Will the US Postal Service Follow Suit?
Canadian Auto Press
It’s the kind of fleet deal dreams are made of. Ford of Canada appears to have put together an extremely sweet sale last week with Canada Post that will see the automaker deliver a total of 1,175 Transit Connect cargo vans to the national mail service.
Ford Transit Connect
Having gone through a competitive bidding process to select the new postal vans, including initial cost and overall lifecycle expenses, the Transit Connect won with flying colours. Chief amongst considerations was fuel economy, and to that end the four-cylinder Transit Connect achieves superb efficiency compared to its cargo-hauling rivals at 9.5L/100km in the city and 7.9 in the city.
The new Transit Connect vans will replace the older Grumman Long Life Vehicles (LLV) produced by General Motors, which live up to their LLV nameplate but are not known for fuel economy.
The question remains whether or not the much larger US Postal Service fleet will follow suit, its fleet almost made up largely of Grumman LLVs. If so, Ford’s US operations would be able to tap into a total fleet of more than 260,000 delivery vehicles. Being that the Transit Connect is the only true compact delivery van on the North American market, a similar deal to that in Canada appears likely.
