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.
Did it have to be so ugly?
Function over form.
To me, maximum function is maximum beauty.
Function has a form all its own
Penis
Ugly in an iconic way.
Clearly designed for practicality.
They look great to drive with all that visibility.
On the other hand the electric version just looks like a disappointing van.
I thought the electric version looked exactly the same
Good use of angled armor on the front glacis, so you don’t have to show the side of your hull to effectively bounce incoming shells.
I understood that reference.
I see they chose to keep the 1970s style 5mph bumpers.
Oh! That’s better.
One of the images had a van looking one, the caption said was the electric.
I thinks it’s the back one in your image.
I was ready to say no, that’s just Ford Transit but couldn’t find conclusive evidence to confirm the minute body lines match a Ford and not a Mercedes Sprinter (my local variant). I went for one last attempt and searched “ford transit usps” and what do you know, we’re both right to some degree. The back vehicle is an electric Ford Transit and the USPS has ordered over 9,000 units. It’s not the “electric version” but rather a competitor to the Oshkosh lineup, which is the front truck. The Oshkosh NGDV is available as both gas and battery-electric.
The electric Canoo models look a million times better.
These gas ones are what you get when a defense contractor gets to build highway vehicles. I’m pretty sure these things are well into the 6 figures per vehicle which seems pretty excessive for what it is.
The current LLVs are made by Grumman and the new ones are made by OshKosh, so defense contractors have been building the postal delivery trucks for the last 40 years.
Defense contractors specialize in reading and meeting bid spec and not a millimeter more.
100%. If they happen to build a working car, plane, tank, etc. well that’s a bonus.
Prettier, sure. But less practical, functionally.
The old Grumman LLV’s are also ugly as hell. We just got used to them over the decades.
The same thing will happen with these eventually.
No it didn’t. But you know, bribes are bribes.
That’s really cute but isn’t the driver on the wrong side for the UK? One of the things about the American Mail vehicles is the driver doesn’t need to leave the seat to deliver letter mail.