Build back better proposes 6 billion to electrify post office fleet 70%
 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...-dejoy-trucks/

I personally think this is a terrible buy. Not because the EVs aren't a good idea, but because it is taxpayer money subsidizing competition to the private sector. Even in this article they admit one need of the new trucks is so the USPS can carry more parcels. The parcel business is already 100% covered by many private companies. It's not "mail" IMO. So they make it easier to undercut FedEx, UPS, and others who have to buy their own trucks. Why shouldn't FedEx and UPS get 4-6 billion each to electrify their fleets? Then it also is bad for mainstreet business. It just makes it easier for Amazon, and big mail order Walmart.com or Target.com, to get lower and lower shipping rates to put more and more mom and pop shops out of business. If they had to foot the real cost of delivering a 40 pound bag of dog food to your door, few people would pay double the price of the object when you had to consider shipping. They would just make a weekly or monthly trip and buy a whole careful of products rather than shipping them one, by one, day after day. It's bad ecologically as well.

That may not be the worst of it. I see it being called '6uild 6ack 6etter'.

The post orifice could use electric vehicle for all but their most rual of routes.
The post office owns the small package business. Anything tiny, like 1 pound and smaller can go first class mail and it is a great deal. Then anything that can be stuffed in their flat rate boxes is also an excellent deal.
Did you know a thousand fired 5.56 shell casings fit nicely in a large fat rate box?
For me I only have to go 3 miles to mail off non hazardous packages that will fit in a flat rate box as opposed to 20 miles to do UPS or fedex.
But if I'm sending out live ammo then I have to use ups or fedex, usps doesn't want to touch anything midly hazardous. Live ammo is so dangerous when in its in original packing you can check 11lb of it per bag when you fly.

Besides all that, it also becomes another threat to freedom, serving as a case for a broader political push toward EVs.


Even though the larger retail chains are not actually taking over the mom and pop shops in my country, nowadays many small businesses are basically forced to join the e-commerce platforms of some larger chain in order to stay competitive.

I have no problem with small shops joining the e commerce, but what is terrible is they can't compete. USPS has special, secret, deals with Amazon where even a 40 pound bag of dog food in a 24x20x20" box ships for around $2. The mom and pop can't send a one pound 4x2x1" box across town for less than $4. The dog food would cost them probably $40. Now Amazon try's to claim "they do most of the work" and the post office just does the "last mile". Now what's more difficult putting 10,000 packages in a semi truck and driving them 200 miles to post office. Or unloading 10,000 packages, sorting them into 100 different routes, then loading 100 small trucks and distributing them over a 40 mile radius to a random 10,000 houses? Yeah, that's worth $20,000. It doesn't cover the hourly wages of the 10 sorting clerks, 100 carriers, and 5 supervisors. Well it does if you assume those 100 carriers were "going there anyway". So Amazon gets a free ride on grandma's cards or mom and pop shop sending $4-$100 packages. They also don't cover the cost of the now needed larger delivery vehicles, the increased injuries to workers, the future retirements, etc. Now the post office jumps through their hoops only to be ridden hard and put away wet. As soon as they figure it out and balance the rates, Amazon will just start their own delivery service not only hauling their own packages but give better rates to the mom and pops the PO screwed helping Amazon establish in the first place. Then the PO will have a shiny fleet of new EVs and no packages to fill them.

The EVs themselves won't be the biggest cost, the cost will be in the infrastructure we need to add. We have about 75 trucks in a small outdoor parking lot that also serves as a 10 bay semi freight terminal. Each truck would need at least a 240 volt level 2 charger. Seems at a minimum carports would be needed but more likely a whole new garage. So 75 $40,000 trucks is only 3 million. We spent 1.5 million just on new security at out office 3 years ago. Basically just fencing that parking lot and installing keyed gates and doors everywhere. A new garage for 75 trucks with 3000+ amp electrical service would be 20 million easy for the building and anything central located in out town would be another 10 million for the lot to put it on.

Letter carriers should have been in EVs a decade ago. Same with garbage trucks and School busses.

We'll have autonomous delivery soon enough, at which point weekly trips to stores will be a thing of the past. Amazon is going to deliver everything, for better and worse.

Keep in mind that the USPS’s largest three customers are UPS, FedEx and Amazon. And while they do discount to these three companies (more than they should IMO) they are still the USPS biggest revenue generators. Without them, the USPS would be an even bigger money loser.
And the costs to ship via UPS or FedEx reflect this partnership. If the USPS were to stop carrying packages “the last mile” for them and Amazon, shipping costs through them would be substantially higher.
And I can’t think of a better application fir EV’s than this. Back in the same lot every night after probably less then 100 miles a day. Perfect.

That's the line they try and feed everyone but it's just not true on the ground. We lose money on those cut rate deals it just doesn't show up in the books because they are still counting parcels as a fraction of the overall hours when in reality they are a majority of the hours. So without them we would yes have much less revenue but we would have even more less costs. Sure there would be less than 1/2 the people and you could close 1000s of facilities, but we would actually be self sufficient, just right sized for the job set out in the Constitution to do. Deliver mail.

Just charge by the ounce for everything, no presort deals, no volume deals, that's the way it was for 100 years+ and guess what, 100+ years of never in the red. Don't buy that prefunding mandate is to blame either. That isn't even being paid anymore and still we go deeper and deeper in debt every year. The first class mail volume has stabilized the last 5 years, the prefunding is over, and yet we lose more and more money every year. What's different? Parcel volumes are thru the roof and they don't pay their fair share of the actual workload.

Well as I stated in my post earlier, I agree that the discounts to the big three are too steep. They need to pay more.
But I don’t agree that going back to just 1st class mail would cut enough costs to make the service viable. They still need to be able to go to every
address every day.
Some combination of the higher wholesale prices for packages (which would in itself cut volume) and attracting the retail side of the shipping (where the money is) could help.
Irregardless, it’s still a perfect application for EVs.