The time has come to upgrade the post office mail truck fleet, also known as LLVs, Long Life Vehicles. There are around 160,000 mail trucks on the road, and most of them are 25-plus years old.
They have lived past the LLV name that was given them to by their manufacturer, Gruman, when they were fist built in the 1980s. They are in massive need of an upgrade cycle this decade.
The USPS fleet is full of run down trucks. I know this first-hand since I provided a jump start to one of these old trucks a few years ago. The mail trucks are very old, hard to get parts for, and have limited (hardly any) resale value. In fact. according to Japolnik;
"These trucks, the USPS said, have “far exceeded their planned life.” The expected service life of these trucks was 24 years, and the average age of the vehicles still out on the road is now 30 years"
We undoubtedly need to electrify the entire fleet. At the same time, electrifying the fleet should be done in smart way, so that the electrification isn't an all out bet on the EV technology that exists today.
Knowing that mail trucks have a replacement cycle that stretches decades, it better to move smartly and at a moderate pace than to jump all in with early-generation electric vehicles.
We know that over the remaining years of the decade, batteries will have more power, charging will happen more quickly, and bi-directional charging will be more common. . Pretty much every year EV technology gets that much better.