ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are vast. Their hoods resemble a duck bill. Their bumpers are enormous.
“You can tell that (the designers) didn’t have appearance in mind,” postal worker Avis Stonum said.
Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens, Georgia, are getting rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down — and even catching fire.
Within a few years, the fleet will have expanded to 60,000, most of them electric models, serving as the Postal Service’s primary delivery truck from Maine to Hawaii.
Once fully deployed, they’ll represent one of the most visible signs of the agency’s 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who’s also renovating aging facilities, overhauling the processing and transportation network, and instituting other changes.
The current postal vehicles — the Grumman Long Life Vehicle, dating to 1987 — have made good on their name, outlasting their projected 25-year lifespan. But they’re well overdue for replacement.
Noisy and fuel-inefficient (9 mpg), the Grummans are costly to maintain. They’re scalding hot in the summer, with only an old-school electric fan to circulate air. They have mirrors mounted on them that — when perfectly aligned — allow the driver to see around the vehicle, but the mirrors constantly get knocked out of alignment. Alarmingly, nearly 100 of the vehicles caught fire last year, imperiling carriers and mail alike.
The new trucks are being built with comfort, safety and utility in mind by Oshkosh Defense in South Carolina.
Even tall postal carriers can stand up without bonking their heads and walk from front to back to retrieve packages. For safety, the vehicles have airbags, 360-degree cameras, blind-spot monitoring, collision sensors and anti-lock brakes — all of which are missing on the Grummans.
The new trucks also feature something common in most cars for more than six decades: air conditioning. And that’s key for drivers in the Deep South, the desert Southwest and other areas with scorching summers.
“I promise you, it felt like heaven blowing in my face,” Stonum said of her…