The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are vast. Their hoods resemble a duck bill. Their bumpers are enormous.

“You can tell that (the designers) didn’t have appearance in mind,” postal worker Avis Stonum said.

Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens are getting rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down — and even catching fire.

Within a few years of the initial rollout, the fleet will have expanded to 60,000, most of them electric models, serving as the Postal Service’s primary delivery truck from Maine to Hawaii.

Once fully deployed, they’ll represent one of the most visible signs of the agency’s 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who’s also renovating aging facilities, overhauling the processing and transportation network, and instituting other changes.

  • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Looks like the same 4 year old that designed the Cybertruck. Kind of like something you’d see in a cartoon.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Meh it’s designed for function, not looks. Giant bumpers for safety, height for carrying capacity, and large windshield for visibility.

    • nfh@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      To me, the Cybertruck feels like it was made by a deeply insecure teenager, crying out for help with how needlessly edgy it is, while the new postal service trucks feel like they hired a children’s illustrator to make them cute.

        • nfh@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I get that, I just see them as different types of childish: one is edgy and mediocre, the other is adorable and anthropomorphic. “How bad is it that they’re childish” is very different between those two

          • Professorozone@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I think the problem is, it’s difficult to divorce the Cybertruck from Elon for the comparison. It makes it difficult to believe a 4 year old conceived of a Nazi urban tank AND a comically disproportionate postal vehicle.