Grumman LLV is gone.
Only one U.S. Postal Service truck did I ever see? I have only ever seen one U.S. Postal Service truck. It is small, boxy and low to the ground. It is ugly. The Grumman LLV (Long Life Vehicle), was not designed to be a beauty contest. Its utilitarian design and no-nonsense approach are what make the truck so attractive. Grumman is about efficiency and getting to work. Many companies jumped at the opportunity to get the contract when the USPS announced that it needed to replace a large portion of its Grumman LLV fleet – possibly 180,000 trucks or greater. Mahindra is an Indian car manufacturer corporation.
We have spy photos from the prototype of the company earlier in this year. We have new spy photos and we can see little has changed in the prototype’s appearance over the past few months. The same wide, boxy cargo area is required by the USPS because larger packages must be shipped. These postal vehicles must be able to handle different sizes of packages and also be reliable, simple to fix, as well as relatively inexpensive to operate. You can see why Mahindra’s design was so awkward when you build it by committee.
The interior of the Mahindra prototype still includes many modern features like air conditioning, push-button start and push-button gear selector. The engine will likely be a four-cylinder gasoline or turbodiesel. It is not known what the prototype’s foundations are. The platform is likely to be decades older than the first-generation Chevy S10 platform, which underpins Grumman LLVs.
The Grumman LLVs won’t disappear overnight, so there is no reason to be concerned. For several years, the USPS has been searching for a replacement vehicle. There will be several rounds of revisions to the vehicle before it is officially released for production. The replacement postal truck should be in production by the end the decade. If the USPS isn’t happy with the current contenders, could we suggest something more unusual?