Billions Spent, Few Trucks Delivered: The USPS EV Fiasco

By Craig Eyermann of the Independent Institute.

"At any given time, the U.S. government is spending taxpayer dollars that are being wasted. Today’s example is being delivered by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).

That’s a shame, because with around 533,000 career employees and another 106,000 non-career employees, the Postal Service accounts for about one out of every five of the U.S. government’s three million civilian employees. From post offices to stamp machines, mailboxes, and mail trucks, they represent the most visible connection Americans have with the federal government in their daily lives.

But that connection doesn’t prevent them from squandering the resources of the taxpayers whose interests they are supposed to serve.

In August 2022, when the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act became law, taxpayers provided over $3 billion to government contractor Oshkosh Defense to design and build 35,000 electric battery-powered mail trucks. These supposedly environmentally friendly vehicles were intended to replace the Postal Service’s fleet of gasoline-powered mail trucks.

It has been described as both “unusual” and “ugly.” It’s certainly very different than the very familiar vehicles that have preceded it

Three years later, the U.S. Postal Service is far behind schedule in its ambition to switch over to battery-powered mail trucks. As of November 10, 2025, it is operating a total of 612 electric battery-powered mail trucks.

Oshkosh Defense’s production of the Postal Service’s Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) has been troubled. According to the New York Post, the company is producing the vehicles at a rate of about 3 to 4 per day. That is far short of the 80 vehicles per day the company projected it would be making by December 2024.

The massive shortfall in actual versus projected deliveries of functional battery-electric mail trucks has prompted several fiscally responsible members of Congress to attempt to claw back funding and halt production of the vehicles, in favor of other vehicles that the Postal Service can acquire and operate in greater numbers.

They have a strong case. If Americans want to rely on receiving regular mail service, having postal carriers in mail trucks that can be built and operated as needed is vital to meet that demand. Despite its years in development and billions of dollars in cost to taxpayers, it doesn’t seem that the Postal Service’s battery-electric NGDV is going to deliver anytime soon."

Trucks Hauling U.S. Mail Frequently Violate Safety Rules. ​Crashes Killed ​79 People Since 2020

USPS, under pressure on costs, contracts trucking companies at cut rates and pushes them to meet aggressive delivery schedules

By Christopher Weaver of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"For years, the U.S. Postal Service has faced competition from the likes of United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. To fight them off, it hired outside trucking companies at cut-rate prices, required them to meet aggressive schedules and then looked the other way when they ran afoul of highway safety rules, a Wall Street Journal investigation found.

The result has been deadly. Postal contractors have been involved in at least 68 fatal crashes that killed 79 people in the past three years, according to police crash and inspection records.

Nearly 50 long-haul trucking contractors that moved mail for the Postal Service had safety records so poor that another arm of the federal government, the Transportation Department, put them on probation, DOT data show. 

Particularly common among the postal contractors were violations of DOT rules meant to guard against fatigue by limiting how many hours truckers can drive. About 39% of trucking companies that hauled U.S. mail busted those limits and related rules at a rate DOT says raises red flags, compared with 13% of for-hire trucking firms that were inspected during the time period, a Journal analysis of DOT scoring data covering 2021 and 2022 found.

USPS tolerated the violations, and according to industry representatives, set unrealistic expectations for speedy deliveries that at times led the truckers to skirt the rules. The Journal identified dozens of cross-country trips listed in postal contracts with deadlines that would require drivers to stay on the road longer than allowed, unless companies cut into their profits by using multiple drivers."

"USPS recently told the office of a member of its congressional oversight committee that it didn’t track serious crashes by its trucking contractors, according to an email from February reviewed by the Journal."

The U.S. Postal Savings System and the Collapse of B&Ls During the Great Depression

By Sebastián Fleitas, Matthew S. Jaremski & Steven Sprick Schuster.

"Building and Loan Associations (B&Ls) financed over half of new houses constructed in the U.S. during the 1920s but they lost their predominance within the following decades as they were pushed to convert into Savings and Loans (S&Ls). This study examines whether the U.S. government-insured Postal Savings System attracted funds away from B&Ls precisely when they needed them the most in the Great Depression. Annual town- and county-level data from 1920 through 1935 for 3 states show that the sudden rise in local postal savings was associated with local downturns in B&Ls. Using a panel vector autoregression, we find that postal savings significantly reduced the amount of money in B&Ls, yet B&Ls had no significant effect on postal savings banks. Alternatively, postal savings had no significant effect on commercial banks. The results suggest that this competitive dynamic prevented B&Ls from rebounding in the mid-1930s and helped contribute to Great Depression’s local real estate lending decline."