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Transportation Government

Postal Service's Plan To Electrify Mail Trucks Falling Far Short of Its Goal (engadget.com) 45

Posted by BeauHD from the slow-rollout dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The United States Postal Service unveiled a plan to buy a fleet of all-electric mail trucks for its mail carriers back in 2022, of which 3,000 were supposed to be delivered by now. Unfortunately, those plans aren't even close to fruition. The Washington Post reported that defense contractor Oshkosh has only delivered 93 vehicles so far. [...]

The Washington Post obtained nearly 21,000 government and internal company records and spoke with 20 people familiar with the trucks' manufacturing and design process. Its reporting shows that Oshkosh ran into significant manufacturing delays of the electric NGDVs that caused lower than expected delivery numbers. Some of the anonymous sources said that engineers struggled to calibrate the mail trucks' airbags, and the vehicles' body and internal components are unable to contain water leaks to an alarming degree. The turnaround time for building these new mail trucks is also very slow. The Post reports that the South Carolina factory can only build one truck per day even though Oshkosh hoped it could build at least 80 vehicles a day by now.

Oshkosh also failed to inform the Postal Service about these delays. Four of the background sources say a senior company executive tried to update the Postal Service about these manufacturing issues only to have those efforts blocked by their corporate superiors. An Oshkosh spokesperson said in a statement that the defense contractor is still "fully committed to being a strong and reliable partner" with the Postal Services and insists "we remain on track to meet all delivery deadlines," according to The Post.

Postal Service's Plan To Electrify Mail Trucks Falling Far Short of Its Goal More | Reply

Postal Service's Plan To Electrify Mail Trucks Falling Far Short of Its Goal

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  • Buy COTS (Score:3)

    by RightwingNutjob ( 1302813 ) on Friday December 13, 2024 @07:53PM (#65012131)

    Delivery vans aren't hard. Even electric delivery vans aren't that hard considering they are a COTS item at this point.

    Government projects aren't a money pit because people explcitly try to cheat the government. Government projects are a money pit because everyone and their mother try to influence the projects, causing complexity to grow and timelines to slip to accommodate an ever changing set of requirements tailored to suit every one of those constituencies.

    • Re:Buy COTS (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday December 13, 2024 @08:38PM (#65012207)

      The first mistake was ordering the vans from a defense contractor rather than from, you know, ... a CAR company.

      Disclaimer: In my misspent youth, I worked for a defense contractor for a few years. I developed a deep cynicism about the MIC and an intense loathing for Ada.

      • Personally, I'd have bought appropriately customized trucks from Rivian. Same place Amazon is getting their EVs from.

        Though at around $37,500 per vehicle, it isn't actually that bad? It's $83k for a Rivian EV van, starting. Looking further, another source says average cost is $59,600.

        Going from 10% EV to 100% EV was projected to cost an extra $3B, for 60k vehicles, which is a marginal cost increase of $50k. Oshkosh is putting the screws in for EV capacity by the looks of it.

        But... 9 mpg. Doing some ba

      • A fella who took me under his wing when I began misspending my youth in the MIC told me something like this: C, FORTRAN, whatever; it's just math in the end.

      • In my misspent youth, I worked for a defense contractor for a few years. I developed a deep cynicism about the MIC and an intense loathing for Ada.

        You had to use Ada, you couldn't get a waiver? In grad school a couple of the students were officers from a local USAF base. One day I asked them about Ada, they laughed. They said they had never seen a request for a waiver denied. Everything they did or seen others work on was in C. Early 1990s.

  • Sabotage (Score:3, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday December 13, 2024 @07:54PM (#65012133)
    the word you're looking for is sabotage. Not "falling short of it's goal". It's actively being sabotaged.

    The oil industry will take good care of the current head of the post office when he finally "retires".

    And the incoming president openly solicited a bribe and we just shrugged our shoulders and voted him in.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 )

      Oh Jesus... It isn't always a Big Oil or Big Whatever conspiracy.

      I've worked many years for both California state and the Federal government. The problem is both general incompetence/apathy on the part of the government workers, group think and ass covering on the government side (the more anonymous committees involved in any decision the less likely anyone will get in trouble for fuck ups), and the government budget system where any money not spent in a budget cycle is lost for future cycles, which encour

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kellin ( 28417 )

        As someone who has used both FedEX and USPS for years to send and receive large mail boxes, I can tell you that the plan to "dismantle" the USPS is well underway. I am neither left or right, but I can tell you I've heard echoes of the right wanting to privatize and get rid of the USPS for many years, and the disaster that is currently happening is a direct result of DeJoy being at the helm.

        I get six or seven large boxes 2x3 feet or so every month of products for my shop, worth anywhere from $3k-$6k (for the

        • So it's been tough for them to take it apart. They have tried some pretty major things and when they did those businesses came down on them like a ton of bricks. The problem is the right wing are professionals whose goal is to turn every single public service and every single dollar you have in the profit for them personally. Because of that they never stop and they never give up. So it's tough to beat them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        Just because bureaucratic inefficiency exists doesn't mean USPO corruption doesn't also exist. In fact, we know it does, and we also know that corrupt leadership at the post office would do anything that would be a black eye to Democratic goals. You should know that, you would vote for it. You literally support this shit that you are slagging in this post.

      • Any ideas how to make any improvements? It seems that government budgets only go up and become more wasteful as government itself becomes more oppressive. It also seems impossible to course correct, despite what the department of government exploitation may like to market. Expect all USPS vehicle contracts to go to Tesla soon.

        This is an interesting read:

        https://deanebarker.net/huh/fe... [deanebarker.net]
        • A path forward is to downsize federal government quickly and push as much as possible to the States. A smaller federal government will have less to waste. Each State can then be a laboratory of corruption.
          • Agreed, but what do you downsize? Anything significant could be catastrophic. Anything minor won't have any impact.
            • Here are a few, and there are plenty more.
              Push most everything to the States, other than what is specifically authorized in Constitution for the feds - like border defense. Delete CIA. Cut overseas military bases in ~half. Resign from NATO.
              Sell federal holdings such as offices outside D.C. Give much of massive federal land holdings in western States to each State, or sell it off.
              Delete export-import bank.
              Enforce anti-trust law against medical system. Delete authority of AMA to control medical docto

              • Sell federal holdings such as offices

                Joke mode: I think they're going to need that space for the detention centers. Or how will they fund that effort? And the inevitable lawsuits? They want to deport my ex-girlfriend...

        • The stuff you're posting here is absolutely batshit. It's I guess a side of the times but still.

          You will always have a government and you need to get fucking over that. If you don't form and take part in a government somebody else will come around and do it for you and then use the government against you.

          Think of the government like a box of loaded rifles lying around. You can tell yourself you're not going to pick up a rifle cuz you might shoot yourself but the problem is somebody else is going to

          • The stuff you're posting here is absolutely batshit.

            Man, I had heard stories, but you really are insane. I haven't even seen fox news in ages. I have no idea what you're talking about or what point of mine you're trying to refute. I am afraid that you haven't lived outside of your head during your entire life. My words have nothing to do with your response.

            Please inform me further. I love engaging with idiots.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by drnb ( 2434720 )

          Any ideas how to make any improvements?

          No government designed vehicles. Strictly commercial market with configurations that are not novel. For example a small van but one available in England so there is already a right had side driver configuration.

          • No government designed vehicles.

            That seems completely obvious. My county recently passed a $1.5B bond. They budgeted to build three high schools. They've already wasted significant funds just "researching". Nothing is more wasteful than government. Now they're re-evaluating their plans. People's incomes depend on these processes. To hell with the children. My older boy will likely go through four years of high school in storage units.

            • If they need to expand your son's high school in a hurry, they'd be better off using Quonset huts [wikipedia.org] as they're as roomy as you need, well ventilated and can be assembled in one day by by a ten person team of untrained labor with nothing but hand tools. Not only that, they're so durable that there are still some in use that were assembled during WW II.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drnb ( 2434720 )

        Anecdote 2: we had 450k to buy enterprise storage for the federal facility I worked for. I knew from private world work that the storage we were looking at was about 125k from the same manufacturer (same model, etc, this was my area of expertise at that time). What do you think we Iyou, the tax payer) paid? Yup, 450k.

        I'm going to guess the hardware was 125k and there was a 325k contract for service and support?

        A friend was in sales and he said large corps and government absolutely love the service and support contracts.

  • And cancel the new duckbill vehicle purchase until they can find a way to run close to a balanced budget

  • You could buy lots more horses and they're most likely way cheaper overall than electric.

    • That tells me that you haven't really done the math. Horses are expensive.

      And electric vehicles for postal delivery is basically the best use case scenario vs ICE you can come up with.

    • Plus they're 100% recyclable into steaks, glue, and bone meal.
  • Government hands out corporate welfare and gets nothing useful done, news at 11.

  • The postal carriers love them (Score:4, Informative)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Friday December 13, 2024 @09:07PM (#65012247)

    Reviews of the new vehicles are positive. Carriers love them [newsweek.com] for various reasons including having air conditioning (the old vehicles never did) and more room inside. They get about 70 miles on a charge [cleantechnica.com] which is almost 5 times the route of a carrier.

    It's unfortunate private industry is once again screwing things up for the government.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Reviews of the new vehicles are positive.

      But are those the EVs or the new petrol powered trucks?

      It sounds like EVs are new to Oshkosh and that's where most of their troubles are.

      Perhaps the USPS should have gone with an existing EV van manufacturer (Ford, Rivian, Mercedes) and quit funneling money to the government good-old-boy network of defense contractors.

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