ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — The Postal Service’s new supply autos aren’t going to win a magnificence contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are huge. Their hoods resemble a duck invoice. Their bumpers are monumental.

“You may inform that (the designers) didn’t have look in thoughts,” postal employee Avis Stonum mentioned.

Odd look apart, the primary handful of Subsequent Era Supply Autos that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens are getting rave critiques from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older autos that lack trendy security options and are liable to breaking down — and even catching fireplace.

Inside a number of years of the preliminary rollout, the fleet may have expanded to 60,000, most of them electrical fashions, serving because the Postal Service’s main supply truck from Maine to Hawaii.

As soon as absolutely deployed, they’ll symbolize one of the seen indicators of the company’s 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster Basic Louis DeJoy, who’s additionally renovating getting old services, overhauling the processing and transportation community, and instituting different adjustments.

The present postal autos — the Grumman Lengthy Life Car, relationship to 1987 — have made good on their identify, outlasting their projected 25-year lifespan. However they’re nicely overdue for substitute.

Noisy and fuel-inefficient (9 mpg), the Grummans are pricey to take care of. They’re scalding sizzling in the summertime, with solely an old-school electrical fan to flow into air. They’re have mirrors mounted on them that when completely aligned enable the driving force to see across the car, however the mirrors consistently get knocked out of alignment. Alarmingly, practically 100 of the autos caught fireplace final 12 months, imperiling carriers and mail alike.

The brand new vans are being constructed with consolation, security and utility in thoughts, by Oshkosh Protection in South Carolina.

Even tall postal carriers can rise up with out bonking their heads and stroll from entrance to again to retrieve packages. For security, they’ve airbags, 360-degree cameras, blind-spot monitoring, collision sensors and anti-lock brakes — all of that are lacking on the Grummans.

The brand new vans even have a characteristic that grew to become frequent in most vehicles greater than six a long time in the past — air con. And that’s key for drivers within the Deep South, the desert Southwest and different areas with scorching summers.

“I promise you, it felt like heaven blowing in my face,” Stonum mentioned of her first expertise working in an air-conditioned truck.

Richard Burton, one other driver, mentioned he appreciates the bigger payload space, which might accommodate larger packages, and the truth that he can rise up and doesn’t must crouch, serving to him keep away from again ache. The previous vans additionally had a behavior of breaking down in visitors, he added.

Brian Renfroe, president of the Nationwide Letter Carriers Affiliation, mentioned union members are enthusiastic concerning the new autos, simply as they have been when the Grummans marked a leap ahead from the earlier autos, old-school Jeeps. He credited DeJoy with bringing a way of urgency to get them into manufacturing.

“We’re excited now to be on the level the place they’re beginning to hit the streets,” Renfroe mentioned.

The method obtained off to a rocky begin.

Environmentalists have been outraged when DeJoy introduced that 90% of the next-gen autos within the first order can be gas-powered. Lawsuits have been filed demanding that the Postal Service additional electrify its fleet of greater than 200,000 autos to scale back tailpipe emissions.

“Everyone went nuts,” DeJoy mentioned.

The issue, Dejoy mentioned, wasn’t that he didn’t need electrical autos. Relatively, the expense of the autos, compounded by the prices of putting in 1000’s of charging stations and upgrading electrical service, made them unaffordable at a time when the company was reporting huge working deficits each quarter.

He discovered a method to additional enhance the variety of electrical autos when he met with President Joe Biden’s high environmental adviser, John Podesta. That led to a deal wherein the authorities offered $3 billion to the Postal Service, with a part of it earmarked for electrical charging stations.

In December 2022, DeJoy introduced that the Postal Service was shopping for 106,000 autos by way of 2028. That included 60,000 next-gen autos, 45,000 of them electrical fashions, together with 21,000 different electrical autos. He pledged to go all-electric for brand spanking new purchases beginning in 2026.

“With the local weather disaster at our doorsteps, electrifying the U.S. authorities’s largest fleet will ship the progress we’ve been ready for,” mentioned Katherine García of the Sierra Membership, which sued the Postal Service earlier than its resolution to spice up the quantity of electrical car purchases.

Between the electrical autos, lowered tailpipe emissions from optimized mail routes and different adjustments, the company anticipates slicing carbon emissions by 40% by 2030, DeJoy mentioned. The route revisions can even lower your expenses.

This summer time the Postal Service’s environmental battles got here full circle because the White Home honored it with a Presidential Federal Sustainability Award, marking the tip of “an attention-grabbing journey,” DeJoy mentioned.

The honour is a sign of the company’s skill to work by way of complicated issues, be they operational, monetary, technical, political or of a public coverage nature, he mentioned.

“It comes from forging ahead,” he mentioned. “Preserve transferring.”

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Sharp reported from Portland, Maine.