Royal Mail to add 2,100 electric vans to fleet

[Barnacle]

Posties have never been known for good driving! Check out my fresh-from-auction Pilot from a decade ago - broken rear light with bodged repair, plus scraped along a metal post!

You think you are proving something but you’re not. Our vans have been trashed by DPR drivers. You don’t work at my delivery office so you can’t argue that fact.

[Smoothbackground]

They will buy these and post huge losses on the balance sheets then plead poverty.

Isn't the current fuelled fleet leased? I would expect that to continue with electric. RM won't want to repeat the experience of the original Intermec PDAs - kept until they were grossly obsolete because they were a huge sunk cost, batteries all shot, no demand on the secondhand market.

How does leasing handle the trashing of the vans? Since the DPR nonsense started, our vans have become battered skips. Why DPR drivers need to hit every post or break every mirror and van door, I have no idea. Surely there is a charge if you hand the van back to the leasing company as trash?

Oh, so the vans haven’t always been like that then? I didn’t realise damage to every panel of every RM van was
a new phenomenon occurring only since DPR.

Small query: if it is just the DPR drivers responsible for this very sorry state of affairs, how come the small fleet (Partner, Combo etc) — which aren’t normally driven by DPR drivers — are in even worse condition? Who has caused all that damage to the Partner fleet and left the interiors in such disgusting and unsanitary condition? Perhaps the DPR drivers too?

Yes, it’s the DPR drivers who have trashed our fleet of vans. Numerous have been sacked since DPR started because of their ability to drive into inanimate objects repeatedly.

Ah, I see. Do forgive my ignorance and lack of knowledge on these matters. I shall of course defer to your great wisdom and experience.

But help me with this if you can. Were DPR drivers around when you had the Sherpa and LDV fleet then? RM vans have been battered and tattered for as long as I care to remember. (Although newish to RM, I have had long experience with ex RM vans, having bought and sold in excess of 20 LDV Pilots, Convoys and Maxuses, and I remember each and every one of them being replete with bodywork damage to every single panel. Still have photos of some on my Dropbox so might post one or two examples for you to suggest likely DPR culprits at your place - I am certain you will know who it was!)

Wow you've got me reminiscing now, pilots were referred to as 200's the larger version was referred to as a 400 but they attracted an enhanced driving allowance as they were over 3.5t, the maxus were short lived and pretty s**t even by the low standards of the former ldv vans.

When I first started iirc on the induction course they told me RM accounted for three days of production at the ldv factory no idea if that was true or what but as they went bust perhaps it's true.

Oh yeah just out of interest what was your previous employment, were you a motor trader ?

I loved the boxiness of the original Sherpas and the sliding driver’s and passenger’s doors that could remain open as you drove. The simplicity of them - no power steering, a radio with one speaker, leaking windscreen. The tractor-like feel. RM was definitely LDV’s biggest and most loyal customer, continuing to buy until the very end.

No, not a motor trader, though I have as a bit of a sideline dabbled in buying and selling all sorts of things - including cars and vans - over the years. The LDV Pilots and Convoys were very highly sought after for export to developing countries because of how easy they were to fix and maintain, hence why I went through a few of them.

[Mr Rush]

the maxus were short lived and pretty s**t even by the low standards of the former ldv vans.

I think we got two or three years out of the new Maxus vans before they were sent away due to P&L in 2011. LDV went bust in 2009 so issues with parts and servicing might have contributed to ditching them. My recollection is that they weren't as popular as the Convoys, old and gubbed as they were.