[enriquec]

seriously - what a waste of money. Guaranteed the maintenance is rife with corrupt arrangements. Also guaranteed that almost any American car manufacturer (Rivian, Tesla, Ford, etc.) would have done a far better job for far less. Did they even pretend to have a fair bidding system? Oshkosh Defense? Seriously?! What a joke.

[helgie]

Yes, there was a bidding process, you can see some of the entrants that lost here: https://jalopnik.com/here-are-all-the-mail-trucks-that-didn-...

In any case, even if the process was terribly corrupt, I'm not sure why that would have you so bothered. Last sentence from the USPS press release on Oshkosh winning: "The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations." https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2021/0223-...

Both results are on the first page of a google search for 'usps truck bids'.

[philwelch]

> The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

The Postal Service has a legally enforced monopoly that it abuses to deliver literal metric tons of spam into our mailboxes every single day.

[jazzyjackson]

What law is it that prevents UPS/FedEx from carrying spam?

[Kye]

How is this any different from the Grumman Long Life Vehicle it replaces? It worked well last time.

[pishpash]

The only thing that comes to mind is maybe defense co. has experience building with indestructible materials, and the specs are for lasting 50 years, which when amortized is optimal for an entity like the government that can dump huge amounts of capital ($40B) at once that a private sector CEO can never do.

[MBCook]

It is, to some degree, a jobs program. Whoever wins is guaranteed a lot of work for a long time. So contractors really want it.

I don't think Tesla or Rivian are used to working with government contracts. I'm not sure how much someone like Ford does either outside of mild customization. But defense contractors spend all their time working with the government, building to their specifications, handling the requirements and compliance/etc.

They're simply very very well equipped to work on such a contract.

They'd also be very used to making something for decades because that's what the government wants. Does Ford have a vehicle they make that's nearly unchanged for 30 years? I'd assume even the transit vans have changed a lot in that timeframe.

[philwelch]

I think it’s mostly that defense contractors are specialized in selling to the government, which entails jumping through regulatory compliance hoops and placating elected officials by distributing the supply chain across as many congressional districts as possible.

[MBCook]

There was a whole thing with proposals from multiple companies. Did any of those companies even bid? I don’t know.

It was all in the open. It’s not like they were just picked in secret without anyone else getting any consideration.

[thowawatp302]

Do you have any evidence or do you just feel like that?

[RIMR]

>Guaranteed the maintenance is rife with corrupt arrangements.

Any evidence of this, or are is this just verbal diarrhea?

>Also guaranteed that almost any American car manufacturer (Rivian, Tesla, Ford, etc.) would have done a far better job for far less.

Let's do the actual math.

Amazon's Custom Rivian Van costs $90k/vehicle.

The USPS has invested $9.6B to commission 106,480 new USPS vans.

That comes out to... $90k/vehicle.

>Oshkosh Defense? Seriously?! What a joke.

Yeah, the company that makes the majority of our military vehicles is unprepared for the task at making mail trucks. You're a joke...

[sschueller]

How does making military vehicles make you qualified to build vehicles that drive in urban areas? These vehicles need to be safe for pedestrians, not emit excessive noise, exhaust etc. All these things are irrelevant for the military.