EPA tries to block the sale of 165,000 mail vehicles.

The old trucks are way too small for the current volume they're handling. Our mailman downtown drives a new Promaster and it's also not big enough. He loves it and is way happier with it compared to his old Windstar, but something bigger would be more appropriate. You only see your driver when they're making the rounds, you don't see what's waiting back at the distribution center for them or how many trips they have to make. Some days our mailman completely fills his truck with packages just from our building, and we're not the only building on his route, by a long shot.

I also am not sure if the 8.4mpg is all that bad, I have nothing to compare it to. It would be nice if that info was out there. I don't understand why they're not 100% electric, the use case seems perfect for them, the technology is reasonably mature, and amortizing large up front expenses over time is an ideal situation for someone like the US Gov't that can issue bonds for almost no cost.

gearheadmb said:

STM317 said:

It's supposed to have Ford mechanicals, so I'm guessing it's going to be similar powertrain to the Transit and perhaps even just a rebodied/upfitted version that's all Transit under the skin. Those get around 17mpg in general crusing situations.

The old postal vehicles were just rebodied S-10 pickups, which made sense at the time, but in this scenario I don't understand the rebody, just use a transit as is, or a ram promaster city. They seem to be just what the doctor ordered and are an off the shelf purchase.

They have to be RHD, and I'm pretty sure that one of the requirements was that the vehicle be aluminum and/or composite bodied.

There is no way the roof is that high for the drivers sake, it's so they can cram in a bunch of packages and sell it as them helping their drivers.

Delivery people pretty much get the short end of the stick all around. My wife delivers newspapers and you'd think it was insulin or something. One guy was very pissed she couldn't deliver to his house when he hadn't plowed his road and the snowberm was substantially over the bumper of my k1500. She gets like....27 cents a paper to deliver it, she's not harming her car for you asshat

RevRico said:

In reply to alfadriver :

You also see full sized vans, at least I do, closer to the big cities sporting USPS logos. And minivans. 

Just saying, not everywhere has the same use case, and this is one of those times that there isn't a universal bandaid. What works in downtown Detroit is much different than Sacramento suburbs, is different than rural PA. 

Why they couldn't go hybrid other than the question of long term high mileage reliability and maintenance is beyond me, as is how something so much smaller than my excursion gets even worse mileage with 20 extra years of engine improvement. (By my estimate, berkeleying Washington post useless rag that it is, only pushes price and co2 emissions, nothing useful like weight or specifications)

What do you think the MPG of your excursion would be if you used it like a mail truck? 

I suspect it would be pretty terrible. 

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

There is no way the roof is that high for the drivers sake, it's so they can cram in a bunch of packages and sell it as them helping their drivers.

The official design requirements do suggest that most drivers should be able to move about the cargo area while standing:

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

There is no way the roof is that high for the drivers sake, it's so they can cram in a bunch of packages and sell it as them helping their drivers.

 

Delivery people pretty much get the short end of the stick all around. My wife delivers newspapers and you'd think it was insulin or something. One guy was very pissed she couldn't deliver to his house when he hadn't plowed his road and the snowberm was substantially over the bumper of my k1500. She gets like....27 cents a paper to deliver it, she's not harming her car for you asshat

"Described as the 'duck-billed option', Oshkosh's NGDV has been designed to maximize interior volume and outward visibility for drivers who will be required to move against traffic in pedestrian-heavy areas. It is also tall enough for a person to stand inside and work."


 

As someone who has driven delivery vehicles his entire life, this is exactly what I would want a small multi-stop delivery vehicle to look like.    I can stand up from the driver's seat, and reach anything that I want in the back without being hunched over, and it has an incredibly low step=in height, while having plenty of visibility and is a short wheelbase, which makes it easy to park most anywhere.

In fact, it is surprisingly close to one that I owned for furniture delivery.  

z31maniac said:

RevRico said:

In reply to alfadriver :

You also see full sized vans, at least I do, closer to the big cities sporting USPS logos. And minivans. 

Just saying, not everywhere has the same use case, and this is one of those times that there isn't a universal bandaid. What works in downtown Detroit is much different than Sacramento suburbs, is different than rural PA. 

Why they couldn't go hybrid other than the question of long term high mileage reliability and maintenance is beyond me, as is how something so much smaller than my excursion gets even worse mileage with 20 extra years of engine improvement. (By my estimate, berkeleying Washington post useless rag that it is, only pushes price and co2 emissions, nothing useful like weight or specifications)

What do you think the MPG of your excursion would be if you used it like a mail truck? 

I suspect it would be pretty terrible. 

About the same I imagine. I make almost all short trips under 8 miles each way, lots of idling, lots of way under the speed limit following people that served in Washington's cabinet, usually with a bunch of weight in it as either people or materials. Averaging 9.5mpg that way.

My only all highway tank eeked out 13 though.

I'm curious now though. Not enough to spend 400 miles stopping every 30 seconds, but curious. It's too wide to drive from the passenger seat or I would let my mail guy borrow it for a week. 

This really is the perfect application for full electric or hybrid vehicles. The entire mission is stop-and-go and they return to the same yard every night after only 50-150 miles a day.

Before new garbage trucks and cement mixers had DPF's from the factory the company I worked for did retrofits for thousands of trucks in California. They trapped particulates all day and every truck was plugged into a 30 amp, 208 volt receptacle at night to burn the particulates into ash. We hired electrical contractors to install the infrastructure, usually  cords on reels hanging from an overhead "rack". One for every truck in the yard which in some yards was 100 plus.

GREAT ,  rethink this and make a few models , 

All EV ,  my local mail could use that , its pretty flat around here ....

80% EV 20%ICE   for delivering in a more rural area  where you may need to fill up to get back to the depot,

50% - 50%  for areas with a lot of  big hills and long distances  , mostly out inj the country....

Problem will be total weight ,  the EV batteries will take a lot of the payload !

RevRico said:

z31maniac said:

RevRico said:

In reply to alfadriver :

You also see full sized vans, at least I do, closer to the big cities sporting USPS logos. And minivans. 

Just saying, not everywhere has the same use case, and this is one of those times that there isn't a universal bandaid. What works in downtown Detroit is much different than Sacramento suburbs, is different than rural PA. 

Why they couldn't go hybrid other than the question of long term high mileage reliability and maintenance is beyond me, as is how something so much smaller than my excursion gets even worse mileage with 20 extra years of engine improvement. (By my estimate, berkeleying Washington post useless rag that it is, only pushes price and co2 emissions, nothing useful like weight or specifications)

What do you think the MPG of your excursion would be if you used it like a mail truck? 

I suspect it would be pretty terrible. 

About the same I imagine. I make almost all short trips under 8 miles each way, lots of idling, lots of way under the speed limit following people that served in Washington's cabinet, usually with a bunch of weight in it as either people or materials. Averaging 9.5mpg that way.

My only all highway tank eeked out 13 though.

I'm curious now though. Not enough to spend 400 miles stopping every 30 seconds, but curious. It's too wide to drive from the passenger seat or I would let my mail guy borrow it for a week. 

Making short trips is way different than going from zero to ten, multiple times in a neighborhood.........all day. 

Yeah, constant stop and go is exactly where vehicles with regen are at their best. Even if you only recoup 25% of the energy expended to accelerate, that's a major improvement. And since the amount of energy available increases with vehicle mass, you're not penalized as much by a heavy vehicle as you are with an ICE.

I think this is the EPA trying to stop some blatant and obscene corruption in the USPS right now. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

As usual, you nailed it. 

STM317 said:

Antihero (Forum Supporter) said:

There is no way the roof is that high for the drivers sake, it's so they can cram in a bunch of packages and sell it as them helping their drivers.

The official design requirements do suggest that most drivers should be able to move about the cargo area while standing:

I'm not saying that it is better, because it is, I just doubt that was the original reason

They should be taking a long hard look at hydraulic hybrid systems for this use case. Cheaper and better energy recapturing than batteries.

Driven5 said:

They should be taking a long hard look at hydraulic hybrid systems for this use case. Cheaper and better energy recapturing than batteries.

Are there any hydraulic hybrid vehicles on the road? I think that making your 165,000 vehicle fleet the first of a new kind of vehicle seems like a bad idea.

The new 8.6 MPG is the typical mail duty cycle WITH air conditioning on, as opposed to the current LLV's 8.2 MPG without A/C. If you turn the new van's AC off, it gets 14.7MPG delivering mail while being a larger, heavier, roomier vehicle with better amenities for the driver. Page 23 of this document has the specs. And yes there is a BEV version, but the gas one happened to get more orders first.

So just your basic over-sensationalized headline with over-reactions from figureheads of big bureaucracies. But I agree, it should be a hybrid. 

dculberson said:

Driven5 said:

They should be taking a long hard look at hydraulic hybrid systems for this use case. Cheaper and better energy recapturing than batteries.

Are there any hydraulic hybrid vehicles on the road? I think that making your 165,000 vehicle fleet the first of a new kind of vehicle seems like a bad idea.

Now many, but there are some. Mostly in larger vehicles than we're discussing here though. NREL showed some very promising results on a bunch of hybrid hydraulic UPS trucks that were put into service. There are also a number of cities running hybrid hydraulic garbage trucks. As a concept it has fallen out of favor, replaced by CNG for heavy municipal use and the ongoing development of battery systems for commercial use. Presumably in large part because of the battery cost/regen improvements, but I also don't doubt that some of it is simply due to the perceptions and lack of knowledge/awareness about HHV's on the part of the general public and the public/shareholder 'servants' who make such decisions.

gearheadmb said:

I have a question about that 8.6 mpg. Did they come up with that number the same way they do every other car, or by testing it the way it would be used in real life? Because I cant imagine any gas vehicle doing much better when you come to a stop, drive forward 100 yards, repeat the way a mail car does.

If that number comes from actual mailman use its probably not that bad. If it's from standard car testing that's horrible. I imagine big rigs get similar numbers.

I doubt the huge frontal area makes that much of a difference on a vehicle rarely goes above 20 mph.

Big rigs don't get close to 8.6 mpg. More like half that. 

In reply to SV reX :

Average for a typical American sized 18 wheeler is in the 6's. Some newer ones were starting to push 8 around the time I left the indistry. Of course it depends on duty cycle, load, terrain, etc. 

In reply to maschinenbau :

Yep. That's what I found when I was testing diesel blends and additives. 
 

That was a little while ago (about 8 years), but fleets were excited when we could help them improve their efficiency to 5.5 mpg. At that time, everyone would get really thrilled to hit 6 mpg.

8.6?  Nope. 

I'm always amazed it's that good, given the fuel use I see when towing a couple of race cars in a trailer. I'm getting about twice the mileage but doing far less than half the work.

I love seeing the aero tweaks to big rigs to get slightly better fuel economy, because you know they appreciate every tenth of a mpg.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

(I think you meant half the work) 

SV reX said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

(I think you meant half the work) 

Fixed. Although it was still technically accurate ;)