USPS Searching For The Mail Truck Of The Future

Another one bites the dust...this time in Washington State:



http://www.columbian.com/news/2015/...lark-county/

It occurs to me that there are far more than usual fires in these LLVs.

Looks like they got the mail out anyway.


-IBFS

This topic has always endeared me.

Does anyone have any updated information on what the USPS is doing regarding choosing their new mail delivery truck?

This could be your mailbox someday!



-IBFS

Looks like that one Braked a little hard For Stamps, IBFS ...

Not much of anything ... or so it would seem:




https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/road-n...livery-fleet

This link is more than a year old and was the last update I've seen about the timetable for implementation:

http://www.savethepostoffice.com/si..._Posting.pdf

In the movies, cars are always bursting into flames, but I have never seen it in real life. I know it happens, but not often. So why so often with mail trucks? Design flaw?

Don

I spotted this Rural carrier the other day, I think he has the right idea!

-IBFS

A good question. I don't pretend to know anything about the design of the US Mail Trucks, but it seems to me some of the suggestions made in this article provides some plausible answers:

http://www.postalmag.com/llv.htm

Very interesting read, wt1. I wonder still though, if most of the fires can be summed up by age?

The fuse box does definitely appear to be a person of interest. It was right for it's era, but if things are added to it over the years I can see it overloading.

And placing a liquid (alcohol!?) directly over the fuse box is just asinine. When laying out a piping plan in a factory I can tell you that just running a water pipe over a breaker box is a code violation.


-IBFS

This appears to be a new USPS mail delivery vehicle making the rounds in my neighborhood, just North of Boston. Much larger than previous and possibly more utility orientated to accomplish multiple mail type delivery. I would suspect that these would also be outfitted for field maintenance operations thus allowing for a larger purchase order.

Looks like we have an update:
http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2016/09...l-truck.html

I think part of the problem could be due to older catalytic converters

I still think it is too big to operate on streets where lots of cars park on the side of the road.


-IBFS

What do I know about vehicle manufacturing? (Nothing!) But the prototype picture shown in the previous post suggest that a RH drive truck with a sliding driver door would seem to be in direct conflict with the rear cargo door shown in the illustration.

As for size, I can tell you that I was driving through some residential neighborhoods of Providence, RI last week and saw a few USPS vehicles built on a Ram Promaster body. They were awfully big for some of the side streets but presumably in a larger city it may make sense given the amount of mail that must be transported.

In another siting (this time near my worksite in Norwood, Massachusetts) I saw a larger sized USPS truck with SINGLE REAR WHEELS (a rarity on ANY truck of that size in this part of the country). I suppose it represents a savings if cargo weight is minimal but it looked so unusual.