Random Thoughts

[Angrboda]

Reading an article about the postal service's plan to retire their current trucks in 2023. I had totally forgotten the old postal jeep.




About the current trucks:

“Much has been said about the new U.S. Postal Service in the last year or so; about how this 200-year-old institution is moving in new directions, using the latest technology to carry out the task of delivering the nation’s mail,” then-Postmaster General Preston R. Tisch said at the 1987 ceremony to take delivery of the first LLVs. “What could be a better symbol of these new directions than these shiny new vans moving us forward toward greater efficiency and economy?”

The agency ordered bidders to submit prototypes specifically designed for mail delivery. That meant right-side drive to allow letter carriers to reach roadside mailboxes out their windows, said Lynn Heidelbaugh, a curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum, low steps for entry and egress, and a cargo bay with a low lift gate so carriers could more easily move heavy bails of mail.

The Postal Service road-tested trucks from Grumman (partnering with General Motors), Poveco (Fruehauf & General Automotive Corp.) and American Motors on a 24,000-mile course in Laredo, Tex., in the summer of 1985. Among the challenges, the vehicles had to travel 11,520 miles over a gravel road at 30 to 45 mph, drive 960 miles over cobblestones and another 960 miles over potholes.

Each firm’s engineering team was allowed five “unscheduled maintenance actions” to repair components expected to last the full life of the vehicle. Trucks were eliminated if they experienced the same problem twice. The Grumman prototype was the only vehicle to complete the test. Postal Service officials gushed over its durability.

“The children of the drivers behind me,” Tisch said during the 1987 ceremony, “could one day deliver mail in the year 2011 using the very same vehicle their father or mother is driving today.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/...spstrucks/

And the bride-to-be: