Like a letter or bundle that was considered misplaced however lastly will get delivered, and after greater than 10 years of planning, deliberation and infighting, america Postal Service (USPS) has begun to situation its new electrical Subsequent Technology Supply Automobile to letter carriers.
The NGDVs are constructed by Oshkosh Protection, which received the contract to make the autos in 2021. They’re being manufactured at a manufacturing facility in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and 75% of them might be battery-electric autos.
“Our huge expertise in delivering autos that excel in essentially the most demanding circumstances positions us to supply reliability, security and maintainability for many years forward,” mentioned Tim Block, President of Oshkosh Protection.
To say the NGDV stands out visually can be a substantial understatement. The car’s design features a large windshield and a low-slung hood, the latter of which was designed to permit the motive force—regardless of peak—to see the highway, 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 car or its seems.
The vehicles have a spread of 70 miles, greater than ample for the every day common of 12 to fifteen miles coated by a typical city letter service. Not like the autos they’re changing—the Grumman Lengthy Life Automobile, which was the primary metropolis letter service car 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 car.
The brand new autos even have extra space for packages, a nod to the Amazonification that the postal service has undergone, as letter carriers in the present day ship much 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 just a few accidents and the occasional dying once they have been hit by oncoming autos, the brand new vehicles have the cargo door on one aspect, permitting packages to be unloaded immediately onto the curb.
Letter carriers participated within the strategy of designing the specs for the brand new truck, which started in 2014. A few of their recommendations—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 fundamental security options that new autos in the present day characteristic, similar to airbags and driver-assistance applied sciences similar 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 staff can use as properly, which was really useful by the Common Accounting Workplace in 2023. The chargers, he mentioned, 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 higher constancy, maybe in the future 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 carrying out their appointed course with all velocity.”
Supply: Oshkosh Protection
