What are those little trucks most US Mail delivery persons drive through the neighborhoods? They replaced the US Mail Jeeps maybe 10-15 years ago now. I thought I once heard it was a German company that initially won the contract. Was that ever correct? A friend of mine swears they are built by Grumman. But, I don’t see the Grumman name on them. At best, there is a sticker that says “SCG”, IIRC. Other than that, there is no identifying ensignia. (Could it have once been a German design, perhaps?) Maybe some SDopers recall the story of what replaced those cute little US Mail Jeeps and why… - Jinx
[url=“http://www.postaljeep.com/history2.html”]Here’s some information.
IIRC the trusty DJ-5 (a 2WD variant of the CJ-5) had a two-speed transmission. Jeeps were never fast, nor did they need to be. They were not expecially efficient either. I would guess that the greater capacity of the “long-life vehicles”, and their assumed (by me) greater efficiency is why the Postal Service decided to replace the DJ-5.
Grumman Olson is contractor for at least some of them. Here’s a blurb:
http://www.autoaluminum.org/appmail.htm
Freightliner and Grumman recently got contracts:
http://www.grummanolson.com/Press%20Releases/prjul17.htm
It’s possible that the work was contracted out to other manufacturers as well. Often, things like this are built to spec by a variety of manufacturers.
A guy I know who works for USPS as a mechanic says they’re just Chevy S-10’s with aluminum shells.
I heard a similar story on a competing message board indicating it was a Ford Ranger underneath. God knows who, if anyone, is right.
I’ve never seen a mail pickup truck. I still see lots of jeeps and some vans. Does anyone know what the vans are?
The auto parts store where I used to work supplied parts for the Postal Service LLVs. Every single one I worked on during that time was a Chevrolet S-10.
Friend of a friend says the newest vans are built on a Ford Explorer frame.
But again, I don’t know for sure.
Going with most of them being Grumman Olson van bodies, the Grumman Olson site isn’t much of a help - they build their vans on both Ford and Chevy/GMC platforms:
http://www.grummanolson.com/products.htm
They also use the Workhorse and Freightliner chassis. I would guess that that 2001 blurb about a new contract with Grumman and Freightliner means some of the more recent ones are on a Freightliner chassis.
Yabob, all those are the larger vehicles. The smaller ones that replaced the Jeeps are LLVs.
I just looked it up. The older ones are Grumman LLVs built on the Chevy S-10. These are what I supplied parts for.
The newer ones (around 1998 and up) are Ford Utilimasters, built off of the Explorer.