Familiar White Postal Service Trucks Too Small For Increasing Amount Of Parcels Being Mailed
SAN JOSE (KCBS)— Those familiar little white vehicles that mail carriers drive could soon be disappearing. They've been used for decades by the postal service, but according to a USPS spokesman, they no longer fit the bill because these days the postal service is delivering less mail and more packages.
"On any given day we have 214,000 vehicles on the road at one time delivering mail. Those trucks were largely designed to deliver letter class mail. Yeah, it can accommodate some parcels, but not the kind of parcels we're seeing today where we're looking at a 12-percent increase. Just right here in this facility alone we're going to see four million pieces of mail. Of that, I'd say about half a million will just be parcels alone," said postal service spokesman Gus Ruiz.
He said the post office needs more UPS sized and style vehicles.
"If you look at those trucks they have shelves on them and they have them in order of the stops they're going to make and they use direct routing. That's what we need to do. We're using direct routing right now especially on the Sunday deliveries" he said.
The postal service would need legislative relief from Congress on money earmarked for future pension benefits to fund the purchase new vehicles.