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Comment by ggreer | Hacker News Reader

I wondered why other delivery companies use commercial vehicles instead of NGDVs or LLVs, and the answer is that commercial vehicles are more capable while being significantly cheaper.

NGDVs cost $60,000 each, and that's for half of them being ICE vehicles and half EVs with a 70 mile range (35 miles if you use the heater). The ICE version gets 14.7 miles per gallon (8.6mpg if you turn on the air conditioning).[1] There is no hybrid version, which is outrageous considering the expected driving profile.

For comparison, a Mercedes eSprinter (which has more cargo capacity and >2x the range of the NGDV) starts at $63,475 MSRP. I'm sure a bulk order of 50,000 would get a significant discount.

This whole project seems to be a handout to a defense contractor, not an efficient use of funds.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh_NGDV#Fuel_economy_and_...

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As usual when you take a dismissive stance ("this is obviously a waste of money!") you are ignoring lots od details. The use case of a mail carrier is not well suited by a massive eSprinter. They have no need for something so large. They want to be seated at the height where most mailboxes are so they can make many deliveries without getting out of the car.

Whenever you find yourself going "why would they make THAT decision?" assume it is yourself that is ignorant and take it as an opportunity to learn, rather than dismiss the choices of people who specialize in the area you are puzzled by.

I used the eSprinter as one example, not the only option. Maybe something like the Ford eTransit or the Rivian EDV is a better fit for postal deliveries. My point is that other delivery companies and postal services use commercial vehicles, most likely because that's the most cost-effective option.

Considering the NGDV's atrocious efficiency, lack of hybrid option, and high unit costs, it seems far more likely that this is a pork project for a defense contractor than that everyone else is doing it wrong.

Is it inefficient? Would it be more worthy to have two chassis designs, one for ICE and one for EV, to make it more efficient for the gas version? Would any hybrid drivetrain provide higher efficiency for similar build costs on the same chassis?

My point would be that they weighed a lot of design considerations and I assume this is the best they could get that meets all of them. Like others said, other commercial delivery vehicles don't have the same use case as this. Who cares about range when the use case for this vehicle is ~20 miles a day?

Everyone else isn't "doing it wrong", they're doing it differently, for different needs.

There's a wider meta point here which is always relevant: nobody comes into work planning to do a bad job.

I'd add the second point is: if you're not in the same field, then start with the assumption that the people who's work you're looking at had good reasons for their choices (and that it wasn't a conspiracy).

> I wondered why other delivery companies use commercial vehicles instead of NGDVs or LLVs, and the answer is that commercial vehicles are more capable while being significantly cheaper.

Commercial vehicles in fleets are leased - they last anywhere from 2-5 years then they're pushed off to the used vehicle market. After 10-15 years they're so done that they'll end up on the scrap yard or shipped off to Africa or Asia. On top of that they're designed to be aerodynamic at highway speeds because they'll spend a lot of their life time on such streets and speeds, whereas these postal trucks will spend most of their time moving like snails.

These USPS tanks in contrast are expected to last 30, 40 years like their predecessors, racking up insane mileage... and while no one cares if some underpaid gig worker runs over some child because the child happened to be in the dead spot of his vehicle, if the same happens to USPS the government itself is the target for a nice juicy lawsuit. So it makes sense for a custom order at that scale and expected life time, and it also makes sense to stray from what the market has to offer because the requirements are different.

Oh, and commercial delivery doesn't have to take care about its workers. They'll get burned out with their backs and joints ruined, but the companies don't have to pay a dime. In contrast, USPS is a government agency and has a massive financial incentive to keep healthcare costs low.

How in the world is a mail carrier going to deliver mail in a huge esprinter, you going to have them open their door and climb out at every mailbox?

My point was that a much more capable vehicle could be purchased for a similar price. Depending on the use case, of course other commercial vehicles would make more sense. The smaller versions of the Ford Transit are a popular option among non-US postal services. And if US Postal Service was willing to buy foreign vehicles, they could have even smaller and cheaper options. (Though they'd have to deal with EPA and NHTSA rules to make them street legal.)

> My point was that a much more capable vehicle could be purchased for a similar price.

This leaps to a conclusion. Probably the documents are public - why did they choose this solution over off-the-shelf options? (No point in speculation; what is their actual analysis?)

> The smaller versions of the Ford Transit are a popular option among non-US postal services. And if US Postal Service was willing to buy foreign vehicles, they could have even smaller and cheaper options.

Ford isn't selling the Transit Connect in North America anymore. And they're made in Europe, so despite the brand, they're a foreign vehicle, too.

> non-US postal services

What postal services are those? Are you sure you aren't confusing the USPS with a parcel service?

if US Postal Service was willing to buy foreign vehicles,

It's not. Offshoring critical infrastructure is always a bad idea.

they'd have to deal with EPA and NHTSA rules

Possibly not. They don't even have license plates, as the Postal Service outranks state governments.

The NGDV's gross vehicle weight rating is 8,501lbs so that it is classified by the EPA as a heavy-duty truck. If the rating were a pound less, it would be classified as a light-duty truck and have much stricter emissions standards.

One key difference between USPS and UPS/Fedex is that USPS does not do freight, and they do a lot more lightweight items (i.e. letters), so cargo capacity is much less of a concern. The fact that junk mail is so common actually reduces the need for cargo capacity since their routes tend to be made long not because of physical volume/distance so much as dwell time (that is, if someone is using EDDM[0] to target a neighborhood, you have to stop at every mailbox in that neighborhood, even if it's just to deliver that one piece of junk mail which will immediately get thrown away, and this takes far more time than delivering a bundle of packages to a handful of houses).

I remember reading about the NGDV, and one of the reasons it looks so weird is because USPS wanted a vehicle that was low to the ground (to make it easier to climb in and out of) and easy to see over the hood, even for very short drivers[1]. Given that they are in residential areas (and thus, in proximity of kids playing outside) far more often than UPS/Fedex, I can't say I disagree with that requirement. (Also, if you have a tall truck like UPS and Fedex typically roll, good luck delivering to the average mailbox while staying in your seat.)

USPS has certainly evaluated more traditional designs; in fact, they are actively using ~20k Ram ProMasters (a rebadged Fiat Ducato), which are quite similar to the Mercedes Sprinter, alongside ~9k mini vans[2].

[0]: https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm

[1]: https://x.com/Nir_Kahn/status/1364465483911675905

[2]: https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2023-01/... (PDF page 6)

> Given that they are in residential areas (and thus, in proximity of kids playing outside) far more often than UPS/Fedex...

That isn't the case at all in my experience. In any neighborhood I've ever lived in, you see at least one van from each organization come through daily. And if anything, UPS and FedEx come through more than once per day sometimes, whereas USPS doesn't.

Per your earlier point about freight I can imagine that UPS/FedEx have a lower percentage of company traffic in residential areas than USPS does. But I find it difficult to imagine that the total number of trips to residential areas is lower for them. They simply have more non-residential traffic than USPS, not less residential traffic.

I wish there were publicly available data on this stuff, as we can only discuss anecdotes. In any case, in the neighborhoods I've lived in, it's not uncommon for UPS and Fedex to have zero deliveries at least one day of the week.

If Fedex is rolling around twice in one day, it's never the same line (that is, Fedex Express vs Ground/Home; Express incurs a special surcharge for residential deliveries and thus is usually only used by companies that primarily deliver to commercial addresses or who don't care about cost).

UPS is similar; usually, they only roll around in the evening, and when they roll around in the morning it's for one package with a specific delivery window obligation.

During December, of course, this goes by the wayside. Even USPS will roll around twice a day on the weekends leading up to Christmas.

> That isn't the case at all in my experience. In any neighborhood I've ever lived in, you see at least one van from each organization come through daily. And if anything, UPS and FedEx come through more than once per day sometimes, whereas USPS doesn't.

USPS doesn't deliver freight, UPS does. So yeah, you are going to see both in a residential setting but you won't see any USPS trucks making freight deliveries in an industrial area. UPS has to support that use case, USPS doesn't.

Did you not read the article?

The NGDVs aren't Sprinter vans, they're purpose made mail delivery vehicles, with ergonomics and cargo space setup for that, which makes a massive difference for the drivers, especially when it comes to repetitive motion injuries, which is a huge cost for USPS.

Amazon went away from commercial vans to purpose made vehicles built by Rivian for many of the same reasons and they've been widely praised by the drivers.

UPS brown trucks (they call them “cars” internally) are also custom made. They don’t even resell them when they are at EOL they crush them.

The Rivian vans are commercially available.[1] Like the NGDV, they have a side door and an 80 inch interior height so that nobody has to stoop while in the cargo bay.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivian_EDV

The Rivian vans are commercially available.

If you follow the link in your link, you'll see that while new Postal Service trucks are $60,000, the Rivian vans START a $83,000†, and it's simply not possible for the driver of one of those vans to reach a mailbox from inside the vehicle, which is how vast majority of what the new Postal Services will be used.

Paying a 40% premium for less capability? That doesn't sound smart.

† https://rivian.com/fleet

I was just saying that the vehicle is commercially available, not that it was a better option for the US Postal Service. But $83,000 is the retail price. Anyone buying in bulk will get them for significantly cheaper. The $60k for the NGDV is the discounted price for a bulk buy of 50,000, and it's for a mix of ICE and EVs. The ICE vehicles are significantly cheaper to manufacture, so the EV price is probably close to the Rivian's bulk price, and the Rivian has significantly greater capabilities.

> Rivian has significantly greater capabilities.

According to you, some random tech bro CEO who hasn't delivered hundreds of letters a day for decades and is just looking at cost and going "hey, this isn't the cheapest option, it must be one of those darn government projects meant to subsidize those annoying poor people!"

In reality, the USPS studied several other options in use by post offices around the world, from commercial vans to tricycles: https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2023-01/...

They've since published further reports on things like how to tighten up the manufacturing contract, opportunities to use EV's, etc etc: https://www.uspsoig.gov/focus-areas/focus-on/next-generation...

But hey, I'm sure you know better!

Having wrenched more extensively than I want to on the Transit, the Sprinter and the Promaster I would hand out the pork to a defense contractor ten times over before I bought Euro vans of ANY make because at least they tend to build things with margin in the places you need it even if it's not peak comfort and user experience. The engineering culture and default assumptions are completely different and it shows.

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