DOGE Lawmakers Want to Strip $3 Billion From Project for Electric Mail Trucks
The deal started in 2002. USPS received fewer than 100 trucks.
According to Fox News, Sen. Joni Ernst (D-IA) and Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) have a bill to defund former President Joe Biden’s $3 billion project to convert all mail trucks to electric vehicles.
From the report:
Two top DOGE lawmakers are introducing a bill to claw back $3 billion authorized under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which was designated to create an electric vehicle (EV) fleet for the United States Postal Service (USPS).
A South Carolina defense contractor responsible for the 60,000-vehicle order was already “far behind schedule” as of November. A Washington Post exposé revealed that by then, fewer than 100 of these vehicles had been delivered to USPS.
Citing that, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, DOGE Caucus chair, and Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, will be forwarding the “Return to Sender Act,” seeking to recoup what is about 30% of the overall appropriation in Biden’s law that was intended to be geared toward reducing inflation.
The report about the Postal Service spending almost $10 billion on electric mail trucks came out in December 2022.
In August 2022, Congress gave USPS $3 billion in that stupid bill for electric vehicles.
The final deal came to $77,692 per vehicle.
The contractor should have delivered all the trucks within three years of that date.
Fox News reported that the Postal Service has received fewer than 100 trucks.
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Good idea,.let’s see if this tentative, common sense step will get past the various interest groups. Then we can look at much needed, dramatic overhaul of the Postal System.
Good , was upset when I heard they originally bought them
The USPS didn’t want them to begin with. This was something politicians forced on them.
EV’s for the post office is incredibly stupid when you realize how many charging stations would have to be built in the post office parking lot.
Each post office would need a substation.
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor occupied charging station shall keep them from their appointed rounds . . .
Nor headwinds, which are absolute murder for EV ranges.
“Sen. Joni Ernst (D-IA)”
Not sure if this is a mistake or just a low-key diss.
I wondered about that my self.
There are two types of postal routes. Rural delivery done in a truck all day, and city delivery, where they drive 2 miles to a neighborhood and then walk from house to house. They used to have a big truck drive around and dump re-up bags in those non-descript brown boxes, but someone decided to buy lots and lots of minivans instead. It would not surprise me if the average 20 yo used postal vehicle had less than 20K miles on it. You want an EV for a constant start-stop utilization, and at least one person at USPS said “that is only a small part of what we do.”
$3B for electric mail trucks to bring me mail that I did not ask for and immediately throw away. I get my bills via email as well as anything else vital. Packages come from for profit companies such as UPS or Amazon, which do a much better job.
I do not need the Postal Service at all, never mind their expensive trucks.
In rural areas or at least in my own rural area the Post Office does quite a bit of package delivery. Amazon contracts with Postal Service for ‘last mile’ delivery. Personally I like hard copy as do many others. Around 12% to 14% of folks don’t use cellphones. Rural areas don’t always have reliable cell coverage while some folks don’t want a digital leash so phone ‘apps’ aren’t the best one
size fits all solution.
That said UPS or Fed Ex or another commercial entity could probably take over the ‘last mile’ package delivery but it would probably raise delivery prices. Maybe split it by size and weight so below a given weight/size of package goes USPS and the bigger/heavier packages go through UPS. Personally I would be in favor of changing residential delivery to 3 days a week. Split it M,W, F and T, T, S so that residential delivery went six days a week but 3 only days to a given residential address. Folks who wanted daily pick up could get a box in the Postal Office and go to pick up daily.
That sort of delivery schedule would be fine given that so much mail today is junk. I get, maybe, 20 pertinent pieces of mail per month. That’s it. The rest is flyers, and from “non-profits” that pay obscenely low rates.
Yeah, it would probably be fine for almost every residential delivery address. The very few who it didn’t pan out for could go and pick up on non delivery days if they simply couldn’t wait.
I have a home in an area that charges extra for delivery from Fed Ex and UPS. Even then, I have to drive several miles down to the paved road to meet the truck. Also, things like property tax bills and voter registration are sent via USPS. With voter registration, this is particularly important for proof of residency.
Amazon and USPS have been working together since 2013, with the e-commerce giant relying on the postal service for a significant portion of its last-mile deliveries. While Amazon doesn‘t disclose exact figures, industry experts estimate that USPS handles anywhere from 40% to 50% of Amazon‘s packages.
I pay $200/yr for a PO box so that my Amazon meds don’t get stolen off the porch, cough, Portland, cough. I get the stuff for about 1/3 of what Walgreens down the block charges for a delivery from warehouse to store, and I get to keep the middle third for my monthly short walk.
Funny story. Amazon is why you see postal workers out on Sundays. Sunday delivery was part of their USPS contract. First time a mail carrier was told their option was work on Sunday or your job goes poof. Ain’t no union gonna help you here, bud.
Great! Bow do the charging stations they were supposed to build but didn’t and then Kamalatoe’s electric school busses.
The government has (almost) never punished cost overruns or late deliveries in my lifetime. It almost seems cruel to start now when whole generations have grown up thinking there would be no consequences.
But you have to be cruel to be kind, right?
So they’re trying to get back 3o% of the $3 billion. That’s less than $1 billion. So we spent over $2 billion dollars for 100 mail trucks at a cost of over $20 million each. That’s insane. Get it all back.
What do you expect from a “defense contractor”? The definition of “defense contractor” is, “company that would be out of business were it not for its ability to use the badges and guns of government to confiscate money in the form of taxes”.
What was Hunter’s cut of the $3 billion?
So if the power is out we don’t get the mail? Considering the debt the Postal Service is running now, that money could be better spent.
Let’s throw in the broadband spending where NO ONE was connected to the Internet.
Yep. When they eliminated the one company stepping into the gap in coverage areas, Starlink, over partisan political crap it was doomed. I am only 15 miles from the nearest town but it isn’t reasonable to expect fiber optic cable be run down my very rural dirt road with less than 1/2 a.dozen homes in a 5 mile.stretch. I use satellite internet but a competitor would be nice as an option.
Having Electric Vehicles for mail trucks make no sense as they deliver and drive routes that are long distance each day. Then to charge over night the amount of EVs at a post office location would be hard on the electrical to the location.
I never worked as a Postal Carrier but my wife’s friend is one. I worked for the phone company in the mid 70s to pay for college and know how going from house to house, business, and doing cable work, eats up fuel in a vehicle as you are driving around an area. EVs would be worse.
Mary, just FYI
“The deal started in 2002. ” Is that supposed to be 2022?
Yes.
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