Like a letter or bundle that was regarded as misplaced however lastly will get delivered, and after greater than 10 years of planning, deliberation and infighting, the USA Postal Service (USPS) has begun to subject its new electrical Subsequent Era Supply Car to letter carriers.
The NGDVs are constructed by Oshkosh Protection, which received the contract to make the automobiles in 2021. They’re being manufactured at a manufacturing facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and 75% of them might be battery-electric automobiles.
“Our huge expertise in delivering automobiles that excel in essentially the most demanding circumstances positions us to offer reliability, security and maintainability for many years forward,” stated Tim Block, President of Oshkosh Protection.
To say the NGDV stands out visually can be a substantial understatement. The automobile’s design features a large windshield and a low-slung hood, the latter of which was designed to permit the driving force—regardless of top—to see the street, giving it the looks of a kind of goofy mid-to-late twentieth century baseball- or baseball cap-shaped bullpen carts.
However letter carriers aren’t making enjoyable of the automobile or its seems to be.
The vehicles have a spread of 70 miles, greater than ample for the every day common of 12 to fifteen miles lined by a typical city letter service. In contrast to the automobiles they’re changing—the Grumman Lengthy Life Car, which was the primary metropolis letter service automobile for which the USPS developed specs versus shopping for off the shelf—they’ve air-con, a characteristic that was roundly applauded by the half dozen nameless mail carriers who supplied suggestions on the automobile.
The brand new automobiles even have extra space for packages, a nod to the Amazonification that the postal service has undergone, as letter carriers as we speak ship way more packages and much fewer letters and magazines than they did through the twentieth century.
Whereas the Grumman vehicles needed to be unloaded from the rear, which resulted in a number of accidents and the occasional dying after they have been hit by oncoming automobiles, the brand new vehicles have the cargo door on one aspect, permitting packages to be unloaded instantly onto the curb.
Letter carriers participated within the means of designing the specs for the brand new truck, which started in 2014. A few of their ideas—together with non-skid surfaces, lights on the doorsteps and a 3rd solar visor for the windshield—have been integrated into the ultimate design. The vehicles even have the identical primary security options that new autos as we speak characteristic, corresponding to airbags and driver-assistance applied sciences corresponding to automated emergency braking and a collision-avoidance system.
One letter service, Larry, who drives a battery-electric hybrid to work in New York Metropolis from Suffolk County utilizing the HOV lane, predicted to a reporter that the looks of the brand new electrical vehicles on streets will immediate the set up of charging stations that native workers can use as nicely, which was really helpful by the Basic Accounting Workplace in 2023. The chargers, he stated, would make it simpler for him to buy an EV for himself for his commute.
It’s clear that the NGDVs will allow postal couriers to serve with better constancy, maybe someday reaching the excessive aspirational normal of the Persian mounted postal couriers Herodotus described in E book 8, Paragraph 98 of “The Persian Wars,” who “…are stopped neither by snow nor rain nor warmth nor darkness from undertaking their appointed course with all pace.”
Supply: Oshkosh Protection
