They might look like a delivery van designed by a duck-billed platypus, but the new Postal Service vehicles are out and about delivering mail in the Concord area.
They are eye-catching because of their unusual design, which seems to be a hit with the people who matter: the postal workers.
So far, more than 130 of these next-generation delivery vehicles, or NGCVs, are operating in New Hampshire out of more than 7,000 NGDVs nationwide. They replace the squat, square Grumman vans that have been a postal mainstay since Ronald Reagan’s second term.
Their production was plagued by delays: The Postal Service was scheduled to receive 3,000 of the next-gen trucks by November of 2024, but manufacturer Oshkosh Corp. had only delivered 93 vehicles by then, according to reporting from the Washington Post. The slow rollout is finally reaching the Granite State.
The U.S. Postal Service is tight-lipped about specifics, so it’s not clear how many are based in Concord and how many, if any, are battery-electric vehicles rather than gas-powered. About 1,000 of NGDVs nationwide so far are electric, said Judy Ferriera, communications specialist for the postal service in New Hampshire and southern New England.
The new vehicles, built as part of a $6 billion contract, do look funny but for good reasons. Their massive windshield and ultra-low hood exist to maximize driver visibility, a necessity for a van that spends most of its working hours moving through pedestrian-heavy areas, while the oversized back allows postal workers to stand up while working inside, which isn’t possible in the Grumman vans.
That function-over-form philosophy has made them popular with postal workers, as does the fact that they have air conditioning — a feature that, incredibly, is lacking in the Grumman vans. Even Car & Driver, a publication notable for its love of sports cars, gave the new fleet the thumbs-up.
The Postal Service is swapping over close to half of the roughly 140,000 Grumman vans that are delivering our mail, not just with the duck-billed fans but with commercial vans, like Ford E-Transit electric vehicles and Mercedes Metris and Ram Promaster gas-powered vehicles.
