For 19 years, Richard Burton, a letter carrier in Athens, Ga., drove the classic boxy mail truck, with only a fan on the dashboard to keep the cabin cool in the sweltering summer months. A second fan plugged into the cigarette lighter didn’t make much of a difference, he said.
But about two months ago, Mr. Burton, 46, became one of the first letter carriers in the United States to get a long-awaited upgrade: a new electric mail truck with air conditioning, a 360-degreee camera and a sliding cargo door on the side that allows the unloading of packages directly onto the sidewalk.
“It makes the job easier to do because you’re not sweating bullets out there,” he said. “And in Georgia, you can imagine how hot it gets.”
The new mail trucks — 10 years in the making — have started rolling into American neighborhoods, and the early reviews from letter carriers are positive. Many have complained for years that the mail trucks they have been driving, which were introduced in the 1980s, break down frequently and are stiflingly hot, as climate change pushes temperatures to greater extremes. The rear cargo space is so small, they say, that they have to crouch inside to grab packages.
The Next Generation Delivery Vehicle, as the new truck is called, promises some long-overdue relief. But its appearance has not been universally applauded. It has a giant windshield and a low-slung hood designed to allow drivers of almost any height to see the road. One car enthusiast on YouTube called it “ugly by design.” Ezra Dyer, a columnist for Car and Driver, went further, describing the truck as a “visual abomination.”
“It looks like a robot Beluga whale — built by the East German government,” he wrote in 2021, after the design was unveiled. “It also reminds me of the baseball bullpen golf carts that were designed to look like motorized baseball hats.”
Mr. Burton said that people on his route have been stopping him to take photos and to ask if they can peek inside.
“I know a lot of people say it looks funny,” he said. “It looks like a duck or a platypus. It does. But I tell them it gets the job done. It works for me.”
Fans say the design just takes some getting used to.
“It is the goofiest thing in the world when you first look at it,” said Douglas Lape, a special assistant to the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, a union that represents 205,000 postal delivery workers. “But I will tell you, it grows on you.”
The mail trucks are the most prominent piece of the Postal Service’s plan to invest $9.6 billion to modernize its fleet of aging delivery vehicles and make them more efficient, safer and better equipped to carry packages.
The Postal Service ordered 50,000 of the new trucks in March 2022, according to Oshkosh Defense, the Wisconsin company that won the contract to produce the vehicles at a plant in Spartanburg, S.C.
A month later, attorneys general from 16 states and the District of Columbia, along with five environmental groups and the United Auto Workers union, sued the Postal Service, complaining that most of the new vehicles would be gas-powered, undercutting the fight against climate change.
In December 2022, the Postal Service changed course and announced that 75 percent of the new mail trucks would be battery-powered.
Brian L. Renfroe, the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said that the new trucks have several advantages over the model they are replacing, the Grumman Long Life Vehicle. In addition to air conditioning — perhaps the most critical upgrade — they have more cargo space, because letter carriers now deliver far more packages and far fewer letters and magazines than they did in the 1980s.
The cargo door on the side of the new mail trucks is also safer, Mr. Renfroe said, allowing packages to be unloaded directly onto the curb. The old mail trucks had to be unloaded from the back, which resulted in postal workers being injured and even killed when they were hit by oncoming vehicles, Mr. Renfroe said.
Planning for the new vehicles started in 2014, when the Postal Service began soliciting ideas from letter carriers. Some of their suggestions were incorporated into the final design, such as nonslip surfaces and lights on the doorsteps, and a third sun visor for the windshield.
The trucks also have airbags, automatic emergency braking and a collision-avoidance system — safety features that are common in many new vehicles but were missing from the old vehicles.
The new trucks may require some adjustment for letter carriers accustomed to driving the old delivery vehicles.
Ykeyler Barnes, a letter carrier in Athens, said when she first got her new electric mail truck, she thought it wasn’t working when she pushed the button to start it. So she called a mechanic to check it out.
“He said, ‘It starts — you just can’t hear it because it’s electric,’” Ms. Barnes said. “I thought that was so funny. I came home and told my family and we got a good laugh out of it.”
Driving a larger truck took a little getting used to, she said.
But Ms. Barnes, who has been delivering mail for 26 years, said that she appreciated the air conditioning and the additional cargo space, which allows her to walk inside the truck and get packages without having to stoop. She said other letter carriers will also come to appreciate the additional room for packages, especially during the holidays.
“You’re going have to get used to it,” she said. “But once you pass that phase, you’re going to really like it.”
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