OSHKOSH, Wisc.—The US Postal Service’s Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) carries letters, packages, and enormous expectations.
First, this boxy truck being manufactured by Oshkosh Corp.’s Oshkosh Defense unit has to replace a fleet of vehicular fossils. These Long Life Vehicles (LLVs) built by Grumman from 1986 to 1994 with a 24-year planned lifespan continue to ply USPS routes despite their lack of such conveniences as air bags and air conditioning.
Second, the Biden administration’s use of Inflation Reduction Act funding to convert three-quarters of NGDV orders to a battery-electric version means this truck must also bring the Postal Service into the EV era as support for that swings from Biden’s sometimes-ineffectual support to President Trump’s ignorant contempt for them.
But the vehicle that’s supposed to deliver the USPS into modern mobility has itself fallen behind schedule: Last December, the Washington Post reported that the service had only received 93 of the planned 3,000+ NGDVs. Until a visit to Oshkosh’s offices here in mid-October, I’d only seen NGDVs in exhibits at CES and parked in front of the USPS’ Washington headquarters.
Face to Face With the Duckface Truck
Whenever an NGDV does make its way to your neighborhood, you won’t mistake it for any other vehicle. Its low hood runs into a steep cliff of a windscreen that then meets a slab-sided, rhombus-shaped body. This ungainly appearance has earned descriptions like “duckface” or “duck truck.” Letter carriers on Reddit’s r/USPS forum seem to prefer “platypus.”
This NGDV looks that way for a reason: so USPS employees can stand up in the back as they sort mail and packages. E-commerce shipments from Amazon and other retailers now constitute a large chunk of the service’s business and have its trucks rolling on Sundays.
(Credit: Oshkosh Corp.)
“This is transforming the United States Postal Service because it allows them to participate fully in e-commerce delivery,” Oshkosh President and CEO John Pfeifer said at a meeting with journalists during our visit.
Stepping into an early-build electric NGDV parked outside revealed an interior with six large shelves and plenty of room to step back and forth between them. The right-hand driver’s seat up front, meanwhile, was positioned low enough to make it easy to lean out the enormous window to the side and reach into a mailbox placed next to it.
(Credit: Rob Pegoraro)
The NGDV doesn’t look like any other EV, but the model I took for a brief drive around Oshkosh’s parking lot drove a bit like one, affording some of the pleasing instant pickup that I’ve come to expect from EVs while also yielding a tight turning circle.
It charges its 94 kWh lithium-ion battery via a standard CCS port; on the test vehicle, it was next to the right headlight but on production vehicles is at the back-left corner. That pack has a 10-year design life, which Oshkosh CTO Jay Iyengar suggested would result in a substantial upgrade whenever the pack gets replaced: “We do see battery technology and energy density improving very rapidly,” he said.
Visibility through all those windows seemed great, with a backup camera to help with reversing (meaning, it helped me to avoid running into that mailbox). The touch-screen-free dashboard did not feature a radio but included Bluetooth audio for phone calls and a cupholder, another thing absent from LLVs.
Additional exterior-facing cameras and sensors help with collision avoidance. Pfeifer suggested they could also generate valuable civic insights once the NGDV is rolling down every street in America: “It’ll be able to pick up intelligence about city streets and parking conditions and all sorts of things.”
Still Plugging Away
Oshkosh has delivered “thousands” of NGDVs so far, and is now rapidly ramping up NGDV production at a Spartanburg, South Carolina, factory to reach 16,000 to 20,000 vehicles a year.
USPS spokeswoman Kim Frum said the agency has received more than 2,500, including 500-plus battery-electric versions, out of a total order for 51,500, with 35,000 electric.
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Its initial 2022 contract covered 50,000 mostly gas NGDVs, with a $2.98 billion cost. The agency now plans to spend $9.6 billion on vehicle modernization, including $3 billion in IRA funding to cover EV editions of those and other trucks, but hasn’t published a revised budget for NGDV procurement. Pfeifer attributed the slow start to the USPS pivoting to a mostly EV order in late 2022 plus “a few normal ramp-up issues that slowed us down.”
Reports from the USPS Inspector General in October 2024 and August 2025 faulted the agency for ordering a custom design via a prolonged sourcing process instead of picking one partner—in contrast to Amazon’s partnership with Rivian to build EV delivery vans—and also cited such subsequent issues as supply-chain and testing holdups.
The electric version also suffered from a belated buildout of charging stations marred by procurement and permitting complications, which have tripped up private companies, too.
In June, a new threat emerged: Republicans in Congress added a provision to the massive budget-reconciliation bill that would have auctioned off the entire USPS EV fleet—both electric NGDVs and thousands of Ford E-Transit vans—and even its charging infrastructure.
“The language they tried to put in was very damaging,” Pfeifer said, calling it a surprise to many other Republican representatives who “thought it was crazy.”
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Soon after, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that provision out of bounds for a budget measure. That language vanished from the bill that Trump signed in July, but it did wipe out tax credits for buying EVs.
Putting Electrification to Work Where It Works Best
Pfeifer said Oshkosh’s lobbyists made a case for letting the USPS proceed with EVs where they made business sense, and he stuck to that line during the visit.
“We’re not doing electrification for the wake of electrification, we’re doing electrification when it matters because there’s an economic case for it or when customers demand it,” he said.
Mail trucks represent an especially compelling case for electric power because of their driving pattern: “stop-start-stop-start-stop-start,” as Pfeifer put it, saying this truck can often run for two days on a charge. Iyengar’s assessment of electrification for USPS delivery: “No better application.”
Battery-electric garbage truck (Credit: Rob Pegoraro)
EVs’ efficiency in that service scenario also explains why electrification is good for other vehicles that make frequent stops, such as school buses and garbage trucks. Oshkosh’s driving demo included one example of the latter, a battery-electric Volterra ZSL model from its McNeilus subsidiary that I also got to take for a spin around the parking lot.
It smoothly moved out, which is not something I would have expected from a vehicle that weighs 39,500 pounds empty. The lack of a roaring diesel engine made this the quietest garbage truck I have ever driven, but also the only garbage truck I have ever driven.
A Volterra hybrid airport rescue and firefighting (ARFF) vehicle (Credit: Rob Pegoraro)
Oshkosh also makes fire trucks, and for those it’s opting for plug-in hybrid propulsion, with diesel as a backup to electric for long service calls. A Volterra fire truck that I drove for a couple of laps around a training facility next to the airport in nearby Appleton booted up as an EV but could be switched to the diesel engine with a button in the cab.
(Credit: Rob Pegoraro)
That pumper and the sleek airport firefighting vehicle next to it offered one other advantage over diesel-powered trucks: Firefighters can back them into a garage under electric power for a pollution-free return, granting their colleagues cleaner air after a day that may not have allowed much of it.
Disclosure: Oshkosh covered my airfare and lodging for this event.
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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
This article was published by WTVG on 2025-11-10 08:00:00
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