Freightliner Custom Chassis Corporation, located in Gaffney, has been awarded a contract for up to 6,780 U.S. Postal Service (USPS) intermediate delivery vehicles. The first 2,380 are to be built in fiscal 2001. The Postal Service can extend the contract for an additional two years for another 4,400 vehicles. Without the option years, the contract is valued at more than $79 million.
The vehicle will be a new single rear wheel (SRW) walk-in van chassis. The Freightliner MT45 chassis will be equipped with a Utilimaster body. According to Peter Schwind, contracting officer for the Vehicle Purchasing Team at USPS, “Freightliner gave us exactly what we were looking for in a heavy-duty truck. This new vehicle will meet the Postal Service’s needs of the future.”
The SRW design provides less wheel intrusion into the load space of the vehicle, increasing cargo capacity, cargo placement and loading flexibility. The new vehicle has a payload capacity of nearly 4,800 lbs. with an interior volume of 535 cubic feet. That interior volume is 85 cubic feet greater than the USPS’s current two-ton truck.