USPS' Long-Awaited Mail Truck Makes Its Debut To Rave Reviews From Carriers (apnews.com) 136
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: 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. [...] Brian Renfroe, president of the National Letter Carriers Association, said union members are enthusiastic about the new vehicles, just as they were when the Grummans marked a leap forward from the previous old-school Jeeps. He credited DeJoy with bringing a sense of urgency to get them into production. "We're excited now to be at the point where they're starting to hit the streets," Renfroe said.
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. [...] Brian Renfroe, president of the National Letter Carriers Association, said union members are enthusiastic about the new vehicles, just as they were when the Grummans marked a leap forward from the previous old-school Jeeps. He credited DeJoy with bringing a sense of urgency to get them into production. "We're excited now to be at the point where they're starting to hit the streets," Renfroe said.
Good thing most are electric. (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, I've read a fair bit on these things, and am really happy that so many will be electric.
Basically, as getting a custom designed vehicle for the job should indicate, these are very special duty vehicles. Generally, a mail route is a very low number of miles/day, and filled with lots of starts and stops. Ideal for an EV, very unideal for an ICE. Also, the limited number of miles means that overnight charging would be relatively easy.
The ICE version of this truck? Rated for 14.7 mpg, 8.6 if the AC is on. The LLV? 8.2 mpg. The NGDV barely saves any gas, in other words. To be fair, it is a much larger vehicle than the LLV.
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> The ICE version of this truck? Rated for 14.7 mpg, 8.6 if the AC is on.
Wait, why didn't they just build this on a Chevy platform that gets 22/16 mpg with AC?
Heck, even the 6.7L CAT Diesel pickup gets over 20 with AC.
It's ludicrous to get 8.7 mpg in 2024.
I suppose stamps will be going up again.
Re: Good thing most are electric. (Score:5, Informative)
There was some video about it on the series of you tubes. They had a req so that a 95th percentile by height male could stand up straight in it *and* that a 5th percentile by height female could see over the hood to some (short) distance in front. No COTS truck chassis could do both.
Re:Good thing most are electric. (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair it's a pretty edge case for what the EPA estimate is designed to measure:
Average postal route is 24 miles with 200-800 stops so these things are starting and stopping with that many accelerate from zero starts, carrying maybe 1000lbs of mail running the AC nonstop and probably with the door open much of the time on a platform that is not compable to a 202X vehichle as procurement for these things started something like 8 years ago.
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I wonder how much of a typical journey will be covered by regen? I've driven EVs for nearly a decade, and right from the outset, I found that if I hit stop-start traffic on a motorway (I'm in the UK), then my range estimate would go *up* after about 30 mins, because this type of driving is so efficient for an EV.
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I haven't seen official specs for the EV but I bet you get a ton of regen and wouldn't have to touch the actual brakes all that much. On the other hand you might be running the AC nonstop right off the batteries so maybe it's a wash?
The EV mail trucks still make so much sense that they should be 80% of the fleet instead of like 20%
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The A/C costs no more than it would in an ICE, which runs it off mechanical energy from the engine. In both instances you are paying for a compressor to do the same amount of work. Your argument would work, however, for heating during the colder months as ICE engines produce so much waste heat you literally have a huge radiator and fan to cool it off. The most efficient HVACs for EVs use a heat pump to reduce the need for resistive heating, though they may find heat seaters to be more efficient way to keep
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It gets better. The vast majority of the old mail trucks are still *carbureted* engines.
Think about how much vehicle technology has advanced since the early 80s when this kit was first designed. I don't really understand the logic behind aiming for a 25+ year service life on a vehicle that's going to be in near daily service. They don't do that with heavy trucks. If you run mail contracts in freight hauling, they require your truck to be IIRC 5 years old or less. Why the big disparity?
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The advice for most people is "the cheapest car is the one you already own" for numerous reasons, I don't see how that doesn't apply here.
Average Route is 24mi, about 9k miles per year and over their 24 year lifespan thats just north of 200K. Seems pretty reasonable.
If they don't rust to shit up in the salt belt I don't see a reason they can't be maintained that long.
Re: Good thing most are electric. (Score:2)
That's a hard 200k miles constantly stopping and starting.
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I thought that they still were driving Jeeps....I always thought it would be interesting to get one of the old US Mail Jeeps....the basics only.
With all the electronic crap they put on cars today....I really wanna get me an older Jeep, maybe a CJ7...restore it to drive.
No computer....easy to shade-tree mechanic it, work on it, etc.
And...can go off road and drive through water (a good thing with street floods in the N
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Grumman LLV [wikipedia.org]
The body and final assembly is by Grumman, and the chassis is made by General Motors, based on the 1982 Chevrolet S-10 Blazer, powered by GM engines including the 2.5-liter inline-four TBI Iron Duke [wikipedia.org] and, in later production, 2.2-liter inline-four SPFI LN2 [wikipedia.org].
The Iron Duke inline 4 was converted to throttle body injection in 1982 and would be in many of the LLVs built after 1987 up to 1992. The LN2 uses a sequential port fuel injection and would have been in the later versions up until production fi
Re:Good thing most are electric. (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you really think that a 6.7L CAT Diesel pickup will get 20MPG doing a mail run? Starting and stopping every 100 feet or so for hours a day? Seeing almost zero highway miles?
The 8.7 is not what's put on an EPA sticker at a dealership, it's what it gets doing the job it's built for.
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because use all day every day for stop go postal deliver. That Chevy platform would a) probably not realize 16mpg either. b) not last nearly as long without a lot of extra maintenance.
Re:Good thing most are electric. (Score:4)
Wait, why didn't they just build this on a Chevy platform that gets 22/16 mpg with AC?
Because any ICE gets way less than the advertised gas mileage if there are a lot of starts and stops. ICE engines are most efficient with higher gears and long drives. Guess what delivering mail entails? Stopping. A lot of stopping and driving in low gear. That Chevy platform or CAT Diesel pickup is not getting over 20mpg with this kind of use case.
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You're blaming the wrong entity -- the problem isn't the government, it's the public-private partnership. The US government could very easily design and build their own vehicles better and cheaper than than any private entity could hope.
Pick any so-called "government waste" and I guarantee you'll find a private company leaching or a right-wing saboteur trying to "prove" that the government can't do anything right in the most ham-fisted way possible.
Remember kids: Every dollar of profit a private company l
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The LLV didn't even have air conditioning. Just a little fan pointed at the driver.
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That was actually part of my reaction to TFA, how bad does your starting point have to be for these glorified grocery vans to get rave reviews in comparison?
(That's a rhetorical question, I know how bad the LLV's are).
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Not in rural areas.
Re: Good thing most are electric. (Score:4, Informative)
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Some do. I've seen the newer vehicles as well.
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They have to buy/lease the LLV they use
So what you're saying is they *don't* use their own vehicles. The only reality being checked here is your reading comprehension.
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Urban carriers are USPS employees and union. Do you have a source on them buying or leasing LLVs?
My grandparents did contract star route mail delivery. They used their own vehicles, bid for routes, didn't wear postal uniforms, etc...
My understanding is that the more desirable urban routes use the LLVs and such, wear postal uniforms, are actual USPS employees and get benefits.
Rural mail is star route, not USPS union (Score:2)
In my experience most rural mall carriers are contract and use whatever cheap POS car they can dependable use without being killed on gas mileage.
My grandparents were star route drivers - the very contract operators I'm talking about. They had to bid routes. Less money and zero benefits compared to union USPS drivers.
Technically, they could buy a right hand drive vehicle, but getting a bench seat car and using their left foot to operate the pedals was much cheaper.
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EVs should work most of the time. I asked the local mail person about the local routes. They range from 23 to 75 miles.
The big question is winter. Do the EVs have enough clearance to allow for tire chains? And of course how much does the range drop? I would trust they did pick the version of the battery that still works at zero degrees F, at least for here.
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The number of US mail routes that require tire chains is miniscule. Mighty important for those people, for sure, but there just aren't that many of them compared to the entire US population. EVs, particularly dual-motor versions, can have fantastic traction control. But, if the EVs aren't a good fit, the USPS is still procuring 10^4 conventional trucks, too.
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I would have thought chain weather states, would pretty much be the entire northern part of the US? From Washington state...through Montana...Wisconsi
Re: Good thing most are electric. (Score:2)
Donâ(TM)t see much reason for chains in Chicago. I lived north of the border in Ontario for a decade and never once needed them, despite living for a while in an area that gets lake effect snow. In fact, chains are not normally allowed in Ontario and Quebec as far as Iâ(TM)m aware, and I canâ(TM)t imagine Chicago is much different in terms of driving conditions. Even studded tyres arenâ(TM)t permitted in southern Ontario, which is a huge province compared with US states.
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These things called plows go through and clear enough off.
I've lived in Alaska and North Dakota, I've never *needed* tire chains. I owned and used them, but I was doing stuff a mail truck wouldn't be doing.
Snow tires, not studded, have come a long way.
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When it gets icy here on occasion, the whole city stops.
I find in areas where we get it...it isn't so much snow, but sleet and frozen rain....I don't see there's much a reason to attempt driving anywhere with 1-2" of solid ice on the streets, even with chains.
So, when there's a forecast for that, I just go to the store, get plenty of beer and stuff to make chili....and plan on watching TV (or WFH in modern times).
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Not only do most of those places not use chains much if at all, in MANY of those locations chains are illegal on your car! Chains will chew up roads like a pot smoker with a box of pop tarts!
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Not half the year, basically November through February. A third of the year. And not continuously either. A week here, a week there. Still, when you need the chains, you need the chains.
"4WD/AWD vehicles (under 10,000 pounds) do not need chains installed during "chains required" notices, but drivers still must carry chains with them in case conditions worsen and they're required to install chains during a "chains required on all vehicles" notice."
https://wsdot.com/travel/real-... [wsdot.com]
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How many mail delivery vehicles regularly need to transit mountain passes, as opposed to traveling in regularly cleared city streets?
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>clearance to allow for tire chains
Isn't that like 1/20 of the suspension travel? What kind of question is that?
Oshkosh pork (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yup. Simply requiring both an EV and ICE version eliminates companies like Rivian or Tesla from bidding. The fact that it's not GM or Ford really shows that something weird was going on. Though the last one was from Grumman, so the USPS has been with defense contractors before.
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The chassis was made by General Motors, and based off of the 2WD Blazer and S10. The front suspension and instrument cluster are similar to the S-10 as well. The engine first put into the trucks was the 2.5L "Iron Duke", and then later a General Motors 2.2L I-4 iron block/alum
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The engine first put into the trucks was the 2.5L "Iron Duke", and then later a General Motors 2.2L I-4 iron block/aluminum head engine.
And as far as I can tell, the mufflers were sourced from a Toro leaf blower. At least that makes it easy to tell when to go check the mailbox (for now).
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I want a recording of how the new trucks sound. The distinctive asthmatic wheeze of the mail truck is how I know when to check the mail.
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Re: Oshkosh pork (Score:2)
Grumman made canoes as well.
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The fact that it's not GM or Ford really shows that something weird was going on.
No it doesn't. It shows that GM or Ford aren't interested in developing multiple special purpose vehicles sellable to only a single customer and tying up a production line to do so.
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Of course, the USPS could have asked for an ICE vehicle for certain use cases and an EV for another rather than some garbage platform which can be either but compromised either way. I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a few years after EV variants roll out, that they suck. Like really suck because OshKosh has no experience or competence building them, and then the fact they suck is used to proclaim that all EVs suck.
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I mean, is this a problem? Why do you hate capitalism?
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It was competitive bidding, it's just that the requirements are allegedly tilted toward one vendor.
And which requirements were tilted towards that vendor? So far the main differences I see between the new truck and old one is EV, larger, and better AC. There are some modernization changes like more recessed mirrors. From what I can tell, the previous manufacturer, Grumman does not focus on transport vehicles. They make launch vehicles and other systems.
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Oshkosh B'gosh!
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Keep in mind, the government contract was specifically designed so that only Oshkosh could win it.
I don't know about this and don't know what to even search for. Could you give some pointers about that contract design, please?
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I find it laughable that it received "rave reviews". Maybe compared to what it replaces it is a huge improvement, but that's because what it replaced sucked. It doesn't mean that judged by its peers (i.e. what commercial rivals like Amazon are using), it is a good vehicle. It's such a brutal fugly design that it looks practically Soviet and I expect that extends to day to day usability, fuel economy, reliability and all the rest.
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Agreedfrom the moment it was made public its $ reeked. Even yrs later as the production meets a dawdling delivery I’m grateful Postal employees get some love. Nothing stops a Tesla, FORD or Nickola from disrupting the USPS with a cheaper, better solution.
If the design is that ergonomic, its would benefit other last mile delivery(LMD) applications. Commercial fleets could be a viable leasing mechanism to EV LMD replacing ICE trucks spewing NOX while at idle.
Tertiary used EV LMD might emerge repurposed
Re:Oshkosh pork (Score:4, Informative)
But have they really? Every source I can find shows EV sales increasing each year, both in number and fraction of total, at about 11% for 2023 in the USA. Worldwide they seem to be at about 20% of new car sales. Maybe you can squint at the graphs and say that the curves are starting to flatten out, but it certainly doesn't seem like they have hit any sort of wall - even in Norway which is over 80% of new car sales.
https://ourworldindata.org/ele... [ourworldindata.org]
https://theicct.org/us-ev-sale... [theicct.org]
About Time (Score:2)
Re: About Time (Score:2)
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Amazon deliveries are their own special shit show. I see them using Ryder or Budget rental trucks half the time. My guess is Amazon contracted out to a shady company who doesn't own trucks and thinks they can make a profit using permanent rentals.
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It took so long to catch up because the post office does something rare taught in business schools: run an entire massive organization with "C players." Amazon is pretty insistent about having "A players" and managing the rest out of the company or up into acceptable performance.
Remember that the USPS does not operate as an independent commercial company. It takes direct orders from politicians, including politicians who openly desire to cripple it. In particular, it has pension obligations that no company has to endure, and it is legally mandated to serve many unprofitable customers. That the USPS still functions in spite of antagonistic "bosses" is a miracle.
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Re:About Time (Score:5, Informative)
Why would Biden appoint such an incompetent head of the USPS?
*checks notes*
Oh my mistake, he's a Trump stooge who got the job for being a major fundraiser.
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Oh my mistake, he's a Trump stooge who got the job for being a major fundraiser.
And one of his first acts was to continue the dismantling [forbes.com] of high speed mail sorting equipment right befor the election, even though he claimed he ordered a stop to it.
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Re:About Time (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically, a bunch of Washington insiders that have unelected positions selecting one from within.
The term you're looking for is "Representative Democracy"
We elect the President
Every state elects 2 Senators
Those people nominate and confirm the governors. Calling it "the swamp" is just empty populism, this is how it works. Do you want to change to a system where the entire country votes for the governors of the Postal Service?
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Corruption.
UPS and FedEx have no problem getting a custom Ford Econoline that is easy to fix and gets good mileage.
UPS has literally dropped Ford and ordered all recent trucks from "Arrival" an EV delivery truck company, FedEx partnered with Brightdrop - a former GM subsidiary which has spun off.
Neither are using Ford Econoline trucks going forward.
New cabins (Score:2)
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is corrupt (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume that the "rave reviews" are government funded propaganda press releases, because that's how he rolls. I will only consider this to not be a failure if some obviously independent group, who is clearly talking to USPS delivery drivers says they are OK. Even if the union boss agrees, that means nothing, So may unions have been co-opted by their employing operations that groveling is standard practice.
As for the pork for the manufacturing contract, it's a given. If it's good enough for the entire US military-industrial complex, it's good enough for the USPS.
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He has royally messed up the USPS because he controls a competing delivery service.
Interesting. Do you have any more info on this?
Re:Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is corrupt (Score:4, Informative)
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A quick search turned up numerous articles. Here's an example:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u... [nbcnews.com]
Thanks for sharing. Seems like he owned shares in other defence contractors like Honeywell and Lockheed Martin. I'm not familiar with the field, so I can't comment on how much overlap there is between them.
This is the trouble with hiring political donors to important roles in the federal government. Only rich people have the funds to become political donors, and most rich people will have a diverse portfolio*. We need very strong, very transparent rules about how conflicts of interest are dealt with... and
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I assume that the "rave reviews" are government funded propaganda press releases, because that's how he rolls.
If you'd bothered to read even the title, it would be clear that the "rave reviews" are about the trucks (not about the postmaster general), from drivers who think the shiny new mail trucks are a lot better than the 30 year old ones that didn't even have AC. Is that really so hard to believe? But yeah, go ahead, look for conspiracy theories and propaganda.
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I think the story is a bit more nuanced than that. He has clearly found a way to keep the Biden administration onside by relaxing his opposition to EVs over time, and the program has actually ended up in a pretty reasonable place. Far from perfect, and slower than you or I would have liked, but not awful.
And the costs per vehicle are good (60k for a purpose-built truck with lots of specially designed features is not very much more than you'd pay for a new ICE delivery vehicle without all those specially des
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It's not bad at ALL!!
Have you been on some recent car lots? There are fscking pick up trucks with sticker prices over $100K?!?!
I dunno who the fuck would pay over $100K for a pickup truck, but they have them.
Hell, I'd go for a top of the line
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It's weirdly good value! I don't know how it's happened, but it's good to see, for sure
10 Years and $3 Billion for a New Mail Truck (Score:3, Interesting)
https://reason.com/2024/09/13/... [reason.com]
Oshkosh Defense’s USPS van is thousands of dollars more expensive than the industry standard.
Of the 106,000 new delivery vehicles planned for purchase by 2028, 60,000 are NGDVs. Though exact prices are difficult to ascertain, the March 2022 order of 50,000 was valued at $2.98 billion. This brings the per-unit price of the NGDV to $59,600.
This is what you get when you start with an insane system of writing super-detailed highly-unrealistic design requirements for vehicles FIRST, and then collecting bids or even advice on what was actually possible LATER. And then using an inflexible bureaucracy to enforce those blind-authored requirements beyond all reason.
At that point, the only people with the time or interest to actually build what the design requirements demand generally ARE military contractors.
Our tax dollars at work
Re:10 Years and $3 Billion for a New Mail Truck (Score:5, Insightful)
This brings the per-unit price of the NGDV to $59,600.
Well, that doesn't sound bad at all. That's only $10K over the average consumer new car sales price, and not much more than the average EV price. I would have expected something well into the six figures from a defense contractor.
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It depends a lot on the design lifetime. The last fleet of trucks had a 25 year design lifetime and welt 37. If it costs twice as much and lasts 3 times as long as the off-the-shelf option, it's a bargain.
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You make it sound like they are going to space. Those few thousand dollars can be accounted for in any customised vehicle. I'm actually genuinely impressed the price isn't higher, it doesn't look that much more than comparable EV vehicles and seems a bit cheaper than UPS's EVs from Arrival.
Re:10 Years and $3 Billion for a New Mail Truck (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm all for ranting about government inefficiency, but $60k for a purpose built truck seems like a bargain given that a mid range pickup truck runs that these days.
Air Conditioning ! (Score:3)
[air conditioning is ... ] key for drivers in the Deep South, the desert Southwest and other areas with scorching summers.
Good Grief! I live in Canada, just north of the 45th parallel and even here it can get "scorching hot". Today, for example (16 September), it hit 30C (about 86F) this afternoon and was more than a little unpleasant working outside. The last several years have been like this. (Global warming, you know.) I think all of the USPS trucks should have had air conditioning years ago.
Re: Air Conditioning ! (Score:3)
If you think that's scorching hot...
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For reference: here in Paraguay, in summer, you are already happy if the outside temperature drops to 35C after the sun stops shining. 45C during the day is common in summer. The last few years, spring sometimes manages to reach 40C.
And then we still haven't talked about humidity.
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In Houston, where I live, we have nights where the low temperature never falls *below* 86. When 86 is the high, we're looking for restaurants with patio seating!
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lol, 86F, that's almost sweater weather in the deep south...
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Here in Georgia, the high temperature last week finally got down to the mid-80s and it was a huge relief.
I think Phoenix is still somewhere around "Holy fried eggs Batman!"
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Design of front (Score:2)
Judging from the pictures, the windshield design looks extraordinarily un-aerodynamic. The picture with the older van next to it looks like it would be more energy efficient. Am I wrong, and it doesn't really matter? Or are they not concerned about efficiency since the vehicles are mostly local stop-and-go?
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Judging from the pictures, the windshield design looks extraordinarily un-aerodynamic. The picture with the older van next to it looks like it would be more energy efficient. Am I wrong, and it doesn't really matter? Or are they not concerned about efficiency since the vehicles are mostly local stop-and-go?
Most mail trucks are put-putting along in town. The thing that impresses me the most about these vehicles in the windshield. Who would have thought a modern vehicle would give any credence to visibility? Most have such small viewing areas anymore. Honestly, it felt vaguely exciting to see that first image just because of the windshield. I've driven enough larger vehicles over the years to wish I had one with visibility like that.
But why... (Score:2)
...did they award the contract to a defense contractor?
This is the most expensive option
Surely there must be a real vehicle company in the non-defense sector
Re:But why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Longevity? (Score:3)
A/C ain't free (Score:2)
No Funny? (Score:2)
Story seemed to be a rich target.
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I've always found it so quaint that the US have custom mail vans and school busses. What's wrong with regular vans/trucks and coaches?
Um, they're general purpose vehicles not designed for the specific tasks of delivering school kids or mail. Why not optimize those things if the country is big enough to justify custom production runs for them?
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Why not optimize those things if the country is big enough to justify custom production runs for them?
It's not necessarily an optimization. Take American fire engines, for example which are ludicrously huge compared to just about any other country.
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It's not necessarily an optimization.
A few optimizations of American mail trucks: The driver is on the right side instead of the common left side. The passenger doors slide open instead of opening outward. The read door slides up (not a trunk opening). Please tell which of these optimizations is not needed for a mail delivery vehicle?