The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They're tall and ungainly, with outsize windshields, thick bumpers and duck-bill hoods.

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 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 of the initial rollout, 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.

    • @[email protected]
      22•7 days ago

      The president can’t directly fire him, and inexplicably hasn’t used the indirect means available (appointing new members to the board of governors who would do the needful).

      • @[email protected]
        7•7 days ago

        Biden used his direct power to cancel student debt for a lot of borrowers and the Supreme Court illegally blocked it so laws are meaningless in this country.

      • @[email protected]
        21•7 days ago

        Basically the governors on the board like him, the senate will fight any appointments, and Biden cowed him over the electrical vehicles already, so it was largely a win, somewhat a loss as is.

        Initially the new vehicles were going to be like 90% gas, 10% electric. Biden forced him to flip to almost all electric.

        • @gravitas_deficiencyEnglish
          12•7 days ago

          I’ll be blunt: the EV win is going to be categorically meaningless if DeJoy ends up fucking with mail in ballots enough that it makes an impact on the result of the election

        • @[email protected]
          7•7 days ago

          Thanks, this is super useful context. I was also scratching my head how something broadly positive was coming out of De Joy, who has certainly worked to dismantle USPS from what I remember.