Why doesn the postal service provide delivery vehicles for all mail carriers?
The USPS is required to provide a certain number of vehicles (LLV or FFV) each year on rural routes. Currently, about 1/3 of rural routes are provided vehicles. Almost of all the routes with vehicles are less than 21 miles and primarily paved. It costs the Postal Service about .92/mile to provide a vehicle. Under the current EMA (mileage allowance), stop chart EMA ranges from about $21.00to $29.00 per day. It doesn’t make economic sense to the Postal Service to provide a vehicle on a route when it will cost them more than EMA, yet it does make sense on shorter routes. There are also practical reasons. A LLV must be serviced at a VMF and fueled at a contracted station. Towing costs for servicing/breakdowns in remote locations can get very expensive. LLV’s are horrible in the snow , on washboard roads and prone to rollover on steep hills. They wouldn’t be Long Life on the roads that rural carriers are required to drive. Rural carriers are a bit of a weird breed. We take pride in getting
