The U.S. Postal Service uses more than 190,000 vehicles to collect and deliver mail, including about 142,000 long-life vehicles that are nearing or exceeding their expected service life. As the fleet ages, maintenance costs will increase and older models will be retired as they become too costly to maintain or repair. Our objectives were to assess the Postal Service’s acquisition strategy for the next generation of collection and delivery vehicles and identify features recommended for these vehicles.

Conclusion
The Postal Service has an acquisition strategy that has not been fully developed or implemented. The short-term plan developed in 2011 included acquiring 25,000 vehicles costing about $500 million to meet operational needs and replace some of the aging fleet. The long-term plan included purchasing the next generation of delivery vehicles beginning in FY 2017; however, this plan lacked details such as vehicle requirements, specifications, and green technology features. Despite 3 years of effort, the Postal Service has not approved or fully funded either plan. In January 2014, the Postal Service received approval to purchase 3,509 vehicles to meet a contractual rural carrier vehicle commitment as a stop gap measure.

The Postal Service has not fully developed or funded these plans due to financial constraints. Our analysis of the delivery vehicle inventory and motorized routes showed the Postal Service could sustain delivery operations nationwide until FY 2017. On the other hand, it could experience vehicle shortfalls if there are unexpected decreases in vehicle inventory or increases in motorized routes. In addition, aging vehicles are typically repaired when they break down even though it would sometimes be more cost effective to replace them.

In designing the new delivery vehicles, management must consider federal fleet regulations, emerging vehicle technologies, and fleet best practices. For example, growth in the package market could help dictate the design and technologies selected for a new vehicle. Moreover, replacing vehicles could take more than 10 years. Thus, the Postal Service should quickly implement a plan to meet operational needs, achieve sustainability goals, and reduce maintenance costs.

Additional requests are being considered in FY 2014 for more than 400 mixed collection and delivery vehicles (2-ton vehicles) needed to comply with California Air Resource Board (CARB) truck emissions regulations and to meet the increased need due to package delivery growth in the New York and Triboro districts.

Our analysis of vehicle inventory and motorized delivery routes18 considered the following.
 The January 2014 approval of the purchase of 3,509 minivans to satisfy the commitment in the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association contract to provide additional LLVs to rural carriers.19 The Postal Service will redeploy LLVs to rural routes by December 31, 2014 (FY 2015).

 The Postal Service retires about 1,300 vehicles each year due to excessive repair costs or unavailability of parts for older minivans.

 The Postal Service needs a vehicle reserve of 4 to 5 percent to replace vehicles being serviced and other non-route related assignments, such as driver training.

The Postal Service’s ability to continue reducing motorized city delivery routes by about 1,100 routes a year due to reductions in First-Class Mail® volume and route optimization.20 Management indicated that maintaining these motorized route reductions into the future may prove challenging due to the continued growth in package volume.
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The Postal Service projected that in FY 2013 about 9 percent of the LLV fleet (nearly 13,000 vehicles) would require maintenance repairs costing more than $6,000 per vehicle per year, or a total of over $107 million. This represents more than 23 percent of total projected FY 2013 LLV maintenance costs. As the OIG reported in 2010,22 the fix as fail strategy is not cost effective for vehicles with high maintenance costs

Vehicle Safety
While the Postal Service has generally maintained its LLV fleet in a safe, working condition, these vehicles do not have the numerous modern vehicle safety features now considered standard on most vehicles, including:
 Front airbags
 Back-up cameras
 Intermittent wipers
 Blind-spot warning systems
 Daytime running lights
 Seatbelt reminders
 Anti-lock brake systems (ABS)
Many standard safety features were not available when LLVs (which are 75 percent of the delivery fleet) were originally designed and purchased about 27 years ago (see Appendix C for additional information regarding standard fleet safety features).

Delivery Vehicle Fleet Replacement