- Hundreds of USPS delivery trucks have been reported to have caught fire in recent years, a new vice report shows.
- Trucks are long-lasting Grumman vehicles and have a useful 24 year expectancy. the last deliveries were in 1994.
- Aging fleet is just another issue facing the USPS, on top of a shrinking budget and pandemic-related health issues.
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when you think of a typical united states postal service delivery truck, you’re probably thinking of the grumman long-haul vehicle: the boxy one with ruffles on the right side and driver’s seats so letter carriers can access more easily to mailboxes. in recent years, however, hundreds of them burned down, possibly due to age and a budget crisis, according to this new story from vice.
LLVs were specially developed by Northrop Grumman for the USPS, according to this 1997 US Department of Energy report. Based on the chassis of a Chevrolet S-10 truck, they are powered by Pontiac engines and use three-speed transmissions. They have a load capacity of 1,000 pounds and a life expectancy of approximately 24 years. LLVs have been in service since around 1987, with the last deliveries occurring in 1994.
Since May 2014, more than 407 LLVs have been damaged or destroyed by fire, reported via a Freedom of Information Act request. The outlet examined the 3,954-page document regarding the fires (which you can view here; it’s a roughly 400-megabyte pdf) and found that the two engineering firms hired separately to determine the cause of the fires couldn’t actually find a Pattern.
by vice:
A USPS spokesperson told Business Insider that the USPS currently has more than 141,000 right-hand drive LLVs in its fleet. the person was “unable to provide information on injuries” but said the agency implements mandatory maintenance programs and preventative maintenance inspection procedures for the existing fleet.
vice pointed to a July 2015 bulletin from the National Association of Letter Carriers, the union that represents city delivery carriers employed by the USPS, that warned members about the trend of USPS fleet vehicles usps to catch fire as they age and need to be replaced.
An aging delivery fleet is another issue facing the USPS, along with a shrinking budget and pandemic-related health issues.
The Postal Liability and Improvement Act, passed in 2006, requires the USPS to calculate and create a fund to cover pensions and health care for the next 75 years. this, and the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, are major stressors for the agency’s finances. Business Insider reported in May that if funding doesn’t come along soon, the USPS could run out of money by the end of September.
It’s not clear if the USPS’s financial emergency is related to its truck fires, but they certainly match. A presentation from a 2015 USPS Next-Generation Delivery Vehicle Provider Conference shows that the agency planned to roll out the new vehicles beginning in January 2018, but Vice reported that “USPS has yet to decide on a vehicle.” /p >
The USPS spokesperson told Business Insider that the agency had concluded testing of the next-generation delivery vehicle in March 2019. In December 2019, it had issued requests for proposals and would make a decision after “an evaluation of the best value”.
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The pandemic has interrupted that. “in light of the circumstances of the current covid-19 pandemic and its impact on the postal service and carrier operations, the postal service has extended the due date for responses to the ngdv production request to 14 July 2020,” the spokesperson wrote.
vice noted that even with the fires, 26 investigator reports noted that mail carriers tried to salvage as much mail as possible from the burning trucks.