A company on the shortlist to build the Postal Service’s next-generation delivery vehicle said it was unfairly disqualified from consideration in the more than $3 billion contract.
The electric vehicle company Workhorse Group, in an unsealed complaint before the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, said it spent six years and more than $6 million designing a prototype next-gen delivery vehicle for the Postal Service.
However, Workhorse, in its bid protest over the contract award, said USPS “put its thumb on the scale against Workhorse” and took their prototype out of consideration over a “safety incident” caused by a USPS test track driver’s error.
Workhorse also alleges Oshkosh Defense, the USPS vehicle award recipient, submitted a prototype vehicle “entirely different” than the one selected for production, and that the winning design from Oshkosh “skipped the prototype phase altogether.”