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Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the Post somehow makes do with electric Renault Kangoos. I suppose when you do not have a forever war machine to feed, you can buy yo

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the Post somehow makes do with electric Renault Kangoos. I suppose when you do not have a forever war machine to feed, you can buy your post trucks from car companies...

sbierwagen 6y ago
The US has roughly 320 million more people than Switzerland. You can afford to have a domestic arms industry when you're bigger.
- sofixa 6y ago
  And post delivery is hyper localised, so population doesn't change things much. Smaller countries than Switzerland have domestic arms industries, but that doesn't mean they use military-grade trucks from them for postal services.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    The US is very spread out in a lot of places and geographically diverse. Many local routes cover a very large area. Currently, these Grumman vehicles only make up 75% of the fleet. They also use vans, some electrics and in some areas they need 4x4 trucks and even boats. Considering the extreme punishment these vehicles take, i think the investment is probably worth it. I remember reading about how much money they spent on these Grumman vehicles decades ago and being appalled. But here we are 20 years later and they are still using those same trucks. The USPS is an order of magnitude larger than the swiss postal service. At some point it usually becomes just as cost effective to order a fleet of custom vehicles rather than off the shelf ones.
    - hinkley 6y ago
      Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland, the Internet tells me. It has a population of 400,000, which is slightly less than the total current employees of the USPS. We spend all day here talking about scalability, but then we start talking about public policy and people get amnesia.
- Ancapistani 6y ago
  Ironically, the Swiss have excellent small arms for their military, and an impressive degree of design an manufacturing continuity for them. The Sig 510, adopted in 1957, uses the same charging handle as the rifle they adopted in 1889.
  - neolog 6y ago
    I never know if unchanged means "still good" or "obsolete". How can you tell?
    - Ancapistani 6y ago
      In this case, it was because the bolt handle on the m1889 worked just as good on the K-31. While the Sig 510 doesn’t require you to pull the bolt each time you fire, it did need a handle to grab to load the rifle - why create a new part with a new supply chain? After all, the older rifles were still in service for years after the new one was adopted, so re-using the same handle meant they only had to stock one part in their armories instead of two. Here’s the bold assembly for the Schmidt-Rubin 1889 or 1896/11: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/hqEAAOSwT~9WhutS/s-l300.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/hqEAAOSwT~9WhutS/s-l300.jpg Here’s the bolt handle on the Schmidt-Rubin K-31: https://www.gunpartscorp.com/pub/products/997460.jpg https://www.gunpartscorp.com/pub/products/997460.jpg Here’s the charging handle on the Sig 510: http://i870.photobucket.com/albums/ab269/Combloc/SIG%20510-7/P1110558_zpsb5dd0b3e.jpg http://i870.photobucket.com/albums/ab269/Combloc/SIG%20510-7... The part you grip is interchangeable :)
cptskippy 6y ago
The electric Renault Kangoo can drive across the whole of Switzerland on a single charge.
Solar19 6y ago
Are you taking about the word "Defense" in Oshkosh Defense? Yeah, this isn't a military vehicle. It's a van, not some sort of modified Humvee or anything. Oshkosh makes lots of vehicles and some civilian kit like fire trucks, air compressors, etc. They saw the opportunity and designed a van to fulfill the specs. Granted, bidding on government projects is likely in their comfort zone, but I would assume they won fair and square unless there was reason to believe otherwise. The other two finalists weren't major car companies either, at least not in the US. Workhorse is a very small firm with just over 100 employees total, and Karsan is Turkish company I don't know much about. The Renault Kangoo is probably too small for emerging USPS needs, though the existing postal vehicles are almost as small as the Renault. The USPS's core business is shifting to package delivery, instead of letter mail. E-commerce has changed the mix. They're the preferred shipping carrier for packages in the US, being generally less expensive than UPS, which is in turn less expensive than FedEx. Packages are bulky. Also, I think it's irrational for outsiders (e.g. you and I and anyone not involved in the decision) to have strong opinions about the vehicle the USPS selects as the result of its contract and bidding process, much less make some sort of political inference from it. Most things aren't political. Mail delivery van procurement is rarely going to present a genuine opportunity for political insight beyond the usual mundane government procurement issues.

Meanwhile, in Switzerland, the Post somehow makes do with electric Renault Kangoos. I suppose when you do not have a forever war machine to feed, you can buy your post trucks from car companies...

sbierwagen 6y ago

The US has roughly 320 million more people than Switzerland. You can afford to have a domestic arms industry when you're bigger.

sofixa 6y ago
And post delivery is hyper localised, so population doesn't change things much. Smaller countries than Switzerland have domestic arms industries, but that doesn't mean they use military-grade trucks from them for postal services.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  The US is very spread out in a lot of places and geographically diverse. Many local routes cover a very large area. Currently, these Grumman vehicles only make up 75% of the fleet. They also use vans, some electrics and in some areas they need 4x4 trucks and even boats. Considering the extreme punishment these vehicles take, i think the investment is probably worth it. I remember reading about how much money they spent on these Grumman vehicles decades ago and being appalled. But here we are 20 years later and they are still using those same trucks. The USPS is an order of magnitude larger than the swiss postal service. At some point it usually becomes just as cost effective to order a fleet of custom vehicles rather than off the shelf ones.
  - hinkley 6y ago
    Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland, the Internet tells me. It has a population of 400,000, which is slightly less than the total current employees of the USPS. We spend all day here talking about scalability, but then we start talking about public policy and people get amnesia.
Ancapistani 6y ago
Ironically, the Swiss have excellent small arms for their military, and an impressive degree of design an manufacturing continuity for them. The Sig 510, adopted in 1957, uses the same charging handle as the rifle they adopted in 1889.
- neolog 6y ago
  I never know if unchanged means "still good" or "obsolete". How can you tell?
  - Ancapistani 6y ago
    In this case, it was because the bolt handle on the m1889 worked just as good on the K-31. While the Sig 510 doesn’t require you to pull the bolt each time you fire, it did need a handle to grab to load the rifle - why create a new part with a new supply chain? After all, the older rifles were still in service for years after the new one was adopted, so re-using the same handle meant they only had to stock one part in their armories instead of two. Here’s the bold assembly for the Schmidt-Rubin 1889 or 1896/11: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/hqEAAOSwT~9WhutS/s-l300.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/hqEAAOSwT~9WhutS/s-l300.jpg Here’s the bolt handle on the Schmidt-Rubin K-31: https://www.gunpartscorp.com/pub/products/997460.jpg https://www.gunpartscorp.com/pub/products/997460.jpg Here’s the charging handle on the Sig 510: http://i870.photobucket.com/albums/ab269/Combloc/SIG%20510-7/P1110558_zpsb5dd0b3e.jpg http://i870.photobucket.com/albums/ab269/Combloc/SIG%20510-7... The part you grip is interchangeable :)

cptskippy 6y ago

The electric Renault Kangoo can drive across the whole of Switzerland on a single charge.

Solar19 6y ago

Are you taking about the word "Defense" in Oshkosh Defense? Yeah, this isn't a military vehicle. It's a van, not some sort of modified Humvee or anything. Oshkosh makes lots of vehicles and some civilian kit like fire trucks, air compressors, etc. They saw the opportunity and designed a van to fulfill the specs. Granted, bidding on government projects is likely in their comfort zone, but I would assume they won fair and square unless there was reason to believe otherwise. The other two finalists weren't major car companies either, at least not in the US. Workhorse is a very small firm with just over 100 employees total, and Karsan is Turkish company I don't know much about. The Renault Kangoo is probably too small for emerging USPS needs, though the existing postal vehicles are almost as small as the Renault. The USPS's core business is shifting to package delivery, instead of letter mail. E-commerce has changed the mix. They're the preferred shipping carrier for packages in the US, being generally less expensive than UPS, which is in turn less expensive than FedEx. Packages are bulky. Also, I think it's irrational for outsiders (e.g. you and I and anyone not involved in the decision) to have strong opinions about the vehicle the USPS selects as the result of its contract and bidding process, much less make some sort of political inference from it. Most things aren't political. Mail delivery van procurement is rarely going to present a genuine opportunity for political insight beyond the usual mundane government procurement issues.