The Postal Service announced Oshkosh Defense as the winner of the competition to build the mail truck in February. Under the terms of the initial deal, Oshkosh, Wisc.,-based Oshkosh will get a $482 million contract to complete the production design of its mail truck offering. The agreement also provides Oshkosh funds to pay for tooling and factory configuration needed before launching production.
The filing said Workhorse spent more than $6 million designing electric prototypes of a replacement mail truck as part of a formal bidding process but that that agency didn’t take its offering seriously following a mishap with a truck.
“It falsely blamed Workhorse’s prototype vehicle for a “safety incident” that was clearly the result of the USPS driver’s error. It engaged in discussions with Workhorse that improperly failed to meaningfully notify Workhorse of perceived deficiencies in its proposal and that misled Workhorse as to the areas Workhorse needed to address in its updated proposal,” the company said in its filing.
Oshkosh, which has Ford Motor Co. as a major supplier in the program, will assemble the new mail truck at a dedicated factory in Spartanburg, S.C.