The Biden-Harris Inflation Reduction Act allocated $3 billion to help the U.S. Postal Service purchase electric trucks and build charging infrastructure. This funding followed a period in which the Postal Service, after conducting its own analysis, initially rejected electric vehicles (EVs) due to concerns over cost and practicality. Despite the $3 billion investment, only 93 electric trucks have been delivered, far short of the 3,000 originally expected. This situation mirrors the slow progress in building EV charging stations: the administration received $5 billion through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to build half a million stations, but only seven have been built.
The Postal Service is also set to acquire 60,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDVs), most of which will be electric, from Oshkosh, a company known for manufacturing military and heavy-duty vehicles. The nearly $10 billion project has faced production delays and supplier conflicts that have hindered timely delivery. President-elect Trump’s transition team is reportedly considering canceling contracts aimed at electrifying the USPS fleet as part of a wider series of executive actions aimed at scaling back electric vehicle initiatives. These include halting the $7,500 consumer tax credit for EVs and rolling back fuel efficiency standards that promote vehicle electrification.
Oshkosh was originally expected to deliver about 45,000 electric NGDVs and 21,000 off-the-shelf EVs, including 9,250 Ford E-Transit vans, with Ford supplying the vans and Oshkosh modifying them for postal use. However, according to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, USPS purchased 28,000 vehicles in 2024, with 22,000 being gas-powered. For 2025, the Postal Service plans a 50-50 split between electric and gas-powered vehicles, aiming for a fully electric fleet by 2026. DeJoy has stated that USPS is paying about $20,000 more for the Oshkosh electric NGDVs and $10,000 more for off-the-shelf electric vehicles compared to their gas counterparts. Additionally, the Postal Service is incurring extra expenses for the required charging infrastructure. By 2028, USPS expects to spend $9.6 billion on vehicle acquisitions, including plans to purchase approximately 66,000 electric vehicles.
Anonymous sources told the Washington Post that engineers struggled to calibrate the mail trucks’ airbags and were unable to contain water leaks in the vehicles’ body and internal components. The turnaround time for building the new mail trucks was extremely slow. The Washington Post reported that the South Carolina factory can only build one truck per day even though Oshkosh expected to build at least 80 vehicles a day by now. According to one person involved in production, “This is the bottom line: We don’t know how to make a damn truck,” which is an astonishing statement for a company involved in making some of the most robust armored vehicles in the world, such as the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected All-Terrain Vehicle.
The Postal Service is an independent federal agency and is not under President Biden’s executive order for all light-duty cars and trucks acquired by the government to be emission-free by 2027. That was part of President Biden’s goal set in 2021 that 50% of all new passenger cars and light trucks would be zero-emission vehicles by 2030.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, however, enabled the Postal Service to cover the cost difference between gas-powered vehicles and more expensive electric vehicles, according to an anonymous White House official. Biden administration officials wanted DeJoy to purchase more electric vehicles to help the administration achieve its climate goals. On December 20, 2022, the Postal Service announced plans to phase out its old gas trucks and exclusively purchase electric vehicles by 2026. According to John Podesta, Biden’s senior adviser for clean energy innovation, “It will get people thinking, ‘If the postal worker delivering our Christmas presents … is driving an EV, I can drive one, too.’”
Then, truck prices rose. In March 2023, Oshkosh and the Postal Service agreed to an Inflation Reduction Act “premium adjustment.” The cost rose to $2.6 billion for 35,000 vehicles. For 1,958 gas-powered next-generation delivery vehicles, the agency agreed to pay $54,584 per truck. For 28,195 electric vehicles, the cost was $77,692 per truck. The Postal Service also purchased several thousand more vehicles equipped with spare tires and training seats that cost a few hundred dollars more than the base model. Company financial disclosures indicate that the modifications increased the overall value of the Oshkosh purchase by more than half a billion dollars.
Conclusion
The mission seemed simple for the U.S. Postal Service: replace its old deficient trucks with new ones that would do the job. But then the Biden Administration stepped in. The Postal Service needed to purchase a new delivery fleet, as its old fleet produced by Northrop Grumman and its corporate predecessors had parts that had been discontinued, lacked standard safety features such as airbags and air conditioning, and obtained only 8.2 miles per gallon. Its approach toward unproven electric delivery vehicles spurred by Biden administration officials was a costly one for taxpayers. The contractor, Oshkosh, delivered only 93 electric vehicles out of 3,000 expected. Problems arose due to engineering design issues and manufacturing and supply chain difficulties. President-elect Trump’s transition team is considering canceling the Postal Service’s EV contracts as they appear to be costing taxpayers more for an EV product that has several flaws and manufacturing impediments.
