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Origins
Oshkosh's NGDV — Next Generation Delivery Vehicle — won the US Postal Service's 2021 contract to replace the ancient Grumman LLV fleet, with deliveries from 2024: a purpose-built right-hand-drive delivery van whose towering windscreen and duck-like face became instant internet folklore. Beneath the memes sat serious design — airbags, visibility and ergonomics the LLV never offered, in petrol and battery-electric versions whose mix became political football. Up to 165,000 units will carry American mail for decades. The NGDV joins the select vehicles that define national daily life by sheer institutional presence: beloved, mocked, and about to be everywhere for fifty years. Fifty years of daily national presence is the rarest contract in the industry, and Wisconsin won it.
USPS Mail Trucks in Huron South Dakota · Tony Webster from United States · CC BY-SA 2.0
