Daily News drivers voting on a buyout deal

Daily News delivery trucks may soon disappear from the streets in the five boroughs if drivers ratify a new buyout proposal.

The Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union, which represents the truckers, was voting Friday night at the Knights of Columbus hall in Bayonne, NJ, to ratify an estimated $10 million deal that would offer close to 70 drivers a buyout package of roughly $155,000 each.

The deal would eliminate about 40 routes that are currently carting the slumping tabloid to bodegas and newsstands in the five boroughs.

Tribune Publishing negotiators had earlier rejected union buyout proposals at the $500,000 and $250,000 per driver level.

In the latest tentative buyout pact, the routes being scrapped would be taken over by independent wholesale truckers making retail deliveries in the city.

The buyout would also make it less costly for the paper to go all-digital if it so desires down the road, since it would have fewer drivers on its payroll.

The NMDU would keep a handful of drivers on its so-called long distance routes, trucking the paper to more far-flung destinations upstate and in far-off suburbs.

Tribune bought the troubled tabloid for $1 in September 2017 from real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, and has been trying to figure out what to do with it ever since.

At the time of the takeover, the paper was said to be losing close to $30 million a year.

Tribune (previously known as Tronc) has instituted brutal cost-cutting rounds at the News and in July laid off 103 people — including half of those in its depleted newsroom.

Tribune executives had no comment on the union vote.