If you’re experiencing vehicle shortages in your office, you deserve clarity.
A lot of carriers and supervisors are being told some version of: “VMF isn’t fixing trucks,” or “maintenance is behind,” or “we just have to make do.”
That’s not the full story.
At the national level, many LLVs were never intended to be repaired long-term.
When USPS awarded the Oshkosh NGDV contract, it formally acknowledged that it did not have the space, funding, or capacity to operate and maintain two fleets at the same time. Because LLVs are federal property, they could not be sold to the public, so USPS entered into scrap and destruction contracts instead.
As a result, tens of thousands of LLVs were designated for disposal, not rebuilding.
According to USPS Office of Inspector General Report 24-092-R25 (Fleet Modernization: Disposal of Long-Life Vehicles):
-Over 11,000 LLVs were disposed of without proper salvage payments
-At least $452,500 in revenue was lost due to missing or incomplete documentation
-Approximately 95,000 additional LLVs were scheduled for disposal with millions of dollars in salvage revenue at risk
The OIG specifically cited poor asset tracking and documentation failures
This information was formally reported to Congress it is not speculation and it is not a local management decision.
Now combine that with:
NGDV rollout delays
Aging LLVs already marked as disposable
No replacement fleet ready at scale
And you get exactly what many offices are experiencing today: vehicle shortages with no quick fix.
This isn’t a carrier problem.
It isn’t a VMF problem.
And it isn’t a local supervisor problem.
It’s the result of high-level fleet transition decisions and asset-management failures that are now showing up on the workroom floor.
You’re not wrong for being frustrated but the frustration needs to be aimed at the right level, with the right information.
If you want to read the OIG report for yourself, you can find USPS OIG Report 24-092-R25 (Fleet Modernization: Disposal of Long-Life Vehicles) here:
https://www.21cpw.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/24-092-r25-llv-disposal_oig.pdf
