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Comment by i80and | Hacker News Reader

Obviously this is extremely bad and dumb and performative, but putting that aside: who is going to buy them at the needed scale? They're custom purpose-built vehicles for mail delivery, not exactly something I see the marketplace absorbing.

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Scrappers? UPS and Fedex would need bigger vehicles than this. Maybe some other country's postal service would take advantage of it and buy them up, but that's about it as far as I can see.

It's all part of a much larger plan to cripple the USPS so republicans can justify outsourcing mail delivery to the private sector. Take a great investment the USPS made that would decrease health premiums (because it's so much better ergonomically for drivers) and lower operating costs, and throw it into a fire. Now USPS has to continue to maintain the LLVs, even as they continue to fall apart and the drivers suffer.

>UPS and Fedex would need bigger vehicles than this.

I live in the SF Bay Area and i've definitely seen small vans and such used for delivery by the major shippers. they don't always use the standard trucks.

The skeptic in me thinks the provision was added at the behest of the future purchaser. Amazon? FedEx? UPS?

There’s a good chance this ends up as outright thievery.

I would be a little surprised -- Amazon already has their own custom electric delivery trucks, and FedEx and UPS could probably order these from Oshkosh directly if they wanted. These vehicles are also optimized for mail, less for parcels. None of these players need to play backroom shenanigans.

That said, blatant corruption is just the name of the game at this point in America, so who knows.

> Amazon already has their own custom electric delivery trucks

The vast majority of amazon's delivery vehicles are random vans, and amazon themselves doesn't own them; they franchise out like fedex ground does.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonDSPDrivers/comments/17l2gue/a...

no. if you look at Oshkosh's behaviour according to the article you would immediately know this isn't going to be the case. the thievery has already happened.

Maybe they’d be bought as last-mile vehicles for FedEx contractors or similar?

Selling them off really doesn’t make sense, though. I understand that the USPS operates in many areas that aren’t conducive to EVs and that ICE models are needed there, but these electric models would be extremely well-suited for urban areas where drivers are making frequent stops given how poorly ICEs perform in constant-stop-and-go scenarios.

FedEx has a supplier for EVs already. So does Amazon. They probably don't want some oddball trucks in their fleet. Although it would be a nice favor for FedEx or someone to keep the batteries warm until a more sane administration offers to buy them back.

Exactly its more likely its a push to have USPS less efficient and less stable, so that in a year or so they can be like "see its useless we need to privatize it we told you the whole time" (this thing we did is totally proof we were right before) lol

If there's only 93 of them as posted elsewhere in the thread, there's no scale needed, just two randos per state.

Plenty of people driving old usps mail jeeps, you can always find someone who wants to drive something weird.

If they're auctioned off somewhere like govdeals, I could see them selling for above their reserve price.

If these are legal to drive on Europe I think they have a good market offshore.

Except for tarif war

If most other last mile delivery companies (e.g. UPS) weren't already commissioning their own delivery vans, then I would say that any one of them could pick up the slack.`

I don't think there is any desire to find a legitimate buyer. The bill wants to say "throw them into a landfill" but the architects are trying to sound thrifty. Stated reasoning: "Stop wasting the government's money on useless initiatives. Sell these white elephants and ask employees to use their own car!" Actual reasoning: "We need to burn more oil. There are campaign donations on the line and the midterms are going to be very tough for us. Big Electricity does not donate to campaigns and we can't take the money we save on fuel and use it for ads."

I think they only made 93 for the $10bn so it doesnt matter who guys them

They'll rust in surplus lots until Burners buy them one at a time.

Amazon would take them at fire-sale prices.

I could see Amazon buying them.

Amazon has ~ 70,000 delivery vehicles. USPS has 93 EV vehicles.

Amazon already has custom Rivian vans that were designed for them.

You're putting way too much thought into this. The purpose of this provision is to appease donors. If these get sold for scrap, that is a feature. Did someone say there is no quid pro quo?

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/23/politics/trump-senate-democra...

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