The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are vast. Their hoods resemble a duck bill. Their bumpers are enormous.
“You can tell that (the designers) didn’t have appearance in mind,” postal worker Avis Stonum said.
Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens, Georgia, are getting rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down — and even catching fire.
Within a few years, the fleet will have expanded to 60,000, most of them electric models, serving as the Postal Service’s primary delivery truck from Maine to Hawaii.
The new trucks also feature something common in most cars for more than six decades: air conditioning. And that’s key for drivers in the Deep South, the desert Southwest and other areas with scorching summers.
“I promise you, it felt like heaven blowing in my face,” Stonum said of her first experience working in an air-conditioned truck.
Good.
I’ve used the old trucks in New Mexico, 140°F in the trucks wasn’t uncommon in the summer. It was a relief to get out of it and cool off a bit. AC will be great.
Jesus Christ that’s basically uninhabitable for any extended period of time
Yeah it’s basically a convection oven on wheels with the little rinky dink fan installed in them
At 140 degrees you would be able to last about 10 minutes before hitting hyperthermia; not much longer for death.
Love it, peak utility design, and it’s cute.
The delivery truck, Duck for short.
Cuz it kinda looks like a duck.
Yeah. Kinda like a storm trooper helmet too.
… idk, not boxy enough :)
Ducky McDuckyFace?
Honestly, as replacements for their legacy, these look spot on. Modern versions of what came before. I’m so glad the postal workers are receiving new, safer equipment.
It would be hard to develop something that’s not an improvement to the absolute shitboxes they were using.
If lurking in the USPS subreddit for a few years had taught me anything, it’s that some really love the LLVs and some just hate the platypus that’s replacing it, as it was often called.
Huh, in my area recently they’ve been using just normal Mercedes vans with the Mercedes logo replaced by the USPS logo so I had assumed that was just the new standard USPS vehicle now but I guess not, interesting.
Really happy we are upgrading these finally, the previous vehicles had aged out and put postal employees in danger.
I think it’s cute!
We just got a van in my area a few years back, wonder if this’ll replace it?
Nah, they use vans for more package dense areas. They are rolling out electric versions of those too eventually.
It looks like the car that SpongeBob would drive if that were a thing that happened in reality. I love it so much.
Well it’s ugly as shit but it’s super functional so I really can’t complain. Some people thought the AC-130 was ugly, fat and slow till it shelled the fuck out of them
oh fuck what a beauty. I want one of these in cozy coupe theme but the old one without the eyes. kids these days have it rough.
Belcher-ass transportation mode.
Man look at the 5head on that truck
Glad to hear they’re mostly electric. A mail truck is an ideal use a for EV, it ought to save the USPS a ton of money
