified the next year) and sued Grumman. This lawsuit would result in a settlement to fix all 870 buses built until that time (2,656 examples in all), along with an early termination of the build contract where the final 200 buses of the order were transferred to General Motors.

And their indestructible canoes (that weighed a ton).

Weren't they aluminium?

I think so, yes.

Yes. They're actually not that heavy compared to a big plastic boat.

Fun bit of trivia is that they're still made. Grumman sold off the division to another company at one point but about 15 years ago, some ex-Grumman managers bought it and spun it out--and then bought the rights to use the Grumman name again from Northrup Grumman.

https://www.marathonboat.com/about.asp

Things were done differently in the US up through the 1960's. Different company but yesterday I learned that a P-47 Thunderbolt landed carrying a 500 lb bomb where there was a malfunction and the bomb exploded. Not only was the pilot okay, but though the tail was obliterated, the wings stayed on. That was one of the things about the P-47: the wings never came off. Those things were built incredibly tough. This is a part of the reason why the P-47 had such great dive performance. (Only late model Spitfires could beat the P-47 in a dive, and only in a narrow altitude range.)

There was another incident where a FW-190 pilot came across a P-47 limping home, with its canopy stuck. So the P-47 pilot had no choice but to go back and land at his airbase. The FW-190 pilot emptied all of his magazines into the P-47, but it just kept on flying.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCNt3J65UqE

Greg's airplanes and automobiles is a great channel. Another thing I learned from watching it: Logistics in the form of better fuel refining actually was responsible for a big part of the performance advantage of allied planes in WWII. The allies could supply better quality higher octane fuel, which meant they could run their superchargers and turbochargers at higher pressures to get more horesepower from smaller engines. (Which is why late in the war, BF-109s were using water and methanol injection to try and keep up.)

Grumman Tiger. Great little airplane.

Other examples:

While I couldn't find a source quickly, I'd guess the typical brown UPS truck is a custom design, as are their newer, electric(?) variants?

German Post/DHL couldn't get the car industry to make them an affordable electric delivery vehicle, so they bought an electric vehicle startup out of RWTH Aachen and made their own (now also starting to sell these to others, although I think they're teaming up with Ford to produce more of them)

Most of the UPS vehicles in Germany are Mercedes Benz diesels, but they are of course not stock. Same for DHL (though many of the smaller delivery vans are VW, some of which are actually MB). MB diesels ("Oelmotoren") are just reliable as heck.

Afaik all of these are standard transmission.

NZ Post use these things (Paxster), and I always laugh my ass off when they’re scooting past.

https://www.nzpost.co.nz/about-us/sustainability/electric-ve...

I really don't like the idea of a 200kg powered vehicle on the pavements. Have there been pedestrian objections?

In the UK postmen have a large 'pram' that they push on the pavements and which are often found bicycle-chained to lamps whilst the postie visits a cul de sac.

I think those "prams" have a battery assist, although they're presumably limited to walking pace.

In Copenhagen, the postmen ride electric cargo bicycles [1], but mostly on the cycle paths. As with most bicycles, they just lock the rear wheel to the frame[2] if it's left for a while.

[1] https://www.dreamstime.com/editorial-photo-postnord-copenhag...

[2] https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/54206/how-to-lo...

They move at a fast walking pace. I've never even considered the concept of one being dangerous.

I believe a lot of the UPS vans are based on off the shelf step vans, i.e. https://workhorse.com/stepvans. They may have some customizations, but appear to be pretty standard.

1966 Volvo P1800 belonging to Irv Gordon of Long Island, NY. Gordon claimed the Guinness World Record back in 2014 when he’d posted 3.04 million miles.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/automobiles/going-the-distance-7-...

"Until the 1980s, when postal officials looked to buy new vehicles for the service, they combed through existing models for one that best fit their needs."

Bit too young to have a clear memory, but I thought they were usually jeeps?

Or maybe this was because there were alot of surplus jeeps in those days since the jeep was still heavily used in the military?

Not surplus Jeep stock as much as surplus capacity for building more Jeeps. IIRC most of the USPS Jeeps were right hand drive.

Yep. Mail Jeeps (DJs) are somewhat collectible these days.

I didn't remember this, but you're right. https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/vehicles-ga... What I remember was more like the Studebaker here: https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/vehicles-ga...

They were quite often Jeeps up to the 80's. Usually DJ Models. [0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep_DJ

I was puzzled for an instant as to why on earth would they be RHD, until I realised that this enables the driver to deliver mail without having to get out in the street and walk around the vehicle, thus being both safer and more efficient.

Interesting video with a hypothetical redesign of the trucks: https://youtu.be/6oDVsf29tyk

I was just about to post a link to that video! I think it's mostly spot on. tl;dr -- It would be better to replace those things, and Tesla is probably the company to do it!

Right hand drive is a safety feature for roadside mailbox delivery. Eliminating that does not seem like a good idea at all.

It's interesting how they list problems with gas mileage and fire safety in the previous model, and they conclude that a redesign is needed to correct the flaws, and then proceed to start off with adding features like replaceable cargo area, additional doors and airbags.

I stopped watching when they recommended integrating tablets as something that should increase longevity.

I see one of these everyday during my lunch but I never connected the dots that these were likely special made and are likely very old.

I will look at it differently during my lunch today.

It's kind of hilarious to see a bunch of upscale tech workers singing the praise of the LLV when they would otherwise deride the vehicle it's built on.

If you went on /r/cars and said "I'm thinking of buying an '80s S10 with the 4cyl" you'd have people calling you crazy. They you say "but I'm going to put small tires on it and give it 4.10 gears so that the rear end doesn't spew parts and the transmission lives a long time" and they'd call you an idiot.

Somehow a special purpose truck body makes it more acceptable.

It goes to show you how much context/framing matter.

Awesome. It's good to hear of government spending that results in long service life, lessons learned, and value for the taxpayer.

In Upstate New York our postal workers prefer asian small cars to official Post Office truck because they handle better in the snow.

very interesting read. US Postal service had some rigorous requirements and these trucks are definitely an engineering feat. Here in Canada, the Canada Post trucks are similar looking too.

According to wikipedia, it is the same vehicle. It looks like we've chosen a different replacement than USPS, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV

thx Bryan!

We don't need to worry so much about the "not American" thing. The Transit is a proven, off-the-shelf product... but while Ford, it's European. That's not going to fly south of the border.

This appears to be based on an earlier British design https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postman_Pat

Edit: With tongue firmly in cheek of course.

I see Dodge Promasters replacing some of these in Austin, Texas.

Same with Portland, Oregon

Do these ever get sold off to the public?

Yup. I saw one parked next to an ice cream truck last summer. Exact same truck.

Yes, here was one: https://www.govdeals.com/?fa=Main.Item&itemid=6463&acctid=35...

Doesn't look like any are listed at the moment.

Wow they are cheap!!

I've seen them available at auction in the past.

https://autoauctions.gsa.gov/GSAAutoAuctions/

https://www.govdeals.com/

https://www.publicsurplus.com

https://craigslist.org

offtopic: Love how it have a youtube embed from youtube-nocookie.com, yet i can see 1 cookie attempt for youtube-nocookie.com, 10 cookies for google.com, 3 for www.google.com

Why are they right-hand drive?

So you can put mail a mailbox without getting out from behind the wheel.

Good job in 1980s. They have probably already considered the replacements and I think it will be a difficult choice. It is probably too early to switch to electric vehicles. I think (without any real info) they should shoot for investigating electric vehicles in 3 years. In 3 years the cost benefits will have conclusively gone to EVs, but just as important Congress and conservatives should be okay with with one of those newfangled "gasless carriages".

Most postal delivery in somewhat urban environment is a prime case for electric vehicles: low mileage per day, lots of stop and go, low average and low top speed combine with a central spot where vehicles can be charged for extended periods.

It’s not a coincidence that DHL is operating a large electric fleet.

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