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Transportation Government

Postal Service's Plan To Electrify Mail Trucks Falling Far Short of Its Goal (engadget.com) 99

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:5, Insightful)

    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

        • Or get an off-the-shelf Paxster [paxster.no]. They've been making them for ages, used all over the world, and it's just be a standard order item for them.

          • Oh, those are almost cute!

            Best part:

            Paxster is best known for building possibly the world’s best delivery vehicles (or tools as we like to call them).

            I especially liked this bit because when it comes to vehicles used in non-standard ways, like postal delivery and police work, I've always said that it's better to look at the vehicle not as a car, but as a piece of industrial equipment, a tool.
            Cars are generalist pieces of equipment. Postal delivery, police work, fire trucks, all have very specific needs and usage patterns that may not suit the generalist car.

            That said, none of them seem to feature air conditioning, whi

            • The ones used here are pretty nice, completely silent and narrow enough to run up on the footpath if required so you don't have a huge van backing in an out of driveways or double-parked on the street blocking traffic, they just flit from one letterbox to the next.

              • Oh, I've driven some vehicles similar to those - we called them "gators". Ours were ICE, basically golf carts set up with a pickup style body. They're used a lot for maintenance type stuff in the states, like on college campuses for maintenance crews to run around in. Ours have actual steering wheels though, not motorcycle style steering.

                Up the footpath wouldn't help with how mailboxes are set up in the states, though in my local area where all the boxes are collocated, it wouldn't be bad.
                Select spots f

      • 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.

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

        They didn't "order" from anyone. The CAR companies didn't want to place a bid to meet the requirements.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shilly ( 142940 )

      I’m with you on this.

      There was tons of justification about the bespoke needs of the USPS vs others, and no doubt things like the fantastic visibility from that giant windshield, not needing to stoop to get in the back, etc etc are all really useful. And the nominal price was reasonably competitive. But bespoke platforms are a pain in the arse for everyone, and particularly for new tech, they inevitably mean you get stuck with an ossified fleet after just a few years.

      To my mind, the USPS should have in

    • I used to think a COTS solution for USPS should be viable, but the reality is they really do have unique needs when compared to Amazon, UPS, or FedEx. It was just a mistake to give the project to a defense contractor.

      I am surprised that fedex and ups haven't done more electrification, although I know my ups driver does a 100-mile route each day that is not a slam dunk for an electric delivery van.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        Can you articulate some of those unique needs, and in particular why they couldn’t be met by a standard commercial EV van?

        I remember some talk about how these vehicles had unique benefits, but I can’t remember the details. And benefits are obviously not the same as needs

        • First and foremost USPS stops every ~50-100' in areas, which is a special set of challenges in terms of manuverability, pedestrian safety, and operations. While a COTS solution might not experience excessive wear in this type of driving it would likely be challenged.

          The other big thing is the delivering flat mail plus packages. Just envelopes or just packages would be an easier task for a COTS solution, but the need to be able to access a lot of both types of mail efficiently is important.

          A last major que

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by shilly ( 142940 )

            That's very helpful insight, thank you.

            I still think, on balance, USPS would have been better off with COTS. There was a risk-reward trade-off that they didn't factor in: I think you're right that the major strategic factor is productivity -- if they can improve productivity by cutting route times, that's fantastic, and justifies spending more. But while I have no doubt that the NGDVs can in principle deliver higher productivity, what USPS also needed to figure in was the delivery risk. If the program runs

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      That's the basic problem.
      They chose a "defense contractor" to build these.
      Defense contractors operate with a different set of rules. They take their time and pad expenses to milk the contract for all it's worth.
      Actually producing something is a secondary result. The primary goal is to soak the government for as much money as possible.

    • It's more than that. It's also that the work is done by incompetents, and there are no competent people in the govt to adequately oversee the incompetents. This has happened over and over again, and is most notorious in big software projects.

      • Yes. The people who know what they're doing tend to go into the private sector where they can earn more money while dealing with less bullshit. And yet every time one of them is appointed to a government post (usually but not exclusively by a Republican), the parasites with a vested interest in continued incompetence (usually but not exclusively Democrats) scream bloody murder about Louis DeJoy stealing all the mailboxes.

  • Sabotage (Score:3, Insightful)

    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:3, 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:Sabotage (Score:4, Insightful)

        by kellin ( 28417 ) on Friday December 13, 2024 @08:23PM (#65012173)

        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 total, not per box), and in the last two months I've wondered where several packages are because they were not scanned by the USPS when they were picked up. One box completely disappeared, and it had at least $500 worth of stuff that the company I shill for had to re-send. It's so bad the President of the company sent out a video email talking about the situation and what they're trying to do to remedy it.

        They *had* been using FedEx for years, but they had issues and DeJoy apparently gave our CEO/Owner a good enough speech that the company switched over entirely.

      • 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]

        • 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.

      • So these days calling something a conspiracy has become what's called a thought terminating cliche. That's a short phrase used to discourage thinking about a topic. It takes advantage of a flaw in human reasoning where we tend to look for the quickest and easiest solution. The theory is this developed to save on the energy needed to actually solve problems.

        The idea is that you can short circuit your thinking process to quickly get to a solution and in a lot of times you can do that but in many cases peopl

    • This switch to electric vehicles was a result of Biden's Jan 2021 executive order [whitehouse.gov] mandating a switch to electric vehicles by the federal govt. Biden's administration was then and still is heavily staffed by Obama admin leftovers, supplemented by younger more-left-leaning folks. They're not the sort to deliberately sabotage a "green" effort their base supporters demand. This is not an administration full of "big oil" execs and lobbyists; these are people all-in on electric vehicles. These are the same people

  • You could buy lots more horses and they're most likely way cheaper overall than electric.
  • Government hands out corporate welfare and gets nothing useful done, news at 11.

  • The postal carriers love them (Score:5, 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.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by shilly ( 142940 )

        The reviews were of the EVs. In other words, the issue is not being able to scale up, plus quality issues with leaks. The core design is high quality. But I still think it would have been better to buy COTS, and focus efforts on not getting saddled with obsolete hardware in a rapidly innovating market, through clever leasing arrangements.

      • 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.

        Someone else mentioned that existing manufacturers didn't enter the bid. I suspect they figured their limited EV capacity would be consumed by trying to serve the consumer market, and they didn't want to lose the market share.

        The other issue is probably the cost. The Post Office, being under intense budget pressure, was probably trying to push the cost way down, and that pushed car manufacturers out of the big. In reality, these things are going to see daily usage for a couple decades. If they make the job

  • They should have chosen the KARSAN vehicle, at least they know how to produce commercial electric vehicles http://www.karsan.com.tr/ [karsan.com.tr]
  • Some people aren't gonna like this but I bet Chinese manufacturers could bring it in on time & under budget. It's seems the USA is forgetting how to do everything except war & marginalising minorities & women.

  • USPS not only can’t deliver mail - they can’t manage to select a qualified vehicle mfgr – without the choice of an appropriate lasting technology platform. Even then augmented by interceding authorities to add better EV technology, actual contractor performance hems and haws to baseline OG contractual delivery schedule and expects to get away with it.

    Deny and Delay with aggravating rampant incompetence is enough – cancel the whole damn contract

  • B'gosh!

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