By David Sharp and Ron Harris
ATHENS, Ga. — The Postal Service’s new supply autos aren’t going to win a magnificence contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are huge. Their hoods resemble a duck invoice. Their bumpers are huge.
“You’ll be able to inform that (the designers) didn’t have look in thoughts,” postal employee Avis Stonum stated.
Odd look apart, the primary handful of Subsequent Era Supply Automobiles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens, Georgia, are getting rave evaluations from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older autos that lack fashionable security options and are liable to breaking down — and even catching hearth.
Inside a number of years, the fleet could have expanded to 60,000, most of them electrical fashions, serving because the Postal Service’s main supply truck from Maine to Hawaii.
As soon as absolutely deployed, they’ll characterize probably the most seen indicators of the company’s 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who’s additionally renovating growing old amenities, overhauling the processing and transportation community, and instituting different modifications.
The present postal autos — the Grumman Lengthy Life Car, courting to 1987 — have made good on their identify, outlasting their projected 25-year lifespan. However they’re properly overdue for substitute.
Noisy and fuel-inefficient (9 mpg), the Grummans are expensive to take care of. They’re scalding scorching in the summertime, with solely an old-school electrical fan to flow into air. They’ve mirrors mounted on them that — when completely aligned — enable the motive force to see across the car, however the mirrors always get knocked out of alignment. Alarmingly, practically 100 of the autos caught hearth final 12 months, imperiling carriers and mail alike.
The brand new vehicles are being constructed with consolation, security and utility in thoughts by Oshkosh Protection in South Carolina.
Even tall postal carriers can rise up with out bonking their heads and stroll from entrance to again to retrieve packages. For security, the autos have airbags, 360-degree cameras, blind-spot monitoring, collision sensors and anti-lock brakes — all of that are lacking on the Grummans.
The brand new vehicles additionally function one thing frequent in most automobiles for greater than six many years: air con. And that’s key for drivers within the Deep South, the desert Southwest and other areas with scorching summers.
“I promise you, it felt like heaven blowing in my face,” Stonum stated of her first expertise working in an air-conditioned truck.
Richard Burton, one other driver, stated he appreciates the bigger payload space, which may accommodate greater packages, and the truth that he doesn’t should crouch, serving to him keep away from again ache. The outdated vehicles additionally had a behavior of breaking down in visitors, he added.
Brian Renfroe, president of the Nationwide Letter Carriers Affiliation, stated union members are enthusiastic in regards to the new autos, simply as they had been when the Grummans marked a leap ahead from the earlier old-school Jeeps. He credited DeJoy with bringing a way of urgency to get them into manufacturing.
“We’re excited now to be on the level the place they’re beginning to hit the streets,” Renfroe stated.
The method acquired off to a rocky begin.
Environmentalists had been outraged when DeJoy introduced that 90% of the next-gen autos within the first order could be gas-powered. Lawsuits had been filed demanding that the Postal Service additional electrify its fleet of greater than 200,000 autos to cut back tailpipe emissions.
“Everyone went nuts,” DeJoy stated.
The issue, Dejoy stated, wasn’t that he didn’t need electrical autos. Fairly, the expense of the autos, compounded by the prices of putting in 1000’s of charging stations and upgrading electrical service, made them unaffordable at a time when the company was reporting massive working deficits each quarter.
He discovered a strategy to additional enhance the variety of electrical autos when he met with President Joe Biden’s high environmental adviser, John Podesta. That led to a deal during which the federal government supplied $3 billion to the Postal Service, with a part of it earmarked for electrical charging stations.
In December 2022, DeJoy introduced that the Postal Service was shopping for 106,000 autos by means of 2028. That included 60,000 next-gen autos, 45,000 of them electrical fashions, together with 21,000 different electrical autos. He pledged to go all-electric for brand new purchases beginning in 2026.
“With the local weather disaster at our doorsteps, electrifying the U.S. authorities’s largest fleet will ship the progress we’ve been ready for,” stated Katherine García of the Sierra Membership, which sued the Postal Service earlier than its determination to spice up the quantity of electrical car purchases.
Between the electrical autos, diminished tailpipe emissions from optimized mail routes and different modifications, the company anticipates slicing carbon emissions by 40% by 2030, DeJoy stated. The route revisions may even lower your expenses.
This summer time the Postal Service’s environmental battles got here full circle because the White Home honored it with a Presidential Federal Sustainability Award, marking the top of “an attention-grabbing journey,” DeJoy stated.
The consideration signifies the company’s skill to work by means of complicated issues — be they operational, monetary, technical, political or of a public coverage nature, he stated.
“It comes from forging ahead,” he stated. “Preserve shifting.”
Sharp reported from Portland, Maine.
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