USPS unveils first chargers for electric mail truck fleet

The United States Postal Service (USPS) today unveiled its first set of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, and announced plans to install them at hundreds of additional locations across the country throughout the year, building infrastructure to power what it says will be the nation’s largest EV fleet. 

The initiative is part of the service’s $40 billion investment strategy to upgrade and improve the USPS processing, transportation, and delivery networks. The inclusion of a significant portion of EVs among that fleet has been a tense process, since initial plans to replace the service’s aging mail trucks relied almost entirely on gas-powered trucks.

Under pressure from the White House and increased funding from Congress, USPS later upgraded its plans to include more EVs, and in 2023 the service began placing mass orders for those vehicles. The most recent version stated that USPS would acquire at least 66,000 battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as part of its 106,000-truck acquisition plan by 2028.

Today the service said that the first set of chargers will be at USPS’ South Atlanta Sorting and Delivery Center (S&DC), and they will soon be visible also at hundreds more S&DCs, USPS said. According to USPS, these stations will be able to efficiently charge its EVs overnight prior to the next day’s deliveries. The service’s first 14,000 EV chargers will be manufactured by three suppliers: Siemens, Rexel/ChargePoint, and Blink.

USPS also showcased domestically manufactured, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), battery-powered delivery vehicles from Ford Motor Co. that will make up a portion of the new EV fleet. Deployment of electric delivery trucks will start in Georgia and then expand to other locations across the country throughout the year.

USPS plans on procuring a total of 21,000 COTS EVs — including 9,250 from Ford — depending on market availability and operational feasibility. In addition, the Postal Service anticipates adding at least 45,000 battery-electric Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDVs) by 2028. In addition to reducing emissions, modernizing the Postal Service’s fleet will allow delivery vehicles to haul larger volumes of mail and packages. The Ford E-Transits unveiled today have nearly three times the cargo capacity of the Grumman LLV delivery vehicles that the Postal Service currently uses.

“The improvements we need to achieve in sustainability are an integral outgrowth of the broader modernization efforts we have undertaken through our 10-year Delivering for America plan,” Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in a release. “As we transform our operating processes and invest in new automation, new technologies, and upgraded facilities and vehicles, we will generate significant efficiencies that reduce our costs, slash our carbon footprint and minimize waste. We are grateful for the support of Congress and the Biden Administration through Inflation Reduction Act funding, which helped enable the electrification in evidence here today.”