Being an idiot, I’ve often talked to my postman about his work truck, the venerable Grumman Long Life Vehicle (LLV). these aluminum workhorses, based on the chevy s-10 pickup, are soon to be retired, and while a full (possibly electric) replacement is in the works, some mail-order fleets have already added interim placeholders, including ram promaster and mercedes-benz metris vans.
In fact, a metris in postal service livery showed up at my house the other day, with an interesting change: the famous mercedes-benz three-pointed star badge on the grille had been swapped out for a badge with the head post office eagle. . I liked it, but I was curious, why did they do that?
I asked my mail carrier about the badge. that day he was following a trainee postman who was driving the new metris. from his position at grumman llv, he had an answer for me right away:
“they decided to take off the mercedes badge because they were afraid people would see it and think we were spending too much money.”
The “they” refers to some anonymous high-ranking people in the postal service, and you know, this seems like a plausible answer. In the United States, we almost exclusively equate Mercedes with luxury, although the company makes many non-luxury utility vehicles that are more common in the rest of the world.
Also, the post office is very often under scrutiny regarding its finances, although as far as I’m concerned, it offers a great deal. I can send a first-class letter from my home in North Carolina to a friend in Los Angeles for 55 cents. If I asked you to deliver a letter from me to a friend, even a mile away, for 55 cents, you would probably slap me. the post office is fine in my book.
I wanted to know if this was the real reason the badges were changed. I mean, aesthetically, I think there’s a good argument to be made, as I think the eagle head badge looks cooler than the benz symbol anyway, at least in this context.
I contacted the postal service for comment and got this response:
“It is common practice to remove manufacturer nameplates as part of the upgrade process. The Postal Service does not endorse any vehicle manufacturer or advertise on behalf of a manufacturer. As part of our decal package, we chose to use the USPS trademark eagle symbol instead of the vehicle manufacturer’s symbol. all decal markings are installed as part of the vehicle purchase contract.”
okay, well, that doesn’t really address the motives behind the swapping of badges, and while they could simply have swapped badges just because they could, some of the reasoning given here doesn’t hold water.
The part about removing manufacturer nameplates, for example, hasn’t always been historically accurate for the post office. check out this jeep dj dispatcher, the famous postal jeep used in the 1970s and 1980s:
That’s an official postal service photo from 1970, and as you can clearly see, the manufacturer’s name isn’t exactly hidden here, stamped in huge letters on the back door.
Current grumman llv’s were designed specifically for the postal service and as such were never badged or branded. so they don’t really count.
maybe this is a new rule? maybe newer postal vehicles can’t have their manufacturer’s credential? well i’m not so sure that’s true either, because the post office has started using promaster ram vans in the last couple of years, and look at them :
yes, it’s a ram, not an eagle. I know my animals, but feel free to confirm independently if necessary.
so, from what I can tell, I’m more inclined to believe that the real motivation for exchanging badges is just what my mail carrier told me: the post office wants to avoid any reason for people to get mad at them .
Honestly, this is probably a smart move; The badges add an additional USPS-defining visual element to the vans, and I’m pretty sure there would have been some kind of ill-informed reaction if people saw the mail carriers riding around in easily identifiable Mercedes-Benzes. I’m not even mad that they didn’t officially admit it to me. I get it.
The same people who didn’t seem to mind that the mail carriers were sweating like hams on a tanning bed in their non-air-conditioned llv’s, would have suddenly been horrified, just plain horrified, that the mail carriers were spinning around in the luxurious embrace of a mercedes.
These are not luxury vans. they’re utility vehicles, well built but not remotely opulent, and the postal service really has nothing to hide. They’re even assembled at the Mercedes factory in Charleston, South Carolina, mainly to get around the dreaded chicken tax.
but that doesn’t really matter. Even if they didn’t admit it to me, I think they made a good call here. Plus, anyone who knows a bit about cars knows what they are and knows there’s nothing to be scared of.