Post Office Delivery Trucks Keep Catching on Fire
July 7, 2020 11:36 AM Subscribe
Hundreds of the iconic Post Office delivery trucks have caught on fire in recent years, thanks to a 30-year-old fleet and a manufactured budget crisis. [Vice]
Bonus: Aaron Gordon tweets how he was turned on to this story: About 8 months ago, I got a handwritten letter through the mail on a blank piece of paper with one sentence: "File a FOIA with USPS for LLV truck fires."
Bonus: Aaron Gordon tweets how he was turned on to this story: About 8 months ago, I got a handwritten letter through the mail on a blank piece of paper with one sentence: "File a FOIA with USPS for LLV truck fires."
Is there a way to get rid of the prefunding rule, assuming all goes better in November?
posted by jeather at 11:43 AM on July 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by jeather at 11:43 AM on July 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
Longish-Life Vehicles
posted by GuyZero at 11:44 AM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by GuyZero at 11:44 AM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Old vehicles means old wiring, which can and will crack, creating a short circuit. It also means old fuel lines which can crack and spill fuel everywhere.
Vehicle fires are incredibly common, to the point we are mostly inured to them. Nobody really pays attention any more than they do to the other deleterious effects of a car-centric society. In a way, I'm surprised that the LLV fleet is doing as well as it is.
posted by wierdo at 11:48 AM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Vehicle fires are incredibly common, to the point we are mostly inured to them. Nobody really pays attention any more than they do to the other deleterious effects of a car-centric society. In a way, I'm surprised that the LLV fleet is doing as well as it is.
posted by wierdo at 11:48 AM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Wikipedia says the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act passed the House by a voice vote, and the Senate by unanimous consent. Maybe everyone thought it was about renaming post offices.
posted by theodolite at 11:50 AM on July 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by theodolite at 11:50 AM on July 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
Neither Snow Nor Rain
A Brief History of the Postal Mail Jeep
posted by clavdivs at 11:55 AM on July 7, 2020
A Brief History of the Postal Mail Jeep
posted by clavdivs at 11:55 AM on July 7, 2020
Since May 2014, at least 407 LLVs have been damaged or destroyed in fires, or approximately one every five days
Holy fuck.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:58 AM on July 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
Holy fuck.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:58 AM on July 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
I wonder if the pre-funding of retirement healthcare benefits is related to the physical nature of mail carriers’ jobs? Either way I wish we could guarantee those kind of pension benefits *and* keep their vehicles from exploding with fire. (I know a retired postal worker and I wish every worker had his same retirement benefits...it can be a tough job but he raised a family on his salary and is enjoying a nice lifestyle as a retiree.)
posted by sallybrown at 12:05 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by sallybrown at 12:05 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
I wonder if the pre-funding of retirement healthcare benefits is related to the physical nature of mail carriers’ jobs?
No.
It is a boat anchor designed to make the USPS unprofitable, and thus an easy target for privatization.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:07 PM on July 7, 2020 [42 favorites]
No.
It is a boat anchor designed to make the USPS unprofitable, and thus an easy target for privatization.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:07 PM on July 7, 2020 [42 favorites]
I wonder if the pre-funding of retirement healthcare benefits is related to the physical nature of mail carriers’ jobs?
The army doesn't have this requirement.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:13 PM on July 7, 2020 [36 favorites]
The army doesn't have this requirement.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:13 PM on July 7, 2020 [36 favorites]
The garage we take our cars to is right around the corner from us, on the main drag in town, and they repair the town's mail trucks. There's always at least one sitting in the lot, waiting to be fixed; I remember chatting about it to the owner, and he said that the town's fleet was over 25 years old, so, this all checks out.
posted by damayanti at 12:16 PM on July 7, 2020
posted by damayanti at 12:16 PM on July 7, 2020
There couldn't be a more perfect fleet to go electric. Mail Trucks come home every night to roost/charge, they don't do a lot of highways, electric is more environmentally friendly, etc etc etc. . Unfortunately, the bidding process to build the "next generation" of Mail Trucks are being delayed due to - you guessed it - Coronavirus.
This has been a longtime dream of mine. I think that the Postal Service could be leaders here, but it seems like they're always on the tipping point/chopping block. I would hate to see them privatized. I would also hate to see them delay getting new trucks further...obviously they need to replace their current fleet.
posted by Gray Duck at 12:18 PM on July 7, 2020 [17 favorites]
This has been a longtime dream of mine. I think that the Postal Service could be leaders here, but it seems like they're always on the tipping point/chopping block. I would hate to see them privatized. I would also hate to see them delay getting new trucks further...obviously they need to replace their current fleet.
posted by Gray Duck at 12:18 PM on July 7, 2020 [17 favorites]
The army doesn't have this requirement.
Literally no other private nor public company does. The whole thing is designed so Republican Congresspeople/Senators can whine about how unprofitable it is on FoxNews. Like many (or most) things Republicans hate, they can't attack it in a good faith way, so they have to gin up some bullshit to even make the argument.
posted by sideshow at 12:18 PM on July 7, 2020 [25 favorites]
Literally no other private nor public company does. The whole thing is designed so Republican Congresspeople/Senators can whine about how unprofitable it is on FoxNews. Like many (or most) things Republicans hate, they can't attack it in a good faith way, so they have to gin up some bullshit to even make the argument.
posted by sideshow at 12:18 PM on July 7, 2020 [25 favorites]
I know a retired postal worker and I wish every worker had his same retirement benefits...it can be a tough job but he raised a family on his salary and is enjoying a nice lifestyle as a retiree.
As noted by NoxAeternum, this is part of the reason why the USPS is constantly under attack and has this bizarre unique prefunding requirement. And I will add that the USPS has been the single greatest lifter of Black Americans into the middle class. That will no longer be the case if it is privatized, 90% of the workforce is converted to 30-hour contractors, and the pensions and health care get tossed in favor of 401k matching and HSAs.
posted by Etrigan at 12:22 PM on July 7, 2020 [32 favorites]
As noted by NoxAeternum, this is part of the reason why the USPS is constantly under attack and has this bizarre unique prefunding requirement. And I will add that the USPS has been the single greatest lifter of Black Americans into the middle class. That will no longer be the case if it is privatized, 90% of the workforce is converted to 30-hour contractors, and the pensions and health care get tossed in favor of 401k matching and HSAs.
posted by Etrigan at 12:22 PM on July 7, 2020 [32 favorites]
I can't believe that Vice got the FOIA data from USPS so quickly (and no wisecrack intended). In Canada, you will basically never get what you ask for out of Canada Post Corporation. It took me two years to get a not-very-useful subset of an ATI (=FOIA) data request out of them, and that was only with the Information Commissioner backing me all the way and threatening legal action for non-compliance.
Canada Post's little Transit Connects have pretty much replaced LLVs in town.
posted by scruss at 12:39 PM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Canada Post's little Transit Connects have pretty much replaced LLVs in town.
posted by scruss at 12:39 PM on July 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
David Roberts at Vox: A no-brainer stimulus idea: Electrify USPS mail trucks
posted by General Malaise at 12:54 PM on July 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by General Malaise at 12:54 PM on July 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
Maybe there should be a special tax on the Republican Party (and any subsidiary or descendant parties) to pay for insuring the national infrastructure....
As an incentive.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:53 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
As an incentive.
posted by GenjiandProust at 1:53 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Much as it is for public education, the Republican zeal to shut-down and privatize the USPS has a lot to do with there being a union to eliminate.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:06 PM on July 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 2:06 PM on July 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
Yeah, the prefunding requirement isn't in any way about making the retirement plan functional or solvent. Some amount of prefunding is a good thing, obviously, but 75 years is open warfare on the USPS' entire existence.
Every other entity in the US is allowed to pay as they go, even though they are almost all far less stable than USPS and the government is largely on the hook when companies go bust.
posted by wierdo at 2:26 PM on July 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
Every other entity in the US is allowed to pay as they go, even though they are almost all far less stable than USPS and the government is largely on the hook when companies go bust.
posted by wierdo at 2:26 PM on July 7, 2020 [3 favorites]
They legislate what they're paid to legislate, and that's funded by sociopathic loons who want to stoke their impoverished fellow loons into tactical victories in rural wastelands.
The problem is not lunacy or the collective desire to the believe it's Someone Else's Fault - it's the corruption of current campaign financing, and nothing will change if JoeB is elected, as he was one of the principal beneficiaries of it from the credit card industry in Delaware.
There will be bleating about the poor old USPS (the government agency most people actually have daily contact with and actually makes the most positive daily difference in people's lives), whose treatment as a public utility is a disgusting travesty of corrupt legislators, and who should be able to self-fund if they could run secure email and public-key encryption repositories for the USA, but then some junior Senator from Dogpatch with an eye for the younguns and a spouse with expensive taste will find a parliamentary procedure to make sure this stays on the Red News Radar.
And so it will go on, until those elected with corrupt campaign practices decide to vote against their comforts and find a way to rescind them.
(this is not an endorsement of Trump - Trump is a nasty orange MERSA boil that represents a deep infection of ignorance and is now oozing his infection across the rest of the body. He needs to be lanced, electorally. But JoeB, while being better in multiple ways, will not raise the game in this particular dimension).
posted by lon_star at 2:27 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
The problem is not lunacy or the collective desire to the believe it's Someone Else's Fault - it's the corruption of current campaign financing, and nothing will change if JoeB is elected, as he was one of the principal beneficiaries of it from the credit card industry in Delaware.
There will be bleating about the poor old USPS (the government agency most people actually have daily contact with and actually makes the most positive daily difference in people's lives), whose treatment as a public utility is a disgusting travesty of corrupt legislators, and who should be able to self-fund if they could run secure email and public-key encryption repositories for the USA, but then some junior Senator from Dogpatch with an eye for the younguns and a spouse with expensive taste will find a parliamentary procedure to make sure this stays on the Red News Radar.
And so it will go on, until those elected with corrupt campaign practices decide to vote against their comforts and find a way to rescind them.
(this is not an endorsement of Trump - Trump is a nasty orange MERSA boil that represents a deep infection of ignorance and is now oozing his infection across the rest of the body. He needs to be lanced, electorally. But JoeB, while being better in multiple ways, will not raise the game in this particular dimension).
posted by lon_star at 2:27 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Having ridden by an open bay postal vehicle garage/repair facility hundreds of times;
I have yet to ever see a vehicle being attended to, or actually worked on.
Your local facility runs differently I hope.
posted by Afghan Stan at 3:07 PM on July 7, 2020
I have yet to ever see a vehicle being attended to, or actually worked on.
Your local facility runs differently I hope.
posted by Afghan Stan at 3:07 PM on July 7, 2020
I can't believe that Vice got the FOIA data from USPS so quickly
I can only imagine of federal institutions the USPS probably doesn’t get as many FOIA requests as others, and could be a way on their part to expose how bad things are getting with congress continually bleeding them to death by a thousand paper cuts.
posted by wcfields at 4:53 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
I can only imagine of federal institutions the USPS probably doesn’t get as many FOIA requests as others, and could be a way on their part to expose how bad things are getting with congress continually bleeding them to death by a thousand paper cuts.
posted by wcfields at 4:53 PM on July 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
it seems likely to me someone got a question they wanted to answer. Been waiting to answer. Been hoping to be called in front of congress to testify to.
posted by bonehead at 8:21 PM on July 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 8:21 PM on July 7, 2020 [6 favorites]
A no-brainer stimulus idea: Electrify USPS mail trucks
--General Malaise
Definitely! Electric trucks excel at start/stop city driving because of regenerative braking and using no power when they are stopped--the same conditions under which gasoline trucks are the least efficient and most polluting.
The German company Deutsche Post did it. They even had their own electric truck company and built 13500 trucks.
posted by eye of newt at 11:43 PM on July 7, 2020
--General Malaise
Definitely! Electric trucks excel at start/stop city driving because of regenerative braking and using no power when they are stopped--the same conditions under which gasoline trucks are the least efficient and most polluting.
The German company Deutsche Post did it. They even had their own electric truck company and built 13500 trucks.
posted by eye of newt at 11:43 PM on July 7, 2020
Note that at the time the pre-funding of the healthcare benefits was agreed, the USPS was running at a substantial surplus and could easily have afforded the pre-funding. That is why this went through on a voice vote, it wasn't controversial at the time.
posted by atrazine at 1:31 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by atrazine at 1:31 AM on July 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
Why were the LLVs manufactured by Northrop Grumman? They build, like, fighter planes and shit. It's just a right-hand-drive truck with a sliding door--they should've given the contract to UPS.
This is like when I learned that my state was giving a $20 million contract for coronavirus contact tracing to General Dynamics.
posted by box at 4:46 AM on July 8, 2020
This is like when I learned that my state was giving a $20 million contract for coronavirus contact tracing to General Dynamics.
posted by box at 4:46 AM on July 8, 2020
The current contenders are:
Morgan Olson (a current USPS supplier)/Karsan, a Turkish electric builder, offering a plug-in hybrid.
Mahindra, an Indian company probably best known for farm equipment in the US, is offering gasoline and "mild-hybrid" options.
Workhorse Group a specialty bus maker in Ohio that has been recently focusing on going entirely electric. They recently lost their partner in VT Hackney, so it's not clear if this bid is still going to go forward.
Oshkosh Corp., who make MRAPs for the army, is offering a diesel vehicle in partnership with Ford using their Transit van.
posted by bonehead at 10:17 AM on July 8, 2020
Morgan Olson (a current USPS supplier)/Karsan, a Turkish electric builder, offering a plug-in hybrid.
Mahindra, an Indian company probably best known for farm equipment in the US, is offering gasoline and "mild-hybrid" options.
Workhorse Group a specialty bus maker in Ohio that has been recently focusing on going entirely electric. They recently lost their partner in VT Hackney, so it's not clear if this bid is still going to go forward.
Oshkosh Corp., who make MRAPs for the army, is offering a diesel vehicle in partnership with Ford using their Transit van.
posted by bonehead at 10:17 AM on July 8, 2020
I believe it was still just Grumman at the time, not Northrop-Grumman. Northrop, named for and for many years run by aircraft designer and flying wing inventor Jack Northrop, was the one that manufactured aircraft. Grumman did build airplanes, but also many kinds of land vehicles, both strictly military and general utility vehicles.
As for why most of the old manufacturing giants outside of the few that concentrated solely on aircraft had their fingers in so many different pies, it was a combination of direct encouragement by the government for perceived national security reasons and the combination of the tax system favoring the conglomerate structure and the enforcement of antitrust law still being a thing discouraging vertical integration to the degree we see today.
posted by wierdo at 9:19 PM on July 8, 2020
As for why most of the old manufacturing giants outside of the few that concentrated solely on aircraft had their fingers in so many different pies, it was a combination of direct encouragement by the government for perceived national security reasons and the combination of the tax system favoring the conglomerate structure and the enforcement of antitrust law still being a thing discouraging vertical integration to the degree we see today.
posted by wierdo at 9:19 PM on July 8, 2020
Morgan Olson, Mahindra, Workhorse Group,, Oshkosh are really the contenders? Farm equipment, army vehicles, full diesel! What a ragtag group! At least Oshkosh is apparently working with Ford, and Workhorse has a contract with UPS (though it is for < 1000 vehicles).
Why don't they work with Rivian? Sure they haven't built anything yet, but Amazon has ordered 100,000 of their trucks and they have up to 400 mile range--4 times greater than any of the electric contenders they are considering.
All the contenders' trucks they are considering look like they will be obsolete before they are even built.
posted by eye of newt at 10:10 PM on July 8, 2020
Why don't they work with Rivian? Sure they haven't built anything yet, but Amazon has ordered 100,000 of their trucks and they have up to 400 mile range--4 times greater than any of the electric contenders they are considering.
All the contenders' trucks they are considering look like they will be obsolete before they are even built.
posted by eye of newt at 10:10 PM on July 8, 2020
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posted by NoxAeternum at 11:43 AM on July 7, 2020 [12 favorites]