balthazar

- - - - - RE the Oshkosh mail truck : of course it's hideously ugly. With all the ubiquitous gassing about tech & futurism, I was offhandedly expecting something more 'pod-like' if we're likely going to still be looking at them in the year 2060. These look like they were designed in 1985. UPS has touted this image as a future vehicle- why not a teensy bit sleeker (not Oshkosh's bag, I know) :

History of electric postal vehicles : https://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-history/electric-vehicles.pdf

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Yeah, modern times typical. I think only Summit White is free at GMC (Sierra), then there a couple that are $195, about 4-5 that are $495 and 1-2 that are $695. But at 70 grand, it should be included even moreso than at the $50K level. “Optional paint”. Wonder if you can get a vehicle ‘paint delete’?

Saw for sale online; NOS '71 'cud grille, $4500.

Simple- just quadruple the cost of all mailings & eliminate the loophole of 'fleet pricing' for mass mailings/advertising. Tomorrow at the opening of business; a first class letter costs $2.20. It's just like BE's- you gotta spend 2-4 times what you were used to, to 'save' something. Everyone loves doing that/can afford it; this is America!!

For that kind of money, the paint should be free.

Never saw Tron. I said this to my son yesterday, standing in a convince store waiting on lunch & listening to 2 songs piped in. 'Modern pop music certainly is wretched, lyrically.' If you're lucky, you get 2 repeating lines instead of just 1. It's all disposable garbage to me and I never listen to it if I have a choice (but sometimes you're just subjected to it). I have heard that 'get lucky' song - abhorrant & vapid.

It certainly presents well in pics, and overall it's attractive in & out... EXCEPT the 'surprised anime' front end. I think a lot of potential buyers will shy away from that aspect (ignoring price here).

Isn’t the USPS deficit due to pension underfundment, not operational costs? Also, nothing - short of segments of the military - run by the Gov’t is efficient. Those 2 things are mutually exclusive.

Definitely a lot of Teslas in NJ. I've certainly seen a number of them on flatbeds, but nothing out of proportion to other brands.

Is this a Canada thing? All my life, carriers with a vehicle always reach out the window for mailboxes.

It's an 'open quantity' 10-yr contract with an initial advance of $462 million, for a guaranteed volume between 50K and 165K vehicles. The current fleet of Grumman LLV mail trucks were built between '87 & '94, designed for a 24-yr lifespan (which they've all exceeded). Those use the GM 'Iron Duke' 4-cylinder/THM 3-spd trans. The next generation Oshkosh trucks will be powered by a mix of battery-electric and low-emission internal combustion powertrains. They're also getting A/C, automatic braking, collision avoidance & 360-degree cameras. No word yet from D.C. regarding their announced forward policy of 'replacing all government fleet vehicles with electrics'. Oshkosh beat out Karsan & Workhorse on the contract. - - - - - Feast your eyeballs on the world's largest windshield :

Clicked quickly thru a '1993-2021 tribute' video; I've never heard any of that before. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Who?

^ That may well be the best route to addressing the problem. Some it may be 'defeated' by technology, IE; over/understeer vs. traction control/ESC. I've always urged my sons to get out & slide around in the snow, to (safely) push their vehicles in braking, acceleration, limit of handing traction to get to know it. That's an even higher level of literal training vs. whatever vehicle you road test in. I believe commercial truckers have testing akin to what you're suggesting. My brother has a Mack tri-axle dump truck and moves his own equipment; his commercial license supersedes his regular license, and infractions committed on his personal vehicles are 'counted' as commercial offenses. It's a prime reason I believe the vast majority of HD truckers drive with such care (and rightly so).

Right; there was discrimination, then there were lawsuits / anti-discrimination laws, not the other way around. Currently, there is no age-related onerous testing of a certain portion of approved/licensed drivers. I'm merely prognosticating on the litigious nature of people and the current times we live in. I see all sorts of outcry if a '75-yr old and older regular driving skills test' is implemented. Totally disagree WRT a national testing standard. Unworkable. Now you're talking -say- having southern FL drivers in some sort of winter-environment test facility and the like. States have all sorts of different traffic laws & standards; you'd have to nationalize traffic laws, too. Last thing we need in the guise of improvement is the federal gov't's grubby hands in the matter.

Privilege/right is immaterial. Employment isn't a guaranteed right, but you can’t have different age-related treatments of employees. I don’t disagree about ability degradation, but how that’s addressed is the question. And again I point to 16-17 yr old drivers, the worst of all age groups and fresh out of edumacation; what’s the suggestion there to address tje carnage- test them every 6 months until they’re 20?

>>"Chinese scientists have used nanoplates that generate power from temperature changes to create synthetic methanol, which could be a clean way of removing CO2 from the atmosphere, as well as generating e-fuels. The paper, published in Nature Communications, describes a process of using the ambient temperature change over the course of a day to generate electricity, used to combine carbon dioxide from the air with water in order to make methanol. Methanol (the poisonous form of ethanol or "common booze") can be turned into petrol whether it's made out of moonshine or cracked out of the air on a molecular level. The latter method is more environmentally friendly, as it both doesn't require crops and ultimately removes CO2 from the atmosphere, something we crucially need to do."<< ~ The Drive

The potential legal problem isn't in testing drivers at a certain age, it's testing ONLY drivers of a certain age (vs. testing them all). Within the realm of licensed driving, that's an age-based 'discrimination'. Potentially. Well, unless the owners are dead and don't need their car repaired.

Right- same here in the States, basically. Provisional license at 16, full driver's at 17 (I am sure it varies by state). If they're causing the most incidents/injuries & deaths, perhaps that needs to be PL at 18 and full DL at 19. I mean... if we're 'after the problem' here...

Vision and serious medical issues are one thing, but neither is a driving skills test. According to hard data, 80+ drivers are slightly BETTER than 20-24 yr olds AND 25-29 yr olds as far as the 'all crashes' AND 'injury' crash rates goes. When you come to fatal crashes, 80+ is on par with 16-17 yr olds. What are we going to do about that - gotta raise the age to obtain a drivers license...

The very real issue is you'd be looking at age discrimination lawsuits in trying to implement something like that. Hope you're ready for 'all the stupid' being able to go 0-60 in 3 seconds!!