House panel to probe USPS plan to purchase gas-powered trucks

A House committee has opened an investigation into the U.S. Postal Service’s $11.3 billion plan to purchase mostly gas-powered mail-delivery trucks, ordering the mail agency to turn over confidential records on their environmental impact and costs.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., who chairs the powerful House Oversight and Reform Committee, told Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in a letter sent Wednesday night that his agency may have “relied on flawed assumptions” to justify buying a fleet in which only 1 in 10 of the vehicles would run on cleaner electric power.

The Postal Service has the largest civilian fleet in the federal government and one of the largest in the world; it is crucial to President Joe Biden’s plan to take the entire government fleet electric by 2035.

The trucks the agency agreed to purchase from Oshkosh Defense in February 2021 fall well short of the White House’s climate goals and could do lasting climate harm, federal regulators have warned the Postal Service. The agency has closely guarded records and data sources on how it selected the trucks after a competitive seven-year procurement process.

“The Oversight Committee strongly supports the purchase of electric vehicles for the Postal Service’s fleet, which will position the Postal Service as an environmental leader,” Maloney wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Washington Post. “An all-electric Postal Service fleet would reduce costs, increase reliability, and improve the Postal Service’s ability to efficiently deliver mail and packages. Electrifying the next generation of Postal Service vehicles is also essential to achieving the nation’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and fighting climate change.”

The “Next Generation Delivery Vehicles” get 8.6 mpg with the air conditioning running, a scant 0.4 mpg improvement from the 30-year-old trucks now in use. Regulators estimate the NGDVs would emit roughly the same amount of Earth-warming carbon dioxide each year as 4.3 million passenger vehicles when they hit the streets in 2023.

The Postal Service has largely refused to voluntarily turn over records to lawmakers about the trucks, for which it already has paid nearly $3.5 billion. Maloney’s letter sets the stage for a potential congressional subpoena to the mail agency over the summer, a step that insiders say House Democrats have been itching to take for months.

Attorneys general from 16 states plus the District of Columbia, and three prominent environmental activist groups, filed three separate lawsuits against the Postal Service in April hoping to block the truck contract. The complaints allege that the agency vastly underestimated the vehicles’ costs and adverse ecological impact.