Going Postal

One good thing about the Post Office — it’s over 200 years old and yet it’s never been hindered by progress.
That’s a tired, old joke on a soft target. But as with any good joke there’s more than a grain of truth in it. Better technology (email, online payment systems), more responsive competitors (FedEx, UPS), and abysmal finances (nearly $100 billion in unfunded liabilities) make Ben Franklin’s baby easy to hate – or at least ridicule.
Who doesn’t have a post office tale of woe? Boots I ordered on January 22nd were scheduled for delivery on the 29th, but as I’m writing this essay on February 9th all I can tell from the USPS website is that the box left Springfield, MA, on the 31st…and ended up in New Jersey.
The delivery date is still listed as January 29th, as if that were possible. My local Post Office could only confirm that my boots were indeed at a facility in the Garden State. It took 7 days for my boots to go from California to Massachusetts, but 10 days and counting to go from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. Those boots were made for walking, not for being driven around the country in a postal truck.
Speaking of postal trucks, nothing better exemplifies Postal Service dysfunction than the ubiquitous mail delivery truck, the Grumman Long-Life Vehicle (LLV). Fish rots from the head down, as they say: Leadership failures kill organizations. While it is easier to criticize your mail carrier or post office worker directly for delivery problems, they are just the customer-facing part of a huge dysfunctional enterprise suffering from years of poor leadership and bad decision-making.
If you’ve seen an LLV navigating snowy roads you will not be surprised to learn that the entire on-road testing cycle during prototype selection was conducted in Laredo, Texas. Tests were created to replicate the needs of city letter carriers, with each protype required to successfully accomplish a list of tasks that included driving 5,760 miles on a closed loop 5-mile-long paved road at 50 to 55 mph; 11,520 miles over a gravel road at 30 to 45 mph; and driving 960 miles over potholes at 10 to 14 mph.
The list goes on, but does not include driving in cold, snowy conditions at any speed. It does not include providing a safe and even moderately-comfortable driver environment when temperatures dip below zero or soar above 100 degrees.
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Clearly, meeting the demands of the Post Office motto was not part of the postal delivery vehicle’s design requirements. Even back during selection in 1985 there were better choices for a postal truck than the LLV – which is essentially an aluminum box attached to the engine and drivetrain of a two-wheel drive Chevy S-10 Blazer.
And that engine – GM’s 2.5L “Iron Duke” is a 1970s powerplant that won’t make the highlight reel of US automotive design. Like many GM products from the era – and I owned a couple – reliability was not baked in.
But it isn’t just the big mechanical bits or lack of all-weather testing that make the LLV such a poor vehicle. The worst part of the LLV saga comes at the end of the vehicle’s useful life: They catch fire.
A Postal Service memo cites lack of proper and timely maintenance, failed fuel-system components, and overloaded wiring as causes of catastrophic fires. The Postal Times reported that at least six mail trucks have burned up so far this year, including one in a driveway in Dunstable, MA, on January 3rd. In 2018, 17 burned; in 2016, 42. It’s such a problem that the National Association of Letter Carriers issued a new warning, stating that the risks to letter carriers are growing as the LLV fleet ages.
The LLVs entered service in 1986 and more than 100,000 were produced into 1994. The design lifespan was twenty-four years, but in 2009 this was extended to thirty years – by executive decision not retroactive engineering. Do the math and smell that rotting fish. The LLV fleet has aged past its original life-span, but the USPS is still in the process of looking for a replacement vehicle.
According to Trucks.com, the Postal Service “expects the first vehicles to be delivered within 12 to 18 months” once testing is done and a contract is awarded. So new trucks may not be on the way until 2020 or 2021, at a cost of over $6 billion. That nickel increase in First Class postage won’t cover the complete recapitalization of the postal fleet.
Only a government entity could be run this way. Next time I order something I really need, I’ll go UPS or FedEx instead of going postal.

Ken Gorrell can be reached at kengorrell@gmail.com