User-agent: Mediapartners-Google* Disallow: Trucks World News: TRUCKING INDUSTRY * USA - USPS: The question is: What will come next?
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Sep 23, 2014

TRUCKING INDUSTRY * USA - USPS: The question is: What will come next?

* DC - Poised to drive off into the sunset, mail trucks face uncertainty

(Photo: The vehicle above is a 1961 Grumman FJ-3/FJ-3A, which was built on a Jeep chassis, and was built until 1965, when it was taken over by a weirder, boxier Jeep-based vehicle, made until 1970) Washington,DC,USA -The Washington Post, by LISA REIN -September 22. 2014: -- The U.S. Postal Service mail truck, one of the largest vehicle fleets in the country has reached the end of its useful life... The delivery and collection fleet of 190,000 postal trucks includes 142,000 vehicles that desperately need to enter retirement, with an average age of 24 years and some as advanced as 27. The first Grumman Long Life Vehicle, as they're called, rolled off the assembly line in 1987. Maintenance costs on the trucks increase every year - and hit almost $1 billion in 2012 - and replacement parts for older models are scarce. The trucks are not up to today's safety codes. They get terrible gas mileage. The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General said in an audit this summer that the agency could keep them safely in use only until fiscal 2017. But replacing the fleet would cost postal officials about $5 billion - an amount they are unable to meet. The financially struggling mail agency has exceeded its legal borrowing limit and doesn't have the cash for such an expensive, if critical, investment. The Postal Service, however, has come up with a possible solution: Find a company that can retrofit the existing light-duty trucks by keeping their aluminum bodies and replacing the frames.

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