Tag: USPS

USPS ready to buy 66000 EVs

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Oshkosh Winning Design

The long-running saga of the United States Postal Service’s delivery fleet took another turn when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced that the service is increasing the number of electric vehicles it plans to purchase. The new plan calls for a minimum of 60,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) by 2028, 45,000 of which will be battery EVs. The USPS will also buy an additional 21,000 commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) EVs—perhaps EVs like the Ford e-Transit or the BrightDrop Zevo 600—for deliveries by 2028. And from 2026, all vehicles bought by the USPS will be BEVs.

Further establishing the precedent for modern progressive business in the GOUSA.

2023, this critter starts delivering to our rural mailbox

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The new van, manufactured by Oshkosh Defense, will get a massive overhaul that will provide some significant and desperately needed upgrades for the folks who ensure that “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom” prevent your packages and letters from arriving on time. While the polygonal-like build and massive front windshield of the new truck have some wondering if the USPS stole Homer Simpon’s car idea or perhaps tapped Pixar to do the design, it’s what’s on the inside that is most interesting. Sure, there are high-tech advances like the inclusion of 360-degree cameras and front- and rear-collision avoidance, but postal workers will welcome one feature in particular: climate control.

…Uncle Sam is hoping to squeeze a long life out of these new vehicles, too, equipping them with both gasoline and electric drivetrains to ensure they are prepared to transition to a fossil fuel-free future. It seems likely that the government will lean heavily into the electric option, as the vehicles won’t hit the road until 2023 and President Biden recently expressed his interest in converting the entirety of the government’s fleet of vehicles over to electric. That would have to include the USPS, which makes up about one-third of the government’s fleet.

Overdue…

Rural Post Office woes are news…but, they ain’t new!

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Before the federal Postmaster General Louis DeJoy suspended his short-lived and highly controversial policy changes, the slowdowns it caused had already trickled into rural New Mexico.

Fernando Rodriguez, a window clerk at the Roswell post office, said mail that was usually processed in a day or two would take most of the workweek. Earlier this week, he said federal authorities were already trying to make cuts at his facility…

However, the Trump administration’s latest attacks on the Postal Service are just part of the issue in New Mexico. Rural post offices have faced cutbacks for years that have led to inadequate staffing and slow mail turnaround times.

“It’s really an attack on rural America,” said Roxanne Heckman, a maintenance worker and vice president for the New Mexico postal worker union.

Read it and weep, folks. Care for an important link in the chain that holds life in rural America together.

The Punk in the White House is clueless over the damage he’s causing over the Post Office

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Putting the USPS in a deep freeze benefits no one
Matthew T Rader/Unsplash

A country that doesn’t hesitate to drop $700 billion on its war machine now finds itself quibbling over $10 billion to run a very essential service. Of course, a lot of this talk about shrinking the United States Postal Service has nothing to do with its budgetary shortfalls. It is yet another example of short-term political opportunism. USPS might as well stand for United States Political Shitshow…

It might be hard for politicians and their lackeys to see, but the postal service brings more than ballots and postcards. USPS plays a significant role in the US economy. Any actions against it have ramifications for businesses of all sizes. If there was any doubt, the pandemic proved that USPS is an essential service. It kept the country’s almost moribund economy moving, albeit at a sputtering pace.

The pandemic has made online commerce an incredibly significant part of our society. People across the demographic spectrum are now using some kind of online shopping. And many of those packages are delivered by our postal service. According to The Washington Post, “Week to week, package deliveries increased 20 to 50 percent in April compared with the year-ago period, and 60 to 80 percent in May.” If the package volume stays 15 percent over average, the USPS might not need further cash bailout…

USPS is part of the new future of retail. Main Street is no longer just on the street. Thanks to tools like PayPal, Shopify, WooCommerce, and Square, it is also online. And it needs USPS to do business.

Amazon can — and is — building their own logistics and delivery system. Not everyone can do that. All those politicians who complain about Amazon’s monopoly forget that the only way to fight the giant is to arm many David’s with slingshots. USPS is that slingshot. Instead of thinking about shutting down or shrinking USPS, we need to really work hard in helping it adapt to Mail Service 2.0..

Everything Om writes is readable. He could do my grocery list and I’d probably get home from town earlier – with money left over.

There’s lot to learn in his post on the USPS. Dimbulbs like the Fake President will never get it. But, the voting public has time before the next election to understand more about a stupid decision made for the grimiest of political reasons.

Post Office Pimp backs down. Think dozens of states cranking up lawsuits helped?

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Embattled Postmaster General Louis DeJoy reversed course Tuesday, saying that all changes being made to the Postal Service would be suspended until after the November 3 election, just as 20 Democratic states announced plans to file federal lawsuits.

DeJoy said that some of the deferred decisions mean that retail hours at post offices will not change, mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain in place and no mail processing facilities will be closed.

Apparently, he is neither as stupid nor as arrogant as his boss. That is rather a guarded analysis since the thug-in-chief is just as likely to override this decision as honor it. Trump doesn’t do honorable!

Debate over a long-time public service called the Post Office

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Republicans want privatization, Trump wants to stick it to Amazon.

…The Trump administration…appears to be specifically hostile to the idea of a Postal Service bailout. Its distaste for a postal bailout merges ideological conservatives’ generic preference for postal privatization with the president’s hang-up about the idea that the USPS is giving Amazon a sweetheart deal on shipping.

In general, there are a lot of complexities to the long-term postal policy picture in the United States, but the immediate crisis is actually pretty simple: Mail volumes are plunging, taking USPS revenue down with them. And unless something is done relatively quickly to make up for those lost revenues, it’s hard to see how significant layoffs and service reductions can be avoided…

…At the core of that entity is a two-sided bargain. On the one hand, the Postal Service gets a monopoly on the provision of daily mail services. On the other hand, the Postal Service undertakes a series of public service obligations that a private company would not provide — most notably, daily mail delivery and flat postage rates regardless of where you live.

RTFA. Some discussion. Some debate. I see nothing useful in ending a public service that only has private alternatives that cost American consumers a boatload of money.

Driverless trucks start test runs on Southwestern Interstate highways

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❝ The U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday started a two-week test transporting mail across three Southwestern states using self-driving trucks, a step forward in the effort to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology for hauling freight.

San Diego-based startup TuSimple said its self-driving trucks will begin hauling mail between USPS facilities in Phoenix and Dallas to see how the nascent technology might improve delivery times and costs. A safety driver will sit behind the wheel to intervene if necessary and an engineer will ride in the passenger seat.

❝ If successful, it would mark an achievement for the autonomous driving industry and a possible solution to the driver shortage and regulatory constraints faced by freight haulers across the country.

The plan is to have these trucks on the road 22 hours at a time. Not exactly something human drivers are up for. Since long-haul runs are literally short thousands of drivers, timing couldn’t be better. If everything works OK? 🙂

The Feds Mandate That the US Postal Service Lose Money

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❝ For the first three months of 2018, the US Postal Service reported a $1.3 billion loss, up from $562 million a year ago.

The basic issue is that revenue is growing more slowly than expenses. Total revenue grew by 1.4% while total expenses grew by 5.7%. Clearly, that makes for a less profitable business. This is a government-mandated financial squeeze and there are two main causes.

❝ First, regular mail—that is, the ordinary letters sent by individuals and businesses on a daily basis—is a declining business; volume-per-end-point (the mailbox) declined by 3.4% this year. Overall, regular mail is down 35% over the past 10 years. The problem is that the cost to deliver doesn’t decline with lower volume…

❝ Second, retirement expenses are growing significantly. Retiree health benefits increased 60% since last year and unfunded retirement benefits increased a whopping 142%…

RTFA. After all, there is some good news. Mostly from doing business with folks like Amazon.

Nature strikes back at urbanization

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❝ A postmaster seems dumbfounded in a 911 call he made to get help for a New Jersey letter carrier who was trapped inside his truck by several wild turkeys.

The incident played out Tuesday in Hillsdale, New Jersey. The audio was released Wednesday.

❝ The postmaster initially tells police “you’re not going to believe this” before providing details about the attack, noting similar events have happened before. The police officer who took the call sounds equally amazed.

Authorities say about seven turkeys accosted the letter carrier, but he wasn’t injured.

Two officers scared off the turkeys so the letter carrier could continue his route.

Wild turkeys can be pretty scary. Too bad Ben Franklin didn’t win his campaign to make them the national bird. More character than most of their peers.