UPS is working on a fleet of 50 custom-built electric delivery trucks

Re:UPS is working on a fleet of 50 custom-built electric del... by gt_ on Thursday February 22, 2018 @01:11PM (#16439785)

Rural American mail trucks are being replaced with barely-running junk minivans or really whatever can be purchased for the cheapest possible amount, probably the lease emission-aware solution I can think of. I’m not sure if these are workers providing their own transportation on contract or what, but I have seen some very sketchy vehicles delivering mail in multiple states around the US lately.

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Re:UPS is working on a fleet of 50 custom-built electric del... by Spooky23 on Thursday February 22, 2018 @01:29PM (#16439980)

Rural delivery has always been private vehicles. Carriers with spouses who have good jobs buy right hand drive Subaru’s. Everyone else drives some hooptie mobile.

A lot of farm spouses used to do this gig. A moderately reliable car and a mechanically inclination is a key to success — cars need brakes every 3-6 weeks.

USPS in general started buying more low bidder commercial vehicles because their package volumes have increased and the bespoke, cheap mail trucks were too small.

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Re:UPS is working on a fleet of 50 custom-built electric del... by ams6110 on Thursday February 22, 2018 @02:14PM (#16440462)

Jeep used to sell a RHD Cherokee for delivery. I think, or maybe they were re-imported. But I've seen more than a few rural carriers driving these. Older Jeeps tend to rust out so there may not be many of them on the road these days.

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Re:UPS is working on a fleet of 50 custom-built electric del... by toomuchtodo on Thursday February 22, 2018 @01:56PM (#16440276)

Sometimes a Model S will do:

https://electrek.co/2016/02/25/mail-man-tesla-model-s/

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Re:UPS is working on a fleet of 50 custom-built electric del... by jws on Thursday February 22, 2018 @02:15PM (#16440469)

The USPS is in a pinch for vehicles. Their LLVs (the boxy mail truck, Long Life Vehicle) are at end of service life and being extended with costly maintenance. They need to hit alternative fuel targets with the replacements, electric looks like the win for most of the trucks, but they aren't there yet so they keep fixing things.

It seems likely that stopgap vehicles are a reasonable answer. In my suburban area I'm seeing minivans where I used to see LLVs.

There is a nice exposition of LLVs and the electric replacement option here: https://www.greatbusinessschools.org/usps-long-life-vehicle/

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Re:UPS is working on a fleet of 50 custom-built electric del... by sillyquiet on Thursday February 22, 2018 @01:29PM (#16439975)

rural route carriers, who are generally independent contractors working for the USPS to serve low volume highly-dispersed routes, (what used to be called star routes) have provided their own vehicles since forever.

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