US mail trucks have the driver on the right hand side (as opposed to the left), so that they can deliver mail without having to get out of the driver's seat. Which naturally means we can't just reuse trucks made for the UK or other Commonwealth markets because... China or socialism or whatever.
"The requirements dictated the step-in height, the glass height (including the low side glass), the vision angles, the internal height, and the maximum roof height," wrote Kahn in a tweet. "That was all locked in."
Other constraints included the ability to reach the mailbox while in the seated position, and the requirement to see the ground around the vehicle...
I saw that, but those constraints don't seem to be necessary for postal vehicles in other countries. The person I was responding to was wondering why other countries seem to just fine with regular looking vans that have postal branding. It's worth asking about, isn't it?
Just because those things are spec'd as they are, that doesn't mean they need to be.
Each country has their own circumstances to deal with. This design would not make sense in Europe where a lot of the last mile delivery was done by mail carriers on foot or bicycles. However it does boost efficiency considerably in the USA's vast expanse of suburbia. FWIW, mail trucks in Canada also have with right hand drive and low floor so the driver could reach into mailboxes without having to leave their seat.
My local postal service used to make delivery on bicycles but they have gradually introduced golf-cart like miniature EVs. This allow each run to cover a much larger area but probably would not for the most of US because their mail routes are too long.
> However it does boost efficiency considerably in the USA's vast expanse of suburbia.
Also it sounds like the new trucks have pretty stringent visibility requirements, which would help avoid running over playing children in a suburban setting. I can see that as a pretty serious risk for the USPS, given how frequently they stop for a few minutes. An off-the-shelf van without the unusually shaped front probably has more blind spots a kid could sneak into.
Quite a few national postal services use custom or semi-custom vehicles, e.g. Deutsche Post. For those that use more "off the shelf" vehicles they are probably still custom orders specifying an exact feature set. But at the end of the day, it just becomes a matter of cost/benefit. The USPS is enormous, and that large scale makes it financially viable for them to purchase a custom vehicle since the quantities are so great. This allows them to get exactly what they want which gains some operating efficiency.
Oshkosh is also a very well established manufacturer of vehicles for the government and holds substantial military contracts for custom vehicles such as the highly recognizable HEMTT. So the Oshkosh purchase is fairly low-risk in that Oshkosh has a proven track record of delivering vehicles for government fleets.
UPS and FedEx also make use of largely custom vehicles. They are based on off-the-shelf step vans, but to a large extent OTS step vans no longer exist in the US and nearly all of them you see are contract designs for fleets. There's a bit of a cyclical relationship here as the modern step van is basically defined by UPS and FedEx, which purchase their trucks custom to specification from body-makers like Utilimaster and formerly Grumman-Olson. Grumman popping up here again is not coincidental - the USPS and UPS formerly got their custom trucks from the same manufacturer, but Grumman-Olson is no longer nearly as important of a player as it once was.
The short answer: USPS is contracting for at least 50,000 vehicles. When you buy 50,000 of just about anything you gain a lot of leverage to customize.
And yet.....everyone manages. Houses in rural areas have mailboxes outside of the property, sure they are not the iconic american half-pipe shape, but properties all over the world have mailboxes too.
Right, everyone manages with what we have now so why change anything? I mean who cares if increased visibility reduces the number of pedestrian collisions, who cares if seat designs reduce the number of back injuries. The world is good enough as it is.
At scale it makes sense to have control of part supplies and have consistent service processes. UPS and to a lesser extent FedEx also use custom bodies.
Every country's postal system is a system with a lot of interacting parts. You change one part, and it affects the others. Our postal system makes extensive use of mail delivered by vehicles directly to mailboxes that are located at the curb, on streets that are relatively dangerous for people. [0]
[0] I couldn't quickly find any believable stats, but I think it's a reasonable guess to start with traffic deaths in general, for which there are published numbers.
The first part (mail directly to mailboxes) is the same everywhere I've seen it too here in Europe (mostly Spain and Sweden to be fair). But yeah, the second one makes a lot of sense. Would actually explain a lot of the design choices for anything American. We don't have that much to worry about, so we can spend less on armored postal vans.
There's relatively few countries in the world that are as large and sparse as the US. Sprawling metropolis's are rare. In the rural areas, houses are miles apart.
It certainly sounds reasonable to have an enclosed cargo area with sufficient head room for comfort, but saying they look like they do because there are requirements doesn't really explain it.
My rural carrier had no problem putting mail in my mailbox from a modified jeep. They would stop and get out for packages of any size (putting them by the house).
In town here, it's all walking routes. I wonder what the numbers are on curbside vs walking?
Modified jeeps are the best you can get without the leverage of being able to write 9 digit contracts. That doesn't make them ideal.
Aftermarket RHD modified vehicles have a lot of issues, like being able to see the gauges, the ability to operate all of the ancillary controls, interference with factory safety equipment, poor ergonomics, etc.
And those jeeps had generally terrible visibility. You're making a lot of statements with little to no data, nor even research on to why they would want to improve.
I made 1 statement saying that requirements aren't explanations, 1 statement that I observed a rural carrier use a jeep for years, and then a statement that jeeps are in fact commercially available.
I would certainly expect a jeep with a mirror bolted on the traffic side to have better rear and side visibility than something with no glass in the back, so go ahead and hang your hat on visibility if you want.
The article (and your comment) explains how the design conforms to the constraints but what I think they were asking was why have those specific constraints in the first place (apart from "that's how it's always been done here.")
Now, I understand that it's to prevent accidents, make it more easy to put mail into mailboxes if they're situated right next to the road, etc. Yet somehow every other country makes it work without specialized vehicles.
While USPS is not subject to "Buy America" requirements, like most quasi-governmental organizations it does have an acquisition policy of purchasing vehicles from US manufacturers rather than overseas when possible. This aligns with the general US system of preferential government purchasing, in which federal purchasing decisions are based partially on policy objectives such as promoting small businesses and US manufacturing. There could be some debate over this policy position, but at its core it could be viewed as a very light extension of New Deal principles---that the federal government should put its money where its mouth is by patronizing the types of US businesses that are the subject of so much political rhetoric.
To my knowledge, there are no right-hand-drive vehicles manufactured in the US, as RHD is limited to countries closer to extensive auto manufacturing in Europe and Asia. As a stopgap measure, the Postal Service has been making use of domestic minivans converted to RHD using a belt arrangement that does not look particularly user friendly. The driver has to lean over to see the dashboard instruments.
What surprises me us that the USPS is buying the vehicles directly from Oshkosh as a customer, rather than buying the technical design package and contracting construction out to several smaller companies.
Unit cost would be higher but it would be laying the groundwork for the next generation of vehicle, sustaining those smaller companies and encouraging innovation. As well as avoiding too much reliance on one supplier.
"Opposite-driven" postal vehicles have been common/standard in Europe for a very long time. It's not a complex thing to change, especially since many car models are made to be sold in e.g. the UK anyways.
