- the united states postal service announced last spring that it would buy about 150,000 new mail trucks from oshkosh defense and that they would be gasoline-powered instead of electric.
- The EPA asked the USPS to pause the contract and take a more serious look at EVs for these daily work trucks that follow a known route and return to a centralized location each night.
- the usps is independent of the executive branch and therefore does not have to follow the epa’s request, and has decided to go ahead with the original plan.
Update 02/23/22: The USPS announced today that it is moving forward with its original plan to purchase a fleet of gas-powered parts for its aging mail trucks. In a statement, the agency acknowledged the pushback it received from the EPA, which previously urged greater consideration of EV trucks rather than the inefficient internal combustion Oshkosh fender trucks chosen for the replacement contract. In response to pleas from the EPA, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy noted that “the process must move forward,” suggesting there is no legal reason to delay the existing replacement program. The USPS said it plans to put 5,000 electric delivery trucks into service beginning in 2023 and says there is room to add more electric vehicles to the mix “should additional funds become available.”
us update uu. The postal service’s truck fleet has been a long and controversial process, and we’re not done yet. As a quick recap, USPS began looking for replacements for about 150,000 Grumman Long Range Vehicles (LLVs) around 2015. Mail trucks were awarded to Oshkosh Defense in the spring of 2021, the USPS said only 10 percent of new mail trucks could be electric. One of the contenders for an electric workhorse truck sued the USPS last summer over the deal. /p>
the biden administration and the epa told the usps, which operates independently of the executive branch, that the new oshkosh trucks are only 0.4 miles per gallon more efficient compared to the outgoing llvs: 8.6 mpg vs. 8 .2 mpg for older vehicles. He also said that the environmental impact assessments (EIAs) carried out by the USPS to decide where to award the contract were not carried out correctly. the epa sent a letter to the usps yesterday saying that the only reason to buy new mail trucks was to make them cleaner, better, and safer. The EPA said last fall that it had a problem with the way the USPS conducted a previous EIS on the truck purchase and that “the final EIS is still seriously flawed.”
“Specifically,” he continued, “the final eis fails to disclose essential information underlying key total cost of ownership analysis, underestimates greenhouse gas emissions, fails to consider viable alternatives that are more protective of the environment, and fails to adequately consider impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns,” the EPA letter said. The EPA or the Biden administration could also sue the USPS to reconsider truck purchases, something Adrian Martinez, an attorney at environmental law firm EarthJustice, thinks could work. “It’s hard to predict what the courts will do, but the postal service’s job here is embarrassingly flimsy,” Martinez told the Washington Post. “They don’t reveal the source of the information for many of their conclusions, but rule out electrification altogether.” Powering standard USPS mail delivery trucks with electrons instead of gasoline would go a long way toward meeting President Biden’s January 2021 executive order that replaces the current federal government vehicle fleet with EVs as part of an expanded law. American purchase. The federal government had more than 645,000 vehicles in its fleet in 2019, about a quarter of which would be replaced by the 165,000 new trucks the USPS hopes to buy over the next decade.
too expensive says usps
the USPS defense is that it would simply be too expensive to buy tens of thousands of electric vehicles.
“While we can understand why some who are not responsible for the postal service’s financial sustainability might prefer that the postal service acquire more electric vehicles, the law requires the postal service to be self-sufficient,” a USPS spokesperson said. publication in a statement. President Biden’s proposed social spending package last year included $6 billion for the USPS to buy new vehicles, but that proposal is still being debated in Congress. In late January, the California Air Resources Board asked the USPS to hold a public hearing on its plans to purchase vehicles, and the EPA joined that call in its letter yesterday. EPA officials told the publication that even if the USPS continues with gasoline-powered vehicles this year, there may still be time to switch most purchases to electric in the next few years.