USPS Selects Oshkosh Defense for Next Generation Delivery Vehicle Fleet | Hacker News Reader

USPS Selects Oshkosh Defense for Next Generation Delivery Vehicle Fleet

oshkoshcorp.com

64 pointsjonbaer86 comments

Here’s a link with some renders of what the trucks are planned to look like:

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35604138/usps-oshkosh-def...

I wonder if the designers watched "Postman Pat" [1] as kids.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postman_Pat

I'm oddly delighted at the prospect of seeing new mail delivery vehicles creep around a corner, even if the design seems a little ... odd (to me).

Big beautiful windshields to see the sky with, but there has to be some way to get rid of the A pillars on these vehicles. So many accidents are caused by vehicles turning left/right into pedestrians crossing the street because they are blocked by these pillars. I guess holograms work but an engineering solution where they could somehow be eliminated would be better.

holograms? What do you mean?

Sorry, I guess I mean something like AR that lets you see through the pillars. I was thinking a hologram because if it is just a straight projection that other people can see, they might constantly think you're going to run over a pedestrian that has already safely passed from the drivers point of view.

Can someone walk through the vehicle odd detail by odd detail and explain every design decision? For me this is fascinating because there are probably many small items that have a practical benefit that I don't even see on the first glance.

One question though: Why is the back slanted? Why doesn't it go straight down? Wouldn't that be preferable when it's raining, for example?

Here are my educated non-expert guesses:

* low front end, large amount of glass: aids in visibility when maneuvering in tight locations.

* side mirrors are hung from the top: again, aiding visibility. You need to look at the road's surface more than you need to look at the sky.

* two piece side window: it can pass packages while also protecting the driver from the weather

* slanted rear: the person closing the door has a couple more inches to get a steady footing while reaching over their head to close the tall door? Or maybe a tiny aero advantage? Or just for style?

* huge protruding bumpers: cheaper to hit them than it is to hit the body. And maybe it's more likely you can keep the vehicle in service without requiring repairs after minor incidents.

* upswept rear bumper: necessary to mitigate issues with a departure angles, because a short-wheelbase is ideal for driving in tight locations.

* hanging wiper mechanism: visibility, and it doesn't jam up with ice/snow as much.

* side door slides forward instead of rearwards: because the door doesn't have to move outwards clear the rear fender, the track is straight and the mechanism simplified, so it's more durable, more accessible, and more ergonomic than other commercial vans which typically require a compound motion (sliding and extending outwards.)

* and the easy one -- right hand drive: because mailboxes are on the side of the road.

The old LLVs also have a slanted back, its possible its just for design, I'm picturing it with a flat back and it just looks wrong, like a typical creepy white van. The slope gives it some character. Although you're right, there probably is a more nuanced reason.

The current USPS trucks have a slanted back too but my google-fu yielded no results. The info graphic explains some of the other details: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/automobiles/the-mail-truc...

Biggest change is that driver should be able to walk inside it to fetch packages, hence the height and the odd 'forehead'.

I thinks easier to pull back into a loading area and get access to the spot where your putting packages at (that part sort of sticks out farther).

That might not be the winning design – that looks like the Workhorse design, whereas the Osh Kosh looks more like Ford Transit van: https://www.hammerlanelegends.com/news/us-postal-service-to-...

Definitely is, you can see those photos on the USPS website. https://media.usps.com/events/ngvd/

It's beautiful in a utilitarian way

> "some will be electric".

better than none, but really wish it said "all".

I think there are rural routes were battery capacity becomes an issue.

A lot of rural routes are by contractors with their own vehicles. RHD Jeeps and Subarus are popular for them.

> The NGDVs that Oshkosh will build will include both battery-electric vehicles and low-emission internal-combustion-engine vehicles, both of which will be able to be retrofitted to keep up with the latest EV tech. They will also have air conditioning and airbags—both of which the current trucks lack—as well as heat, a 360-degree camera, a front and rear collision avoidance system, and automated emergency braking.

Lots of surprises in a few sentences. I'm glad to hear that some are intended to be EVs. I wonder what the final percentage will be, or if this is just a bullet point to check off.

I imagine that a number of routes- perhaps especially in the countryside- may not be suitable for electric vehicles yet. Add the burden of heat or AC on top of the vehicle's weight (plus packages) and it may be difficult to complete without recharging.

Since they are planning to be capable of retrofitting them, I wouldnt be surprised if they are planning on holding out a bit to see if battery and charging tech improves or standardizes further before investing heavily.

All of that said, I would be very surprised if they didn't electrify the entire fleet before 2030. The cost savings in maintenance alone would probably justify it even without environmental consideration.

That and certain states will force the transition. California being one of them. After 2035 the USPS wont be able to register a new diesel van.

> I'm glad to hear that some are intended to be EVs.

Sure, it's good for the planet, but what spaceship sounding craft will I have the pleasure of hearing every afternoon as it blasts full throttle every 30 yards between suburban mailboxes?

I'm not sure that it'll sound like a 3 year old's interpretation of a redlining formula1 engine unless it's a small, high-rpm motor reduced through a gearbox.

Or, am I missing something?

I'd rather hear the tire noise of an ev being floored that the noisy 3.5l v8 diesel van that my local amazon driver uses.

EVs might be the way to go for cities and suburbs. The agent can park the vehicle and charge it while delivering a load of mail and come back in 30 minutes to see the battery mostly filled.

The only surprise in that sentence that the percentage is less than 100. Obviously, somebody in US post did not get the memo that Biden wants to electrify government vehicles by 100%. Elektrek is pointing out that the key person involved with this decision was appointed by Trump.

Basically it's a fat juicy government contract where a military contractor gets fat juicy pay check to build something that already exists that other delivery companies world wide are buying because they are very suitable for this kind of work load (lots of stop/start, predictable routes).

The other interesting thing in the article is the rather large range of vehicles (50000-165,000) that is being committed to. Half a billion for 50K vehicles seems a lot of money to commit to in a company that probably is wondering how much of their core business is still going to be there in a decade. Delivering letters is basically a dying business. The only mail I get is the very occasional company that somehow hasn't figured out email. Is that still going to be a thing decades in the future?

There are legitimately single carrier routes in USPS that are in excess of 200 miles, so it may not be currently possible to produce an EV capable of doing that every day for years without something drastic like replacing the battery pack every year.

200 miles is well in range of most mid range EVs at this point. Vans exist on the market that can do that already. It's just a matter of putting in a bigger battery. Most companies buying vans buy the range they need rather than giving into range anxiety. There are loads of cheap options with limited range that are simply good enough.

Anyway, if that's more than even 1% of the market, I'd be very surprised. It certainly does not justify spending half a billion on inventing a vehicle with an option to have ICE capability (and the inherent design compromises that come with that) just as this market is being eaten up by basically most manufacturers launching specially designed EV only transport solutions.

A simple solution for this problem would be to simply keep on driving ICE vans on these longer routes until technology catches up. No need to sink money into R&D for this. It's completely redundant.

Replacing battery packs is just not a thing with EVs. Certainly not every year. There are enough first generation EVs still on their first battery pack to prove this. Besides, most vendors provide pretty nice warranties on their batteries because they know that they will rarely have to do any battery replacements. This is not a wait and we'll see kind of thing; companies buying these vehicles in large volumes tend to do their homework when it comes to cost.

All of this is not really something that needs researching, study, etc. US Post is technically kind of late to this. Besides, there are loads of electrical delivery vans in service across most delivery companies. Most of those are pretty much all switching as fast as they can to get some nice cost savings. The business case is long past needing a more evidence or proof. As a consequence, electrical vans are selling as fast as they can be built.

If you discharge the battery pack more than 50% every day its going to last less than 500 days with current lithium-ion battery technology.

So, you would need to get an EV with a range of more than 400 miles.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the Post somehow makes do with electric Renault Kangoos. I suppose when you do not have a forever war machine to feed, you can buy your post trucks from car companies...

The US has roughly 320 million more people than Switzerland. You can afford to have a domestic arms industry when you're bigger.

And post delivery is hyper localised, so population doesn't change things much.

Smaller countries than Switzerland have domestic arms industries, but that doesn't mean they use military-grade trucks from them for postal services.

The US is very spread out in a lot of places and geographically diverse. Many local routes cover a very large area. Currently, these Grumman vehicles only make up 75% of the fleet. They also use vans, some electrics and in some areas they need 4x4 trucks and even boats.

Considering the extreme punishment these vehicles take, i think the investment is probably worth it. I remember reading about how much money they spent on these Grumman vehicles decades ago and being appalled. But here we are 20 years later and they are still using those same trucks.

The USPS is an order of magnitude larger than the swiss postal service. At some point it usually becomes just as cost effective to order a fleet of custom vehicles rather than off the shelf ones.

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland, the Internet tells me. It has a population of 400,000, which is slightly less than the total current employees of the USPS.

We spend all day here talking about scalability, but then we start talking about public policy and people get amnesia.

Ironically, the Swiss have excellent small arms for their military, and an impressive degree of design an manufacturing continuity for them.

The Sig 510, adopted in 1957, uses the same charging handle as the rifle they adopted in 1889.

I never know if unchanged means "still good" or "obsolete". How can you tell?

In this case, it was because the bolt handle on the m1889 worked just as good on the K-31. While the Sig 510 doesn’t require you to pull the bolt each time you fire, it did need a handle to grab to load the rifle - why create a new part with a new supply chain? After all, the older rifles were still in service for years after the new one was adopted, so re-using the same handle meant they only had to stock one part in their armories instead of two.

Here’s the bold assembly for the Schmidt-Rubin 1889 or 1896/11: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/hqEAAOSwT~9WhutS/s-l300.jpg

Here’s the bolt handle on the Schmidt-Rubin K-31: https://www.gunpartscorp.com/pub/products/997460.jpg

Here’s the charging handle on the Sig 510: http://i870.photobucket.com/albums/ab269/Combloc/SIG%20510-7...

The part you grip is interchangeable :)

The electric Renault Kangoo can drive across the whole of Switzerland on a single charge.

Are you taking about the word "Defense" in Oshkosh Defense? Yeah, this isn't a military vehicle. It's a van, not some sort of modified Humvee or anything.

Oshkosh makes lots of vehicles and some civilian kit like fire trucks, air compressors, etc. They saw the opportunity and designed a van to fulfill the specs. Granted, bidding on government projects is likely in their comfort zone, but I would assume they won fair and square unless there was reason to believe otherwise.

The other two finalists weren't major car companies either, at least not in the US. Workhorse is a very small firm with just over 100 employees total, and Karsan is Turkish company I don't know much about.

The Renault Kangoo is probably too small for emerging USPS needs, though the existing postal vehicles are almost as small as the Renault. The USPS's core business is shifting to package delivery, instead of letter mail. E-commerce has changed the mix. They're the preferred shipping carrier for packages in the US, being generally less expensive than UPS, which is in turn less expensive than FedEx. Packages are bulky.

Also, I think it's irrational for outsiders (e.g. you and I and anyone not involved in the decision) to have strong opinions about the vehicle the USPS selects as the result of its contract and bidding process, much less make some sort of political inference from it. Most things aren't political. Mail delivery van procurement is rarely going to present a genuine opportunity for political insight beyond the usual mundane government procurement issues.

Kinda ugly.... looks like a 70s, or 80s movie set prop about how the future would look like.

the nose looks bizarre...

Playmobil is gonna sue them...

If I were trying to dismantle the USPS by destroying morale and public goodwill, this is the vehicle I'd pick. Then I'd paint it an ugly color.

Darn, this stock would've been a great buy in Nov and I watched a youtube video from an automotive channel in January that went into quite a bit of depth regarding the post office vehicle trials and their opinion that Oshkosh would get the contract!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE5FGyq12ds

Lobbying in action [0] with a supposed $105k from Oshkosh in 2021.

[0] - https://twitter.com/QuiverQuant/status/1364341745199308802

It's amazing that a ~$500M contract could be 'lubricated' with $100k. A similar ratio to Tesla paying you $10 to buy their car.

I might choose a Tesla for you to buy were I given $10. That's the difference. The person receiving the money is not the same one who actually has to pay for the product.

UPS, Fedex, Amazon, and the USPS all perform last mile delivery for envelopes and packages (albeit, some of these envelopes are padded). Will these delivery services ever converge on a single design for their vehicles?

UPS, Fedex, and USPS have very different market niches. UPS focuses on volume, mid-market package delivery, Fedex on high-margin, next-day service, and USPS gets the dregs, including a tremendous amount of letters, not to mention junk mail. And their delivery patterns are quite different, not just the type of items delivered. I would imagine the ideal van is quite different, particularly as between UPS and USPS.

FedEx and Amazon probably enjoy the most flexibility, partly because they both heavily utilize contractors for last-mile delivery. To avoid unionization FedEx has deliberately made some interesting decisions about which markets they were going to pursue and which they would cede to UPS. Amazon seems to be taking a page out of FedEx's book. In either case I imagine fleet uniformity is more difficult to achieve logistically and financially without full vertical integration of that component, and not as important when your independent contractors are absorbing much of the efficiency losses. UPS and USPS have more incentive to maximize vehicle efficiency because they directly internalize all the costs.

Before the USPS cuts Priority Mail had an interesting niche.

I could pay just a tiny premium, and the packages I shipped __WOULD__ get there in 2-3 days, even cross country. That and being delivered by someone that handled the package gently, were the premium services they offered.

That trash-compactor-output who ran the USPS into the ground about a year ago ruined it though, and I really hope it gets fixed up properly.

I've had real problems with UPS off and on over the years.

There was a time when Amazon.com would let you chose carrier, and it was a real problem for me when they took that away and gave the contract to UPS. An extra $3 for not having to interrupt my day to get my packages, or ever have to argue with someone that the driver repeatedly putting a not home sticker on my door WHILE I WAS HOME? Shut up and take my money.

Part of the market niche segmentation is that non-USPS carriers are banned from the 'dregs'.

Interesting. So no one else is allowed to deliver letters, for example? Here in Germany for example there's one or a few courier services in pretty much most larger cities that deliver "local" mail, often by bike, and usually cheaper than the Deutsche Post. So most companies having lots of local customers tend to predominantly use those, while longer-distance mail is sent via Post. It's also a bit more efficient as such things can often be presorted by the sender (into local and long-distance mail) and the local mail doesn't have to go through the sorting center that's probably a bit further away, saving basically a round-trip for letter that just go back to the same city.

Yes. It's illegal for private carrier to delivery letters, except for "extremely urgent material". This exception allows FedEx document services and couriers... but only for express categories. You cannot send standard-speed documents via any other carrier.

I don't know if the law has any POV on the speed of delivery, but what I do know is that the law prohibits private carriers from touching your post box (under any circumstance), so they can only deliver letters if they're shipped in a box, or a large envelope that can be left on your porch like a package.

Letter boxes are also legally protected, but that's not the main reason only USPS does letters. They could dump them on your porch like they do packages. It's because it's a legal monopoly. And no, I'm not making it up.

See, for example USPS vs O'BRIEN: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/6... ...which also handily cites the statutes.

Basically, America is still in the bad old days that Germany mostly left behind when there was a government monopoly on mail.

And Americans overwhelmingly like it! Land of the free.

The supposedly more capitalistic Americans also have a majority of their mortgages handled effectively by the federal government: it guarantees many mortgages, so takes the balance sheet risk when people don't pay.

Another interesting example: freight rail transport in the US works really, really well. You just never hear about it. (A few years ago the Economist had a special report on it.)

What works rather badly is passenger rail.

Guess which one is run by the government and which one is in private hands?

Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of...

>Fedex on high-margin, next-day service

FedEx Express does. FedEx Ground has a separate truck fleet, and, fascinatingly, a separate president and CEO. FedEx Ship Manager prints both labels, but they have different barcodes and layouts, and you have to schedule separate pickups.

One name, several different companies.

Good read from last year about how trucks from the current LLV fleet (which at this point are very old) keep catching on fire: https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3ezx4/post-office-delivery-...

Defense companies are known for high prices, so I think it would have been cheaper to go with the traditional auto manufacturers.

Traditional companies struggle to navigate the government acquisitions process, or acquisitions can be so different than traditional manufacturing and customer sales that it would require a completely separate company to manage the risks anyways.

Instead you typically wind up with a contractor company that can work the system and they act as a middle tier that interfaces with the production company. In the case of vehicles you could imagine a low end contractor would negotiate production fleet vehicles. A mid range contractor might build custom versions using a stock base with a different cabin/storage. The large contractor can handle the full lifecycle including the protracted support and maintenance requirements.

IIRC, the existing USPS vehicles are made with a lot of off-the-shelf parts from existing automakers and their suppliers. In a way, this really isn't that much different than traditional automakers -- a lot of them share parts, or even entire chassis designs. I would expect that these will probably also share a lot of parts from other existing vehicles.

The difference is that a government contractor has expertise in packaging everything to meet a single customer's needs. Traditional automakers don't really do this -- they build to their own spec.

Chevy has no issues selling their cars directly to government agencies and Ford to Police. So I think that theory is debunked.

More likely reason is politics.

GM's own website about government sales references things I specifically said, so I'm unsure what you're referring to.

"Our team can work with you to develop your bid or connect you with the appropriate dealer to fulfill your needs."

https://www.gmfleet.com/government-fleets

Supposedly Oshkosh partnered with Ford for their bid. Though, now they're being evasive: https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ford/2021/02/23/oshko...

If this was happening in South Africa I would think corruption 100%. I mean, why can't you just take any van and stick some standard issue shelves in the back?

You can do that -- but remember that the USPS operates at a huge scale and with a very specific set of use cases. Mass market vehicles are designed for average use cases.

If they can custom design a vehicle that saves a driver 1 second per delivery, or decrease their accident rate by 1%, that could be enough savings to pay for the vehicle and then some.

Many organizations that operate at a huge scale find it beneficial to customize their essential tool set.

That being said -- The USPS definitely does have some vehicles from traditional automakers in their fleet. My mailman drives a RAM ProMaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Ducato It's left-hand-drive though, so I would imagine that carriers wouldn't want to drive one on a route with mailboxes at the roadside. https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images...

This is really not a new thing, ups and fedex have been using custom package cars for decades. It seems totally crazy to go with a military contractor for something that we have a mature industry for a la FCCC or Paccar equivalent

Oshkosh has been making trucks since 1917... and they make commercial vehicles too. For example, Jerr-Dan is one of their brands.

Fedex buys trucks from companies like "Spartan Motors", that build in custom/specialized vehicles.

From wikipedia, Oshkosh seems be a company doing custom/specialized vehicles for all kinds of purposes, including military designs. Why does that seem like a "crazy" choice suddenly?

Oshkosh is/has a large civilian truck frame and chassis manufacturer.

I realise that the uk is different in scale to the US, but we function just fine here with mass market vehicles. All* our last mile deliveries are made by normal vehicles, even in London!

(Apparently according to https://www.whatvan.co.uk/analysis-and-comment/2016/fleet-fo... there are some modified vans by peugeot to handle "rough" terrain, but that's a far cry from a custom designed custom built vehicle).

Bear in mind that these "custom" vehicles that the USPS has used in the past use a lot of off-the-shelf parts. For example, the current "custom" Grumman LLV is built on a GM chassis, and uses a GM powertrain.

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

It's essentially a new shell thrown on top of an 80's GM SUV.

Do you have left-hand drive mail vehicles in the UK? I don't recall ever seeing images of a Royal Mail delivering to a post-mounted mail box from a truck now that I think about it....

Not that I know of, nope. My experience is that the royal mail vans are parked, and they do the rounds on-foot/bike

160 000 vehicles is not huge scale for any automaker.

Anyway, I think the biggest issue is that USPS is not requiring for next gen platform to be fully electric.

Driver's seat would be on the wrong side, so in for the US we'd need to import cars from places like SA that are right hand drive.

Well, yes. For decades rural routes have been served using Right Hand Drive Jeeps built for export markets (Australia, NZ, SA, etc.)

It seems like a good idea on the surface, but the volume is way too low, a traditional automaker wouldn't touch this. Fleet vehicles are also notoriously low margin, which is fine if you're rounding up sales of an existing model (like police variants of existing models). But it wouldn't be a smart play for a large automaker to build a custom low volume fleet vehicle like the USPS is commissioning here.

It maybe relatively low volume but it's a multi-billion contract.

Most of the traditional car manufacturers are also defense contractors (although some like Ford have spun of their businesses).

Current USPS delivery trucks platform is based on Chevy truck. Basically the undercarriage is GMs product.

It seems government contracting with a middle-man who contracts with others is how government likes it. Probably politicians are getting more influence this way, at our cost.

I cannot believe that one of USPS requirements for next delivery vehicle is to NOT to be a full EV platform!

Did they copy the workhorse design? Or is the link wrong? So weird.

Interesting choice. They desperately need a new sled. When she's not misdelivering my packages to other people, I feel terrible for my USPS mail carrier during the summer months. Those Grumman POS mail vehicles have no air conditioning. Being from Arizona, I didn't even know that was a thing, an actual configuration you could choose for a vehicle made after the Vietnam War. I think she plugs in a fan. I hope they get some kind of hardship pay when it's 95+ degrees out.

But... I have mixed feelings given their coercive monopoly status. It's actually illegal to offer mail delivery in the US. The USPS even raided corporate mailrooms in New York in the 2000s in an attempt to enforce the letter of the law re: urgent mail. The exception to their mail monopoly is urgent communication, which is why FedEx and UPS are able to offer overnight and 2/3-day express delivery, but not regular letter mail. That's the one category that the USPS doesn't have a monopoly on. So the USPS actually tried to determine – to judge itself – whether the stuff these companies were sending via FedEx and other competitors was in fact urgent. They opened people's overnight envelopes to try to evaluate the true urgency level manifested within, as if they could even begin to judge or assess that characteristic of other people's communications... Thankfully they sparked a big backlash and haven't pulled a stunt like that since.

There's nothing about mail or delivering stuff or logistics more broadly that would seem to require government involvement. There's nothing particular about government that makes it uniquely well suited to delivering mail. This should've been privatized from the very beginning. Britain privatized the Royal Mail, and there are lots of other examples of privatized mail carriers. Sometimes people object to the anticipated cost of mailing a letter to maybe a remote town, on the assumption that it would cost a lot more than the flat artificial stamp price today, but I don't understand the objection. If the natural or actual cost of something is X, why would anyone assert that they should be able to pay less than X?

Anyway, they took far too long to choose a new vehicle, and they'll probably overpay. A private company would be more responsible and disciplined. It reminds me of Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company. He decided to try to compete with the USPS, and charged lower prices. They shut him down by force: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company

It would be so fun to start a mail carrier in his honor. There are so many opportunities for innovation and creativity in mail and package delivery, and the vehicles could double as ice cream trucks on weekends.

If mail was privatized, they would just stop delivering to rural addresses. Which I'm fine with. Rural communities are subsidized by the federal government far, far too much.

> 360-degree camera

So, a government surveillance network will make a sweep of every neighborhood in the U.S. six days a week?

To put this in context, every post office in the U.S. is outfitted with a dozen or more cameras that record the faces and movements of everyone who enters. Those images are routinely shared with FBI and NSA, which use them for law enforcement investigations and security purposes.

Taking that kind of surveillance onto the streets should be controversial. Or are post office vehicles already outfitted with cameras and I just don't know about it?

> Or are post office vehicles already outfitted with cameras and I just don't know about it?

There have been a few LLVs that have been seen with nctech mapping units. [0]

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/jlq18s/usp...

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