Mailbox usps1/2/2024 ![]() ![]() Nationally, the average retail price for gasoline over the past 10 years was $2.89 – in fact, the average national price for a gallon of gas has only been less than $2.19 seven times in the past 10 years. Some of the failures of the EIS are less obvious than others, but none of us would be too dense to find that their use of fuel cost estimates between $2.19 and $2.55 per gallon of gasoline through 2040 when comparing fuel costs between internal combustion engines (ICEs)and battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is way off the mark (see page B-160 of the Final EIS). While the USPS did complete a detailed, lengthy, and jargony EIS in late 2021, it was rife with unreasonable assumptions and a poor study design from the start. These analyses are often very detailed, lengthy, and full of jargon, but are referred to as an Environmental Impact Statement or “EIS.” Because the USPS is a federal agency, it is required to analyze the environmental impacts and benefits of “reasonable alternatives” to any significant proposed action, such as whether to replace the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world with zero-emissions or fossil-fueled delivery trucks. Title 42 of the United State Code deals with topics from environmental protection to civil rights and includes laws that require the federal government to analyze and mitigate the impact of its actions. To get to the bottom of the Postal Service leadership’s decision to favor combustion delivery vehicles, we’ll need to put our bureaucratic hats on for a minute or two. So far, the USPS’s process to update its fleet has been reminiscent of the Trump Administration’s “bait and switch behind smoke and mirrors” regulatory tactics. The Postal Service’s leadership, including Postmaster General Lewis DeJoy, has gone out of its way to keep outdated, expensive, and polluting combustion vehicles on its over 230,000 routes by pursuing a mostly gasoline-powered replacement fleet. It remained in use well after production ended. The Jeep Dispatcher, or DJ, was the first standard delivery vehicle commissioned by the USPS and was produced by several manufacturers from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. Still, this falls way short of what is possible, leaving up to nearly 13 million metric tons of annual greenhouse gas reductions and over $4 billion in cost savings off the table. Thanks in large part to pressure from environmental and labor advocates, the USPS recently announced its new fleet would be at least 40 percent electric. The USPS originally planned to purchase a new fleet consisting of just 10 percent electric vehicles (EVs). There is simply no logical reason not to pursue a zero-emissions USPS fleet. Finally, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress is expected to consider soon, would provide $3 billion to the USPS for the purchase of EVs and charging equipment. Topping this off, the average postal route length of 21 miles is a fraction of the range of nearly all-electric delivery trucks and vans available today. With the significant strides in electric truck technology, vastly reduced operating and maintenance costs compared to combustion vehicles, and the fact that, according to USPS, 95 percent of its routes can be serviced by electric vehicles, one would assume that the USPS would be pursuing electric delivery vehicles in full force. Over the past few years, the USPS has worked to select a new design to replace the aging fleet. ![]() These lumbering little gas guzzlers were originally slated to last for about twenty years, but today, most of the USPS’s fleet of Grumman LLVs have been on the road for nearly thirty years. ![]() A clear childhood memory of mine was when the current USPS delivery vehicle, the Grumman Long-Life Delivery Vehicle (LLV), began to replace the fleet of Willy’s Jeep-inspired mail delivery vehicles in the early 1990s.
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