New U.S. Postal Service vehicles debut in Georgia

Описание: (12 Sep 2024)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4517812

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Athens, Georgia - 5 September 2024
1. Wide of new postal service vehicle, left, and older outgoing model at right
2. Tight left-to-right pan of new postal service vehicle, at left
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Patrick Ecker, USPS, Exec. Mgr. of Fleet Strategy:
"So these are some of the first vehicles on the road right here in Athens and it's really going to be a five year process to roll these out across the country. So the first ones are out now. We're getting just under a hundred this year. Getting to the thousands next year and then we're going to get up to 20,000 vehicles a year we're going to see rolling out and deployed onto the routes." ++PARTIALLY COVERED++
4. Row of new postal delivery vehicles
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Patrick Ecker, USPS, Exec. Mgr. of Fleet Strategy:
"The oldest vehicles are from 1987 so they're well over 30 years of use now, up to 37 years. So as you might imagine they're aging. Some of them are in worse shape than others and as we roll out new vehicles we're very strategic in trying to pull out the worst vehicles, keep the best ones on the road."
7. U.S. Postal Service driver Avis Stonum drives a new delivery vehicle around the work lot
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Avis Stonum, U.S. Postal Service driver:
"I love it because at first glance it's different. However, it's designed in a way that somebody, you can tell that they didn't have appearance in mind. They had safety. They had the way we maneuver. They thought everything through."
9. Row of postal service new vehicles
STORYLINE:
The Next Generation Delivery Vehicle is rolling onto a small number of postal delivery routes. In coming years, tens of thousands of them will hit the road and serve as the U.S. Postal Service's primary delivery vehicle.

And postal workers can't wait to use them.

"I love it because at first glance it's different. However, it's designed in a way that somebody, you can tell that they didn't have appearance in mind. They had safety. They had the way we maneuver. They thought everything through," said Avis Stonum, a postal delivery driver in Georgia.

The first of them are being tested, rolled out initially in Athens, Georgia. Within five years, more than 100,000 of the vehicles are going to delivering the mail from Maine to Hawaii.

More than 150 of the current vehicles have caught fire. The Grumman Long Life Vehicle was designed for a 24-year lifespan, but many of them are now past 30 years. They lack adequate heating and cooling, they deliver poor fuel economy (9 mpg) and they’re becoming difficult to maintain.

Richard Burton, a delivery driver in Athens, said he enjoys the comforts of the new vehicles.

"A lot more roomy. This is, you got so much head space now and all your switches right here. Everything like, they though of everything with these trucks. You can actually stand up in the truck. You don't have to bend over in like the older trucks," Burton told The AP as he climbed in one of the new vehicles.

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