If you’re a fan of getting a letter, count on seeing your US Postal Service carrier delivering the mail in something new in the next few years.
The U.S. Postal Service issued a request for information, the first move in the search for a replacement for the aging fleet of Grumman LLVs, first issued in 1987, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Grumman LLV is mainly derived from pieces of the old Chevrolet S-10, powered by the 2.5-liter Iron Duke four-cylinder – both of which were last made by General Motors in the mid-1990s. The LLV hasn’t been produced since 1994, and the cash-strapped postal service‘s fleet of more than 140,000 of the vehicles is aging rapidly. Repairs and fuel bills have topped $1 billion, according to The Washington Post.
WSJ reports GM is keen to win the contract worth an estimated $5 billion for 180,000 vehicles that would cost between $25,000 and $35,000. A spokesman at FCA said they are reviewing the information request.
Keen postal vehicle fans will remember the Grumman model replaced the Jeep DJ-5 as the U.S. Postal Service’s mail carrying vehicle of choice, itself a modified version of the original Jeep CJ. But before you go thinking that a Jeep Wrangler-based postal truck makes complete sense, the postal service has some requirements.
Any new postal service truck has to do better than the single-digit fuel economy figures of the current LLVs, while being larger to cope with all of the stuff people order online these days and offer modern features like airbags, ABS and cupholders. Yeah, cupholders.
With a flood of new commercial vehicles just on the market now – like the Ford Transit and Transit Connect, Ram ProMaster and ProMaster City, Nissan NV and the “Taxi Of Tomorrow” van – there could be some interesting designs for a postal truck of tomorrow.
But I’m still kind of curious what you could do with a Wrangler.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons