MONTGOMERY, Pa. -- The U.S. Postal Service has seen the future of mail delivery in America, and it is a durable, lightweight van known as the LLV, or long-life vehicle.
In a rural Pennsylvania factory, the Allied Division of Grumman Corp. is producing the new generation of delivery truck for the Postal Service that is to carry the agency -- and the mail -- into the next century.
Grumman won a $1.1 billion contract in April 1986 for 99,150 LLVs to replace both the traditional jeeps and half-ton delivery trucks that now make up the Postal Service truck fleet, the world's largest.
The first of the vans, painted the familiar white with red and blue stripes, rolled off the assembly line in Lycoming County's Clinton Township in April. By late fall, production will reach 95 vehicles per day, or about one every 5 minutes.
The Postal Service views the LLV as an investment that will save nearly $6 billion over the next 24 years.
For Grumman, which is best known as a defense contractor, the new vehicle represents an unprecedented opportunity to put the company's name before the public.
'We are not a consumer-oriented company ... but this vehicle is something that's going to touch the lives of every American family,' spokesman Mike Drake said.
Robert St. Francis, director of the Postal Service's Office of Fleet Management, said the agency realized several years ago that it needed a new generation of vehicle to handle the increased volume of mail.
He said the biggest drawback of the delivery vehicles now in use is their susceptibility to rust, which gives them a life expectancy of only five to eight years.
'We decided if we could eliminate corrosion by going to a new material, we could extend the service life substantially,' St. Francis said.
William McLean, vice president of Grumman's LLV Division, said his company's solution was to place its all-aluminum truck body on a General Motors S-10 chassis.
The result is a 3,000-pound vehicle with a virtually maintenance-free body expected to last for 24 years and a power train with a life expectancy of 12 years.
The Grumman LLV was selected over vehicles from two other companies that were bidding for the contract -- LTV Corp.'s American General Division and Poveco, a joint venture of Fruehauf Corp. and General Automotive.
Although similar in profile to the current half-ton truck, the LLV weighs 800 pounds less, meaning greater fuel efficiency. Its cargo capacity of 1,000 pounds is the same as the half-ton truck but twice that of the jeep.
St. Francis said the Postal Service expects the new vehicle will produce a savings of $5.7 billion in replacement, maintenance and fuel costs over the next 24 years.
'That translates into the avoidance of approximately a seven-cent increase in postage,' he said.
The Postal Service currently uses nine different types of jeeps, each with a slightly different interior configuration, St. Francis said.
The new vehicle is essentially a standardized 'box on wheels' into which the Postal Service will place an integrated modular container system, he said.
The uniformity 'gives us the opportunity for future productivity gains through autom ation and things of that sort,' he said.
To meet the ambitious production schedule, Grumman is making a $28 million capital investment, including an expansion project that will more than double the size of its Montgomery plant to 213,000 square feet, McLean said. The plant's workforce will increase from 250 to 600.
He said every major postal vehicle maintenance facility in the country should have at least three of the new vans by July, and Grumman expects 9,000 to be on the road by the end of 1987.
St. Francis said the Postal Service already is reviewing an option to order another 54,000 vehicles after the first 99,150 are completed in 1992.
