When you buy a car, how long do you tend to keep it? A few years? Six or seven? Ten? For the U.S. Postal Service, it’s a long, long time. The backbone of its delivery fleet – more than 200,000 vehicles – is the right-hand-drive Long Life Vehicle (LLV), which has an expected service life of 24 years. But almost 70 percent of the LLVs on urban and rural routes are now between 25 and 32 years old, and maintenance costs are high.
For some businesses, transportation is a simple matter, getting things from point A to point B, or maybe even getting things from point A to points B, C, and D. For the U.S. Postal Service, it’s a different level of complexity altogether.
If you’re facing a decision – especially a big one – you want to have all the facts so you can make the best choice. It’s also true for organizations, including the U.S. Postal Service. But in one area, as our recent audit found, postal executives may not be getting all the facts they need. In some cases, they’re not getting facts at all.
