USPS' long-awaited new mail truck makes its debut to rave reviews from carriers

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 374 points – USPS' long-awaited new mail truck makes its debut to rave reviews from carriers
apnews.com

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.

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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.