USPS Should Sell its Electric Trucks

But the real savings are in cancelling future EV orders.

Photo by Ralph Hutter on Unsplash

It looks like the Senate will not force the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to sell its electric vehicles (EVs) and charging equipment after all. Reuters reports,

Senate Republicans cannot force the U.S. Postal Service to scrap thousands of electric vehicles and charging equipment in a massive tax and budget bill, the Senate parliamentarian said late on [June 22]. The U.S. Postal Service currently has 7,200 electric vehicles, made up of Ford e-Transit ... vehicles and specially built Next Generation Delivery Vehicles built by Oshkosh Defense.

The Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA) included this forced sell-off, and the provision didn’t seem like a half-bad idea. After all, ongoing fleet acquisition plans are costing the agency nearly $10 billion and EVs are far from the cheapest option out there. Shifting course away from $80,000 trucks could save the agency significant sums.

Yet, the USPS wasn’t fond of this proposal. On June 13, USPS Government Relations and Public Policy Vice President Peter Pastre warned,

Replacing the current 7,200 BEVs [Battery Electric Vehicles] would directly cost the Postal Service $450 million, at a minimum. Preparing for wider BEV adoption, the Postal Service has spent $540 million on electrical infrastructure upgrades. These sunk costs are largely unrecoverable and can only yield a return on investment by being put to their intended use.

...

The funds realized by auctioning the vehicles and infrastructure would be negligible. Much of infrastructure is literally buried under parking lots, and there is no market for used charging equipment. The Ford e-Transit vehicles would likely yield significantly less than even their undepreciated book value, and it would not be possible to sell NGDVs due to security concerns.

None of this is true. Used Ford EV vans from around 2022 or 2023 are regularly selling for more than $30,000, which is significantly more than what used gas-powered vans are selling for. Selling the former to purchase the latter would almost certainly result in a profit, perhaps of $40 million.

Pastre’s assertion that “there is no market” for EV infrastructure is similarly untrue. There is plenty of EV charging equipment awaiting install at facilities such as the Material Distribution Center in Topeka, Kansas. This location has seen repeated thefts of charging station heads and related IT equipment worth thousands of dollars. And, if thieves can easily steal and resell this equipment, the USPS can certainly auction off the equipment with some help from the General Services Administration.

Another option for already-installed EV chargers is to sell (or lease) usage and access rights on USPS premises. New private owners of the stations would reap 100 percent of station revenues, and their consumers would be permitted to drive onto agency property to charge their vehicles. The USPS already leases space at some of their larger post offices to private retailers, and this is basically the same concept. The agency would likely have to figure out how to rework some security fencing for hassle-free access, but this is eminently doable.

But because the USPS currently only has 7,200 BEVs and plans to buy roughly 60,000 more, the real savings are in cancelling yet-unfulfilled orders. Given that the USPS is paying $20,000 more for EVs than gas-powered alternatives, cancelling these orders and pivoting to gas trucks could easily save the USPS $1-2 billion. Fortunately, the USPS’ main EV supplier Oshkosh Corp. appears to be open to contract changes along these lines.

It's long past time for the USPS to ditch its EV plans.