The Grumman LLV—for Long Life Vehicle—mail truck is proof that sometimes federal bureaucrats get it right. The aluminum-bodied lump just completed four decades as the principal mail carrier for the United States Postal Service.
The history of mail delivery is, of course, inextricably linked with the history of American transportation. Legal documents and love letters were once transported via Pony Express and horse-drawn carriages, but by 1906, the USPS began using gasoline-powered vehicles. With the advent of Parcel Post in 1913, the need for commodious, motor-driven mail vehicles was ever more acute, as Americans a century ago liked to ship and receive stuff just as much as we do today. Over the ensuing decades, the postal service fleet reflected the times, with the Ford Model T making way in the postwar period for surplus military Willys Jeeps. In the early 1960s, Studebaker collaborated with Pennsylvania manufacturer Met-Pro to develop a purpose-built mail wagon known as the Zip Van to promote the newly introduced ZIP codes.
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