USPS Awards Contract to Modernize Postal Delivery Vehicle Fleet | Hacker News Reader

USPS Awards Contract to Modernize Postal Delivery Vehicle Fleet

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47 pointsCDSlice68 comments

It's incredible how much flack this thing is getting...especially for its appearance. Clearly gone are the days when designers believed that form followed function. This vehicle was designed to maneuver closely around other objects like mailboxes, maximize cargo capacity, and keep the driver safe. The low hood gives the driver better visibility at the edge of the vehicle while still offering a crumple zone. I can't find any specs on the interior, but I'm betting cargo capacity has been improved...especially for larger packages, which is much more of USPS's delivery bulk in this decade.

Everything about this seems thoughtfully engineered, but clearly our design sensibilities these days are more oriented towards golden ratios than functionality.

It needs to strike a better balance imo, the old trucks are so iconic they could use an equally aesthetically appealing successor.

Low hood would also differentiate it from most consumer vehicles for a good reason.

Pedestrian deaths are rising in the US, both total and per-capita. In large part this can be attributed to the increasing popularity of taller crossovers and SUVs, which strike passengers higher on the body and are more likely to knock passengers under the vehicle and towards the wheels rather than bouncing over the hood.

Of defense contractors, Oshkosh is one of my favorite and makes amazing vehicles. I think the USPS will get a reliable and durable platform from them. As far as electrification, they have experience with that in the HEMTT and could upgrade the platform as the USPS dictates. They also have autonomous vehicle experience so there is a lot of longevity to the partnership. So as far as government boondoggles can go, this sounds ok to me.

I have an Oshkosh P19, an aircraft/structural fire truck. The thing is unstoppable with a fully locked drive train on demand and great construction quality. They also fixed a bunch of issues in the FMTV that were inherited from BAE Systems. The MTVR, JLTV, and HET are all well regarded AFAIK.

> I have an Oshkosh P19, an aircraft/structural fire truck

Cool! What do you use that for?

Brush fires in a rural area

Storming APP (Atmosphere Processing Plant) to rescue colonists I imagine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVLBLJOCBg8 https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/M577_Armored_Personnel_Carrier#B...

I hear those things get a lot of blown transaxles

Oshkosh? B'gosh!

I hope they plan to design them as rolling data platforms. Postal trucks are ideal for collecting hyperlocal data. The 360 camera is a good start, assuming it can record. Imagine getting a completely up to date Street View every day. Imagine getting hyperlocal weather data every day.

And more importantly, that same data collected over time. Being able to monitor the daily changes in weather or traffic or erosion.

With the right contracts in place, it might even be profitable for them to go off route just to collect data.

I suppose google and facebook selling your data is not enough for you...

Google already drives around a fleet of vehicles to collect this data. Wouldn't it be better for them to give all that money to the postal service to subsidize mail delivery while also getting cars off the road?

Because everyone knows how good the government is with our data

I'd rather have the government build a public domain dataset as SamWhited suggested (and equally available to Google's competitors, projects like OSM, and any creative HNer) than have them collect proprietary data for Google and help lock in Google's competitive advantage.

We already can get hyper local weather data: every airport (and there are a lot of small airports in the U.S.) and tons of public buildings have weather stations on them. I guarantee you can get weather data within a few miles easily.

As to everything else: no, that would be creepy and the post office shouldn't do it. They don't need to become profitable or do off-mission things just to please the people that think it should be run like a business for some reason even though the whole point of the post office is to actually go everywhere (even where it wouldn't be profitable for FedEx et al to go) and be cheap (ie. not to be run like a business, to be run like a public service, which is what it is).

I said the same below but it applies here too: Google already drives around a fleet of vehicles to collect this data. Wouldn't it be better for them to give all that money to the postal service to subsidize mail delivery while also getting cars off the road?

And I'm talking about truly hyperlocal data. When I load up Weather Underground or Purple Air, there are a bunch of sensors near me, but the closest is one mile away. I know the route of my postal carrier. He starts his day less than one mile and stays within one mile of my house his entire day. I'd love to have daily temp and air pollution readings from sensors that are near my house all day.

There aren't that many cars that it would get off the road and it's not on mission and outside the realm of their expertise, so no, it's not a good way for them to make money which they shouldn't be doing anyways.

This weather data wouldn't be as useful as you think it would be. You'd be getting data only taken once per day more or less at the same time. You're much better using the airstrip a mile away that has a sensor that takes readings every 10 minutes or whatever.

There are 190,000 mail trucks delivering mail every day. I’ll bet NOAA would find 190,000 mobile sensors collecting data eight hours a day, most within a very small radius, quite a compelling dataset. There aren’t that many airstrips. Not even close.

And who cares if it’s not on mission? We can change the mission.

That's a fair point, NOAA might have a use for it, I don't know.

However, selling data to Google still seems like a bad idea. Things that are off mission and the point is to make money are just a distraction with no good purpose that's going to make the post office be greedy instead of just focusing on delivering the mail.

I could maybe agree that there was some value in having a public set of streetview like images (which is the more likely thing they'd do, not sell it to Google or whomever which would just be terrible), but it also seems deeply creepy. Then again, Google is already doing it so I suppose there's an argument that at least this way it's public domain.

Why don't you buy a personal weather station and connect it to wu? This seems more sustainable than lugging around that equipment on a truck, which increases the fuel cost. Plus, what are the chances of having a USPS vehicle within a mile of you at any given time? It's 6am on a Sunday and I want to know the weather.

I don't want the data for me. I want people who study long term weather patterns to have detailed hyperlocal datasets from 190,000 daily collectors.

I'm a former postal worker (summer job in the 90's) and I drove some of those postal trucks. I drove the "half ton" and "quarter ton" trucks. Those are the small or very small delivery trucks you would typically see in residential neighborhoods.

Those things were named after their actual weight and made of aluminum. Obviously driving around in a 500 or 1000 pound vehicle when every other car weighs considerably more is anxiety producing. Plus the driver seat is inverted compared to every other US vehicle, so my visibility to the left side and rear was poor. Plus other drivers can't be expected to know or understand that my ability to see them is different from what is typical of other drivers. Plus if the vehicle was damaged in any way, I would be fired, even if it was clearly not my fault.

Fun times! And great memories. What a unique summer job to have while in college.

FYI the "S10 with a funny body on it" you were driving does not weigh 500lb or 1000lb. Those are load ratings (very conservative ones).

Really? That's not what they told me when I worked there. They were such flimsy vehicles, so what I was told sounded reasonable.

The Grumman LLV postal vehicle weighs 2,700lbs:

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

The "ton" truck rating persists, but it's mostly outdated. The F-150 is a "half-ton" truck, despite having a rated payload capacity that's often closer to 1 ton. I drive a "1 ton" truck that can haul over 2 tons ...

For comparison 500 lb is a medium sized motorcycle.

Those are load ratings. 1/2 ton is still a standard small pickup parlance, but a a true load rating that probably hasn't been true since the 70s or 80s. Back before then it was a good idea of what you could haul (as opposed to a "full sized" 1-ton)

The proposed new trucks look pretty wonky, like a cartoon: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images...

Woah. I never knew how much I liked the “old” USPS vans until I saw the new one.

I like them purely because it's unbelievably distinctive -- just like the old fleet IMO

+1 to this. Having that iconic look that you can recognize instantly "That's the mail carrier!" - and designed for it's specific function - Outstanding! Just hope they don't randomly catch fire ;)

Not visually appealing at first glance, but the posts I've seen by postal workers are that this thing looks great. The cargo capacity will handle the increase in package delivery, and it's much easier to see around the edges to maneuver up to a mailbox, which reduces the times a carrier has to get out to deliver the mail. The current vans don't even have A/C, and their collision warning system is a plastic pole at the corner.

Form really follows function.

Looks wonky but I would have preferred to drive one of these. Those two cameras would have been super helpful, plus that blind spot warning for the left side. Those will make a big difference.

Also, these have air conditioning!! What a luxury! The previous ones did not have that. Just a sad little fan that barely did anything.

Postal workers don't care what the vehicles look like, they want practical safety features that help them do their jobs.

"Maily McMailface".

That image doesn't emphasize any of the stuff that the people that will have to work with the vehicle and will be responsible for fleet performance want to know (and by proxy, their bosses, who are authorizing the expense).

What's my maintenance costs and times gonna look like?

Will it be ergonomic to get in and out all the time?

Can this vehicle pull out into traffic easily?

Is this vehicle gonna be a fatiguing pain to drive?

The features list almost raises more questions than answers. Half the tech they highlighted comes with a very high risk of being worse than the manual solution it's replacing if the tech is not up to par. Nobody wants to wait for the automatic door to close to put it in gear.

Edit: So why is this opinion so unwelcome here, because I'm not on the "more tech more better" bandwagon or something of actual substance?

Isn't the driver seat on the wrong side?

US should be on the left side right? The figure shows right side...

This way the driver can put mail in suburban mailboxes without leaving the seat (while driving on the right side of the road).

Current US mail trucks are right hand drive so the driver can deliver to curbside mailboxes without getting out.

You are right that US drivers usually have the steering column on the left side

However, postal drivers get out of their vehicle all the time, and often on roads not meant to have vehicles pull over. Therefore them getting out from the right hand side prevents them from having to exit into traffic.

Does this mean they'll have all the old trucks up for sale? Who wants to start a food truck with me in an old USPS vehicle

just one truck? let's make a fleet. mine's gonna be a mini arcade with three cabinets.

Would it be street legal to operate a civilian right hand drive vehicle?

Mail carriers are civilians. My uncle was a rural carrier and had a right hand drive Suburu stationwagon thing that was his personal car, used for work.

Yeah rural mail carriers have cars due to the longer distances they have to go.

Yes, it is. There's a fairly big "JDM" (Japanese Domestic Market) car interest in the US, and I've seen plenty of them registered, insured and driving here. I think getting them emissions certified since the standards are all different is a bigger hurdle when importing than anything else, and that wouldn't apply here.

Edit: Also, the other direction, you'll see a lot of LHD cars in the UK where American troops are deployed. That's a pretty specific loophole, but I remember getting a lot of confused looks driving around.

It's not really a loophole is it? European drivers are welcome to drive LHD cars into UK via boats/channel tunnel just as we can take British cars to the rest of Europe, American troops just happen to be a significant group who take advantage of it being completely legal.

As to the confused looks, I would hazard a guess (having lived near a US base in the past, now not but still see EU cars every day) that they were over your choice of make/model (e.g. a Chevy of a type that no Brits buy), rather than driver side. Maybe I'm wrong and lots of people give weird looks because of the driver side, but personally I've definitely stood staring at cars that looked weird to me and were clearly US imports, but if I see a car that's common in the UK it's not that interesting noticing when there's a foreign version on the road here.

edit: oh and number plates too. American style is obviously much less common than even most old European country styles, yet alone the more standardised versions of the past couple of decades. So even if the model of car is the same, seeing an EU plate you think "they probably drove it from mainland Europe" which is pretty common for holidays, work, or just people relocating and keeping their car, whereas seeing a US plate makes you wonder who cared enough to ship it all the way here.

I guess I used "loophole" because the whole program is a loophole. Typically exempts you from inspections, no international drivers license needed, you buy coupons that relieve the fuel tax, we use weird number plates as you mention (not the ones from home, but military off-duty plates). I had an old LHD Opel Rekord from Germany when I was in the UK, like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Rekord#/media/File:Opel_R...

It's legal, just expensive as all get out to insure I suspect.

Yep. You can even buy a Wrangler RHD direct from Jeep today. Go to their builder and find the "WRANGLER UNLIMITED RHD".

Suspect they will destroy them much as they did the older style postal jeeps towards the end. They are not safe and there is a lot of potential liability in selling them. I think they also want to avoid the situation where people drive around in official looking vehicles that are identified as belonging to the post office.

Also, they are too small to make a decent food wagon.

> potential liability in selling them.

This is a cop-out. Especially when it's the government (notoriously hard to sue) selling. "You couldn't normally sell this stuff to consumers" gets sold on govdeals and ironplanet all the time.

Additionally, the LLVs likely meet applicable NHTSA regulations and FMVSSs for the year they were made and their class of vehicle.

The old mail vans are effectively Chevy S10 pickup chassis with the postal van body on top. Apparently, they are prone to catch on fire randomly.

I don't want to start a food truck, but I would like to electrify them and make them into a fleet of leasable UberEats/DoorDash/Prime delivery vehicles

I don't understand why USPS would contract out designing a new vehicle instead of buying American SUVs built for Europe - all the amenities of a modern SUV, plenty of parts and mechanics to repair them, and they'll have been built by a real car company, not some "Tactical Vehicle Manufacturer". Best of all, they'll have that right-hand-drive that Postal workers love so much.

We can't even do something as simple as upgrading the post office vehicles without bringing in defense contractors. Give me a break. Put that money towards a company of peace, or at least the company that will cost USPS the least.

> American SUVs built for Europe

> they'll have that right-hand-drive that Postal workers love so much.

Maybe you know, but the vast majority of Europe is right-hand-traffic, left-hand-drive like the US. AFAIK only the UK and Ireland are left-hand-traffic in Europe.

Are you going to complain that fishing boats have Raytheon radars?

Oshkosh makes tons of industry specific truck bodies. That's one of their business lines. Same for Grumman before them.

Despite what the internet commenters seeking validation for their decision to purchase a 3yo Tacoma at 2k over MSRP will have you believe, the edge between vehicle manufacturers is quite small to the point where USPS contracting somebody, anybody to build them a bunch of purpose built vehicles will likely be cheaper in the long run than slapping a bunch of shelves in a RHD Transit Connect.

And this is coming from someone who thinks most commercial fleets are over-equipped for regulatory compliance reasons and that the broader economy would be better off if that didn't happen.

Building off an existing platform makes some sense, but modern SUVs are a set of design trade offs that probably aren't great for much other than their target market: suburban homes doing school runs, work commutes and occasional grocery runs on good roads, while maintaining occasional use functionality to pick up heavier/bulkier objects.

They don't make much sense as a commercial vehicle designed to get in and out of all day and load and unload. So your car manufacture would make a bunch of modifications, and at that point you are right back where you started.

Now if you were suggesting buy a bunch of whatever some other country had developed for the same purpose, you might be onto something.

They're planning to buy like 100,000 of these. May as well do the work to get what you actually want when you're buying that many.

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26246116

Sort of - that’s from the contractor, and while largely consistent, it’s good to see both.

thought the government was mandating EVs? Is this some corrupt Louis DeJoy deal?

"The vehicles will be equipped with either fuel-efficient internal combustion engines or battery electric powertrains and can be retrofitted to keep pace with advances in electric vehicle technologies. The initial investment includes plant tooling and build-out for the U.S. manufacturing facility where final vehicle assembly will occur."

Yes this violates the EV EO and will likely be overturned before any vehicles are delivered. Biden just nominated 3 new members to the postal board; meaning DeJoy is on the way out sooner rather than later.

According to Wired, the EO likely has little weight to it, and is essentially symbolic.

https://www.wired.com/story/biden-wants-government-run-evs-n...

I think Biden’s order only applies to government owned vehicles and the PO is a weird quasi-in-between entity. Not really private, not really government.

Why wouldn’t they just used a customized Ford Transit or something?

Because when you're buying a "major car OEMs are happy to sell this number" number of vehicles you can afford to get exactly what you want and the resultant few % reduction in operating cost over the following decade or two will more than make up for the increased cost up front.

Also odds are this thing will be a mish-mash of GM or Ford parts bin with just the body and body specific stuff being different (like the LLV, or that handicapped van AM general used to make). So they may very well be buying a "customized Ford Transit" where it just so happens the body is also custom.

Apparently they're being built by a company called Oshkosh Defense because... delivering mail is just like combat?

The current-gen mail vehicle is called the LLV - literally the Grumman Long Life Vehicle - and the mileage these things have taken on speaks well to the name.

USPS tends to order these things with the expectation that they'll last forever (400k+ miles) with relatively little upkeep. Most cars out today, even if they get to e.g. 200k miles, will probably have taken on some pretty major repairs.

History:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep_DJ ('55-'84)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV ('87-'94, still used today)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Delivery_Vehic... ('23 onward)