According to David Feldman, author of the Imponderables books, when the trucks are retired they are destroyed. So sorry, no buying a used one.
You wouldn’t want one as an RV anyway. Not after they put over a million miles of city driving on that chassis. I drove one from North Carolina to Texas on time, even slept on the floor in the back one night. NEVER again, that aluminum floor just sucks the heat out your body, even on a warm Texas night! And that seat is not designed for long haul comfort. They are basically hot as hell in the summer and cold as Alaska in the winter. The doors are terrible, the top corners are prone to leaking and the sheetmetal dashboard can mess you up.
We made some of these as well (although not this actual one). Much better for cruising!
I had a '72 Chevy Step-Van for a decade or so and the passenger door’s window was fixed but on the driver’s side the front half of the window slid back next to the rear half. It didn’t help much; open door driving was the way to go.
Speaking of the doors wearing out from use, if I opened the door to quickly it would jump off the track and jam. Then I would have to remove the panel covering the door pocket to rerail it. Only did that a couple times before I learned to open it s-l-o-w-l-y.
I had an '82 Chevy Stepvan…I let someone else drive it one day making a haul of trash to the dumpster and was standing on the step. A car came flying across the parking lot and the driver hit the brakes and the door slammed shut on my hand, breaking one of the metacarpals. Three days before my wedding.
Imagine the look on my wife’s face when I showed up for the wedding in a bright blue cast that I couldn’t get through the sleeve of my tuxedo (i had the cast put on Friday afternoon and we got married Saturday afternoon…following tradition, we didn’t see each other from the time I left for the doctor until the wedding).
Not strictly related to the thread, but as the subject is UPS trucks I couldn’t resist the chance to link to this classic photo of the result of a close encounter between Big Brown and the competition.
I’ve noticed in the UK that UPS do this as well…
I don’t see UPS trucks that often, however when I do see them, they can sometimes have one, or both, doors fully open. I have always wondered why do they do this, and are they allowed to do this? I thought it was dangerous to have the doors open whilst driving through towns/villages etc…
I thought that these trucks had windows, but only small ones - is this why? And I always notice that the passenger door is open on semi-hot days, and both doors are open on the occasional baking hot day we have.
Any ideas?
I worked for UPS around 1985.
At that time they were self-insured for health insurance and presumably for liability. They bought EVERYTHING with cash. “Safety” (within reason) is probably just a financial calculation. Drivers are drilled on using their seat belt.
I also remember the “package car” (UPS Word 
) roofs were brown painted fiberglass that became luminous green inside in the sunlight.
The OTR trucks I worked with were basic but had A/C and were well maintained.
I’m guessing that disposing of older trucks is a liability calculation based on safety and degraded pollution control. Plus the aluminum bodies are fairly valuable as scrap.
10 years later, and this link still works. Must be close to a record.
[QUOTE=Nefario]
I’m guessing that disposing of older trucks is a liability calculation based on safety and degraded pollution control. Plus the aluminum bodies are fairly valuable as scrap.
[/QUOTE]
I’m sure liability is part of the thought behind not selling off their retired fleet, but mainly, they run them until the wheels fall off with a lot of aggressive maintenance along the way until they hit some calculated “not worth further repair” metric. Plus, since the fleet is relatively homogeneous, they can easily make Frankentrucks by pulling a good engine/drivetrain from a wrecked body and putting it into a good chassis with a blown engine. Two unusable vehicles turn into one good one and a pile of scrap this way.
And I’m still waiting for the delivery …
Give them another twenty minutes
Do it yourself sunroof? 
I know this is a zombie post, but, what the hey. Rick’s still around.
Not gonna happen. I worked for UPS for a while (not as a driver) and I asked the instructor why you never see a “package car” – as they call them – retired with the UPS logo painted over. He just laughed and said they rebuild them as long as they can, then break them up when it is no longer feasible. Then he said he’d started with the company in 1973 (this was in 1998) and his first package car had been built in 1948.
A UPS package car with 100,000 miles is still a pup. Lots of them are still out there with over a million miles under the wheels.
People have mentioned the cooling and not having to open and close doors all day. I think it’s probably helpful to be able to see when maneuvering in tight spaces, city streets, backing out of driveways, and just trying to find address numbers.
How tight? I worked at a Dallas area sorting hub and ~100 package cars were parked indoors, 8-12" apart with the mirrors folded in, backed up to a conveyor belt platform. They were loaded at night and taken back on the road at 8 AM the next morning. Sometimes they were parked so tight the only access was the back door.