New USPS mail trucks

USPS' long-awaited new mail truck makes its debut to rave reviews from carriers (yahoo.com)

Thoughts?

Fugly.

so ugly I know tax dollars weren't wasted on aesthetics.

I wonder how much that windshield costs, that is a big piece of glass. Also, its ugly. 

We enthusiastically approve of this design.

Edit...

Sorry Chris, I was working on my post when yours landed.

Clearly, they should have enlisted the help of Musk's Cybertruck design team.

In all seriousness, why the huuuuuuuge glass area?

Are they planning on driving these while standing up?  What is the possible justification for having the windshield being so tall?

It's clearly meant to be stood up in, and even walked into standing up... but the glass.... why?   Yes, more light in the back, but I would highly suspect they have some sort of sky light in that thing (most delivery trucks have those now I believe).

Visibility when getting out?  If you are planning on just blindly walking into traffic without glancing where you are going, maybe?  Even still, unless you are parked on the wrong side of the road, the traffic will be coming from the back, and I suspect most of these are right hand drive anyway? (so traffic is on the opposite side of the vehicle unless you are on the wrong side of the road).

In reply to RX Reven' :

I am glad I was not the only one thinking that. 

In reply to WilD :

Clearly, for visibility.

(pun intended, with apologies)

The people who have to drive them think they're great.  https://apnews.com/article/postal-service-next-generation-delivery-vehicle-a2ebbfc7afec0eea2e036eef93bee4d9

WilD said:

In all seriousness, why the huuuuuuuge glass area?

Want to read something boring?

It's covered in 3.12.1 within the spec document (it's in Part 2.) It has to do with proving 125-degree lateral visability for 5th percentile female stature through 95th percentile stature males. Plus it can only utilize a single A-pillar and cannot use a feature vent window or quarter pane aft of the A-pillar.

I'd guess, based on the prototypes that came out of the spec, that a massive piece of glass is required to fulfill that requirement.

Part 1 ends with the exciting parts about the bumper specs FYI.

This thing is truly the American Fiat Multipla.

Good gracious. I try to avoid aesthetic criticism, but that's monumentally ugly. There HAS to be a way to combine form and function more successfully.

$60,000/copy made by a defense contractor. Oh well, at least they didn't oversea production.

It already looks like a Hot Wheels Tooned version of itself.

i was thinking they should just make the front flat, like the UK's Royal Mail trucks (or a bus), but having a hood probably makes it easier to service.

Kreb (Forum Supporter) said:

Good gracious. I try to avoid aesthetic criticism, but that's monumentally ugly. There HAS to be a way to combine form and function more successfully.

$60,000/copy made by a defense contractor. Oh well, at least they didn't oversea production.

Considering they could purchase 1.5 currently-being-rebadged Mercedes Metras at MSRP for each of these, I'm not real impressed. I get that they're purpose built, but I'm not sold they're that much better or that carriers destroy them that often.

In reply to The0retical :

Well, a mail carrier is basically doing a production job, so every little improvement in efficiency or ergonomics is multiplied thousands, if not millions of times over.  So from that perspective, going custom rather than modifying a stock design makes more sense. 

In theory, for urban areas, electric also makes a lot of sense. The old vehicles only got 9 MPG, but that had to be largely due to all the stopping and starting. Of course, when you factor in the problems that EVs have with extreme temperatures, the equation changes.

Anything is better than the completely worn out and absolutely abysmal when new LLV. 

The letter carriers I know are anxiously awaiting vehicles with actual HVAC and that don't have 300k+ miles of wear and tear on them.

I know a fleet mechanic for USPS. I will have to ask him how he feels. He hates the LLVs and is fed up with trying to patch them together. 

Just imagine, it is summer, it is 100°f and you are in an LLV. No AC, just a weak fan on the dash blowing hot air at you. Your sweat, soaking the seats and mingling with the sweat and farts of every driver that thing has had for over 3 decades. 

The drivers I know have no fondness for the LLV. 

Great, now we can all get that old Grumman that we all secretly wanted. 

What a fugly hunk of poo.  Embarassing.

Did someone graft a PT Cruiser front end onto a COE??

The0retical said:

 

...It has to do with proving 125-degree lateral visibility for 5th percentile female stature through 95th percentile stature males. ....

Lateral (side to side).  So, why so tall?  A 95th percentile male is approximately 6'2".   Sitting down, no surprisingly, they are a LOT shorter.  The seat height looks to be about the same as the truck shown on the right. I almost looks like they used that spec for someone standing, and it's still likely way to tall.

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Even with temperature variations, the fact that EVs can regen is huge. 

These things look the way they do because they're designed to meet a set of specifications drawn up with knowledge of the job being done. I remember the windshield wipers are particularly robust, for example. So it looks like a Pixar vehicle. That's okay, it's not a status vehicle. It's not for us. 

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to Kreb (Forum Supporter) :

Even with temperature variations, the fact that EVs can regen is huge. 

These things look the way they do because they're designed to meet a set of specifications drawn up with knowledge of the job being done. I remember the windshield wipers are particularly robust, for example. So it looks like a Pixar vehicle. That's okay, it's not a status vehicle. It's not for us. 

So they ought to get Pixar to give it a silly graphics package so that we can at least get a good chuckle out of them.