Chad Smith, director of engineering at Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Corporation, called the USPS truck and its memorable design “iconic.” That’s one of the reasons he’s so excited to have helped develop the department’s fleet of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles, or NGDVs, Smith emphasized.
“Everybody knows that vehicle,” he said of the USPS truck, speaking with the Sun at Oshkosh’s booth on the Advanced Clean Transportation Expo floor in the Las Vegas Convention Center, where attendees got a sneak peek of the NGDV. “So to think that my kids are going to see this for the next 20, 30 years on the road — it’s pretty cool, right?”
With its low front hood and wide window, the abnormally shaped truck seemed to be causing some convention attendees to double-take when they laid eyes on it, before stopping and either doing a walk-through of the vehicle or sitting in its massive, black seat on the driver’s side — located on the right-hand side, which is unusual in the U.S.
“It’s the modern conveniences that we’re used to in our cars, that now we’re going to have available for the post office,” Smith said at the convention last month. “(360-degree) cameras, airbags, automatic braking, emergency braking. … So that’s just really exciting. And it’s kind of leaping them forward 30 years of technology.”