Is your mail truck on fire?

Reminding us that tips can come in many ways …



… and what Aaron found as a result is scary. (Link to 3,954 fire reports is at the bottom of the story.)

On April 30, 2016, a United States Post Office letter carrier in Fall River, Massachusetts, left his truck to do a 20-minute loop by foot to deliver some mail. When he got back to the truck, the dashboard was on fire.

The next day, on the other side of the country, a letter carrier in Chandler, Arizona loaded his truck with the day’s mail. After driving for about 10 miles, the truck lost power and the engine abruptly shut off. He pulled over, got out of the truck and called his supervisor. While on the phone, white smoke came out of the truck. He started walking towards the truck to investigate when he heard a “whoosh” noise. The truck burst into flames.

Less than 24 hours after that, in Newport News, Virginia, a letter carrier driving her mail truck heard a loud pop and smoke started to come out of the engine. She turned the truck off and by the time she got out, a neighborhood resident came running out of their home to tell her the truck was on fire.

All three of those trucks, which were destroyed in fires within a 72-hour period, were the iconic USPS Long Life Vehicles, or LLVs, featuring right-side driver seats so letter carriers can easily put mail into mailboxes. They are the vehicles you are most likely to picture if someone says “mail truck.” And all over the country, they have been bursting into flames at an alarming rate.

Since May 2014, at least 407 LLVs have been damaged or destroyed in fires, or approximately one every five days, according to documents obtained by Motherboard via a Freedom of Information Act request. …

In 125 cases, the trucks were so thoroughly destroyed that the investigators were unable to identify a probable fire cause. Of the remaining 282 fires where investigators could identify a likely cause, the only pattern was that there was no pattern.

The fires occurred in hot and cold climates, at the beginning and ends of shifts, in the battery compartments, dashboards, and fuel pumps, and in vehicles that had both been recently maintained and were overdue for a check-up. They occurred on rural routes and city streets all over the country.

Although one engineering report found occasional lax maintenance practices that may have resulted in an increase in the number of fires, the most likely explanation for the fires is that the trucks are simply too old and are deteriorating on the road.

The LLVs were purchased between 1987 and 1994 and manufactured by Northrop Grumman to last for approximately 24 years on average, according to a 2015 USPS presentation. That means the LLVs still in service range from 26 to 33 years old, well past their useful lives. As of 2014, about 142,000 LLVs were still in service. Asked for an updated figure, Frum said "there are more than 141,000 right hand drive (RHD) LLVs in our fleet."

As far back as 2015, the Post Office and the National Association of Letter Carriers, the union that represents city delivery letter carriers, connected the increased LLV fires to the vehicle age. A July 2015 newsletter from the NALC’s Region 7—which covers North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin—had a section on “Dangers of Melting USPS Vehicles.”

Over the last six years, hardly a week went by without a mail truck catching on fire somewhere in the U.S. Many days saw multiple fires. On December 21, 2015, two LLVs were destroyed in fires, in Manchester, New Hampshire and Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. On June 13, 2016, three LLVs caught fire in Houston, Texas, Okeechobee, Florida, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. August 29 of that year saw three more LLVs catch fire, this time in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and Del Rio, Texas.​

VICE - Post Office Delivery Trucks Keep Catching on Fire

Which burns another post-journalism career option for some of us.

 

Makes you wonder how many these trucks were filled with old beer cans.

 

The truck
The truck
The mail is on fire
We don’t give fuck
Let the mother fucker burn

 

Citing this as a reason not to use mail-in voting coming in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

 

I worked as a Sunday and holiday delivery person for USPS for two years, and man, those trucks ARE absolutely hellish. It's basically a tin box, with a tiny fan, if you're lucky - a bunch of them don't work. I doubt the UPS or Fedex trucks are much better. In the summer, management would give constant warnings about heat exhaustion and heat stroke. The trucks themselves drive like shit - Mine was from 1991, and I estimated at one point that it had to be nearing in on 300,000 miles. It was still better than a bunch of others at the station I dispatched from though, because at least it could get past 50 MPH, and my Sunday route had a 10+ mile stretch of driving on a highway.

Apparently, USPS upper management has talked for years about replacing the trucks with a new model, but keep punting on it (allegedly) to wait for "one more thing," whether it was AC in the 1990s, or in modern times, electric / hyrbid trucks. (A postal truck would seemingly be a natural for a renewable energy source, since 99.9 percent of the time, you're running the same route.)

 

when you control the mail, you control... conflagration

 

Time to get that Hotmail account.