US Postal Service Wants EV Delivery

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 21, 7:30AM EST

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US Postal Service Wants EV Delivery — © MattGush / iStock Editorial via Getty Images

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) said it would order 60,000 electric trucks to deliver mail. These should be in operation by 2028. The USPS did not say that it should not need them. It is too large and already has too many trucks, people and post offices.
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The trucks do have some benefits for postal workers. They have air conditioning and safety technology.

The USPS already has 220,000 vehicles. It says this fleet is “aging.” Instead of replacing these, the USPS should not add any as they come out of service. It should let its footprint of vehicles shrink.
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The USPS harbors several fantasies. The first is that it needs to have a fleet of vehicles that allow it to deliver mail quickly and six days a week. Because of email and email attachments, six-day-a-week delivery is not necessary. Many Americans pay their bills online. The USPS should encourage that.
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Another part of the core service the USPS offers and for which it needs trucks is to deliver junk mail. This mail is primarily a way to sell Americans something or get them to give money to someone. It helps the USPS make money, but it also helps its expenses to balloon.
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The trucks are also needed to serve over 32,000 post office locations. Some are in towns as small as 3,000 people. These could be cut by thousands of locations. It is another way the USPS could cut people and transportation costs.

The USPS will add more electric vehicles. They are not needed.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.