You may have heard, but just in case: the USPS is getting ! The Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) from Oshkosh Defense is good, but it was only one option out of a The Oshkosh certainly deserves a into its design, but we should also look at the trucks that didn’t make it. In other words, let’s look at the mail trucks that did not quite deliver.

(It’s Memorial Day, so we’re running some of our favorite posts from the last few months while we watch Indy, eat garbage and hug/hi-five our troop friends and family. We hope you’re having a lovely holiday weekend!)

My favorite is probably hot-rod LLV:

OK, sure, Chip Foose’s design was probably never really in the running. But all of the following trucks were seriously considered at one point.

AM General:

prototype is not half bad. Then again, the company knows a thing or two about designing a mail carrier truck. It’s responsible for the , after all and has a long history supplying vehicles for . This is the HUMVEE company. AM General’s prototype though, is a little lukewarm and doesn’t seem to address the need to redesign the vehicle. It doesn’t do enough to build a new platform that feels completely detached from the and addresses the concerns of modern mail delivery.

VT Hackney / Workhorse Group:

The prototype is better in this regard. It seems as though it owes nothing to the LLV and does look better equipped for the task. Those headlights, though, are all kinds of wrong and the slope of its hood does not do enough to increase visibility. And the wheels! Oh, no. No. No. Too flashy.

Karsan Otomotiv / Morgan Olson:

The collaboration produced an interesting concept. Of all the finalists, I think it shares the most with the . But simplicity is a virtue and the Karsan is over-styled in places. When you manage a fleet as large as the USPS, less is definitely more. I’m not even sure I can make sense of some its features. Why does it need a bumper on its roof? And why does its sliding door protrude outside of its body?

Mahindra:

There is another truck from Indian manufacturer , maybe best known here in the States for . We don’t have any rights to photos of Mahindra’s proposal, but you can see the thing at , which I think is definitely the friendliest prototype. Visibility seems like less of a concern for its design than that of the Oshkosh or Karsan. Visibility really should be noted when designing a vehicle this large with the task of navigating neighborhoods and getting as close as possible to a mailbox without breaking or hitting anything. Great wheels, though.

Oshkosh / Ford:

This last one is also from , but borrows from . The joint design looked great to me until I looked at the final NGDV. But that’s probably because I love a . It makes sense in the short term to develop something that’s based on an existing chassis, but a custom design that has no inherent design constraints is better in the long term.

Oshkosh did well to start fresh. I think what they developed when they scrapped the Transit ended up working best.

I know we’ve been doing a lot about the new mail delivery vehicle, but think about it — this is,…