A mail truck caught fire on July 17 on State Road in Great Barrington. It’s one of hundreds of fires in the Grumman Long Life Vehicles whose 24-year lifespans have ended.
GREAT BARRINGTON — When a local mail carrier had to rescue bundles of mail from their postal truck after it caught fire on State Road earlier this month it wasn’t the first time something like this has happened. It’s a scene that’s played out all over the U.S. in the last decade.
No one was injured in the State Road incident on July 17, according to Brian Mead, the Great Barrington Fire Department’s spokesman. The mail carrier first noticed smoke as the truck lost power as they were pulling out of a driveway, Mead said.
But there’s more to this story. This fire is not a one-off for the aging fleet of U.S. Postal Service trucks.
It is one of hundreds of fires that have ravaged carriers’ trucks since 2014 as much of the fleet of Grumman Long Life Vehicles made by Northrop Grumman have passed their 30th birthday. They are catching fire at “an alarming” rate according to a 2020 Vice Motherboard investigation.
That report found that age was the likely culprit. It’s a fleet whose upper lifespan is meant to be 24 years. Many of the trucks were too destroyed to find the cause of the fire. Of the ones that weren’t, “the only pattern was that there was no pattern.”
“The fires occurred in hot and cold climates, at the beginning and ends of shifts, in the battery compartments, dashboards, and fuel pumps, and in vehicles that had both been recently maintained and were overdue for a check-up,” Vice reported. “They occurred on rural routes and city streets all over the country.”
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