For 19 years, Richard Burton, a letter carrier in Athens, Ga., drove the classic boxy mail truck, with only a fan on the dashboard to keep the cabin cool in the sweltering summer months. A second fan plugged into the cigarette lighter didn’t make much of a difference, he said.
But about two months ago, Mr. Burton, 46, became one of the first letter carriers in the United States to get a long-awaited upgrade: a new electric mail truck with air-conditioning, a 360-degreee camera and a sliding cargo door on the side that allows the unloading of packages directly onto the sidewalk.
“It makes the job easier to do because you’re not sweating bullets out there,” he said. “And in Georgia, you can imagine how hot it gets.”
The new mail trucks — 10 years in the making — have started rolling into American neighborhoods, and the early reviews from letter carriers are positive. Many have complained for years that the mail trucks they have been driving, which were introduced in the 1980s, break down frequently and are stiflingly hot, as climate change pushes temperatures to greater extremes. The rear cargo space is so small, they say, that they have to crouch inside to grab packages.