Problems That Apparently Exist: USPS Mail Trucks Keep Lighting On Fire And Nobody Knows Why
When you think of a typical United States Postal Service delivery truck, you're probably thinking of the Grumman Long Life Vehicle — the boxy thing with right-side steering wheels and driver's seats so letter carriers can more easily access mailboxes. In recent years, however, hundreds of them caught fire — possibly due to age and a budget crisis, according to this new Vice story.
Since May 2014, more than 407 LLVs sustained damage or destruction from fire, Vice reported via a Freedom of Information Act request. The outlet examined the 3,954-page document in regard to the fires (which you can view here; it's a PDF that's about 400 megabytes), and found that the two separate engineering firms hired to determine the cause of the fires were unable to really find a pattern.
Full story here.
You know who doesn’t get enough credit? Mailmen. I’ll put my hand up, it shouldn’t have taken me reading this article about how their vehicles are spontaneously combusting to have written this. I’m coming fresh off of four years in New York, where the subway’s routinely light on fire or crash. Maybe that made me bitter, but I can’t let that be the bar. You know what you’re getting into when you ride the 4/5 train from Franklin Ave to Grand Central: you’re playing a game of russian roulette where the one empty chamber is a normal trip, and every other one is either getting spit on, rubbed up on, threatened, or permanently scarred in a variety of ways.
Mailmen don’t have a choice. They can’t choose to take a personal vehicle on the job out of fear for for their life, and should they need to? I guess it’s not enough that they have to spend all day in a truck lugging your shitty mail around, they’ve also got to work in a goddamn tinder box.
How does the saying go? Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds? What about fire of truck? Is that mentioned anywhere? Burning off of asses? They’ve either got to make that part of the creed or fix their shit up.
The gravity of the situation is not alleviated by the fact that you’re surrounded by flammable material. Not only that, but it’s also flammable material that you are specifically tasked with making sure does not catch on fire. Pretty easy thing to cover if, you know, your vehicle doesn’t explode; bhose ass is on the line if all of the bills and catalogues do go up in flames? I’m sure it’s yours. If you’re lucky enough to survive the raging inferno of a box truck spurned, then you’ve got your hands full of a bunch of disgruntled middle schoolers under internet arrest who can’t jerk off to the latest LL Bean. Honestly, I’d take the fire.
