These Should Be The Next Mail Trucks When The Post Office Gets Privatized
Seemingly, it's open season to cut every piece of the federal government possible. President Donald Trump has given Elon Musk and the self-proclaimed Department of Government Efficiency carte blanche to eliminate as much federal spending as possible. However, privatizing the United States Postal Service was a carry-over goal from his first term in office that has returned for a second attempt.
We asked our readers earlier this week what the ideal vehicle would be for a privatized Post Office. Their suggestions featured a balanced mix of serious recommendations and attempts at comedic political commentary. The basic gist is that we're going to need a tow truck for every Cybertruck hauling the mail. Without further ado, here are what you think should be the next mail trucks:
Read more: These New Cars Just Aren't Worth The Money
"Can we reboot the Windstar? Ford has to have some parts for it in a warehouse somewhere."
Submitted by: Emperor Norton Why not? It's been 18 years since Ford discontinued the Freestar, but enough of them could be put into service with spares fabricated out of the parts bin.
"The vehicle won't matter as long as it has a device that shreds all mail-in ballots going to and fro an urban area. That device may well be the driver, who will be fired by the Musk-owned USPS for non-compliance otherwise."
Submitted by: GTO1962
"The corpse of Canoo is still warm -- buy up that factory/tooling and get those vans on the road. Most of the work is already done; they even had a USPS model in the works. It looks freaking awesome."
Submitted by: BuddyS
If NASA and the Postal Service couldn't save Canoo, I don't think anything is bringing them back from the grave.
"I love everything posted so far. On a more serious note, Toyota hybrids are the obvious answer to every automotive question ever asked. With the exception of anything to do with fast or fun."
Submitted by: Caddyshack03
"I'm pretty sure there's a large number of Cybertrucks that Elon would LOVE to sell at top dollar to the USPS. Would they make it 100k miles? Yeah. Yeah, that's the ticket!!"
Submitted by: Stillnotatony
"Chevy Express. It's made in Missouri (Red State), available with a V8 (Murica!) and it only seems to be available in white. Plus it can tow up to 9,000 lbs so it'll drag a cyber truck if it needs to."
Submitted by: Drg84
"Pre-owned Ladas."
"We're importing Russia's old politics, might as well import their old cars too."
Submitted by: Skeffles
"We should look at getting a slew of used Yugos from Russia. Should be able to pay them a steep premium with the current relationship the two countries' leaders have."
Submitted by: Yugo, no I go.
I hope I'm not the first person to tell you that the Yugo was built in Serbia, not Russia.
"Individual household's own vehicle driving 50 miles each way to get their own mail from the closest regional post office."
Submitted by: PJE
Read the original article on Jalopnik.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Is a $5,000 DOGE stimulus check a real thing? What we know
In February, President Donald Trump said he was considering a plan to pay out $5,000 stimulus checks to American taxpayers from the savings identified by billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Are they happening? No official plan or schedule for such a payout has been released, and a decision on the checks would have to come from Congress, which has so far been cool to the idea. And there have been questions as to how much DOGE has actually saved. The idea was floated by Azoria investment firm CEO James Fishback, who suggested on Musk's social media platform X that Trump and Musk should "should announce a 'DOGE Dividend'" from the money saved from reductions in government waste and workforce since it was American taxpayer money in the first place. He even submitted a proposal for how it would work, with a timeline for after the expiration of DOGE in July 2026. "At $2 trillion in DOGE savings and 78 million tax-paying households, this is a $5,000 refund per household, with the remaining used to pay down the national debt," he said in a separate post. Musk replied, "Will check with the President." "We're considering giving 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% to paying down the debt," Trump said in a during the Saudi-sponsored FII PRIORITY Summit in Miami Beach the same month. DOGE has dismantled entire federal agencies, wiped out government contracts and led the firings of tens of thousands of federal workers, leaving many agencies struggling to continue operations. DOGE checks? Elon Musk dodges DOGE stimulus check question during Wisconsin rally: Here's what he said. Fishbeck suggested that the potential refund go only to households that are net-income taxpayers, or households that pay more in taxes than they get back. The Pew Research Center said that most Americans with an adjusted gross income of under $40,000 effectively pay no federal income tax. They would not be eligible. If DOGE achieves Musk's initial goal of stripping $2 trillion from U.S. government spending by 2026, Fishback's plan was for $5,000 per household, or 20% of the savings divided by the number of eligible households. If DOGE doesn't hit the goal, Fishback said the amount should be adjusted accordingly. 'So again, if the savings are only $1 trillion, which I think is awfully low, the check goes from $5,000 to $2,500,' Fishback said during a podcast appearance. 'If the savings are only $500 billion, which, again, is really, really low, then the [checks] are only $1,250.' However, while Musk talked about saving $2 trillion in federal spending during Trump's campaign, he lowered the goal to $1 trillion after Trump assumed office and said in March he was on pace to hit that goal by the end of May. At a Cabinet meeting in April, Musk lowered the projected savings further to $150 billion in fiscal year 2026. Musk left the White House at the end of May when his designation as a "special government employee" ended. DOGE, the advisory group he created, is expected to continue without him. That depends on who you ask. On its website, DOGE claims to have saved an estimated $175 billion as of May 30, "a combination of asset sales, contract and lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletions, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions." The site says that works out to $1,086.96 saved per taxpayer. However, many of DOGE's claims have been exaggerated and several of the initiatives to slash agency workforces have been challenged in court. DOGE has been accused of taking credit for contracts that were canceled before DOGE was created, failing to factor in funds the government is required to pay even if a contract is canceled, and tallying every contract by the most that could possibly be spent on it even when nothing near that amount had been obligated. The website list has been changed as the media pointed out errors, such as a claim that an $8 million savings was actually $8 billion. On May 30, CNN reported that one of its reporters found that less than half the $175 billion figure was backed up with even basic documentation, making verification difficult if not impossible. Some of the changes may also end up costing taxpayers more, such as proposed slashes to the Internal Revenue Service that experts say would mean less tax revenue generated, resulting in a net cost of about $6.8 billion. Over the next 10 years, if IRS staffing stays low, the cumulative cost in uncollected taxes would hit $159 billion, according to the nonpartisan Budget Lab at Yale University. The per-taxpayer claim on the website is also inflated, CNN said, as it's based on '161 million individual federal taxpayers' and doesn't seem to include married people filing jointly. This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: DOGE dividends: Will American taxpayers get a $5,000 check?
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Perspective: From Trump v. Musk to Carlson v. Levin, are Republicans losing sight of the mission?
What started as something like a barroom brawl devolved quickly into a cage fight, which was distressing for those of us who don't drink and don't enjoy mixed martial arts. The symbolism, however, was rich. Just two months ago, Elon Musk and Donald Trump were ringside in Miami watching the Ultimate Fighting Championship; this week, they were the ones pummeling each other while all of social media watched, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. But Trump and Musk are not the only ones sparring. Political brawling has broken out across the country in ways that feel unusual, as if we are just a couple of social-media fisticuffs away from bringing back the great American duel, the kind that killed Alexander Hamilton. Dueling, however, has been called 'the violence of gentlemen,' so maybe we are safe because gentlemen are scarce in the current political landscape. It's not just Trump and Musk. Tucker Carlson and Mark Levin are feuding, so are Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh, and we're not that far past Shapiro's epic battle with Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Greene's heated drama with Lauren Boebert. There are other battles not suitable for mention in a family publication. It's tempting to say that the recent infighting is all within the GOP, and all about divisions between MAGA versus Never Trump, but it's not. Witness the Democrats' piling on Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary under Joe Biden, who is about to scorch Democrats in her forthcoming book. For Republicans, who under Trump have grown accustomed to governing with the gloves off, the infighting may be accelerating because they've temporarily lost their chief rival, the Democratic Party. The fortunes of the Democratic Party have fallen so low that they're spending millions on initiatives designed to win back young men while one of their star contenders for 2028, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is picking the brains of conservatives on his podcast. Absent a robust foe, Republicans are like a desolate Rocky Balboa with no one to fight, and so have turned on their own tribe. But what is happening is also a predictable result of when politics turns transactional instead of relational. Once the transactions are over, or once the transactions curdle and sour, there's nothing foundational to sustain the human relationship. We've seen this before with Trump, in his transactional relationship with Mike Pence. Many of us had hoped that there was something deeper there with Musk, with whom Trump seemed to have an almost fatherly relationship. It was not coincidence that much of the social media discourse about their 'breakup' was couched in terms of family — either divorce or estrangement. And while it was, on one level, train-wreck, cringe entertainment, like watching 'Housewives' or 'Tiger King,' it was also painful since so many of us know what it's like to have a close relationship implode. Utah Sen. Mike Lee spoke for many when he posted a photo of both men, with the caption 'But ... I really like both of them.' On his radio show Friday, Glenn Beck urged Trump and Musk to reconcile and to keep sight of their shared mission. It is that mission that is too often a casualty when two formerly aligned parties or individuals fall out, whether in politics or in a marriage. A mission can be hard to define; it can be too vague or have too many components. 'Essentialism' guru Greg McKeown says that a 'priority' is one thing, not many, and we risk failure when we set 'priorities.' Maybe that's part of what happened here. Trump and Musk had priorities, and some were in conflict with each other. It's much too early to say that the breakup is permanent; the men have mutual alliances and shared friends who presumably will work hard to bring about a reconciliation. But if the fissure lasts, the relationship that unfolded over the past year — with iconic moments like Musk jumping on the stage at a campaign event and Musk's son trotting after Trump on the White House lawn — was not really a relationship, but a transaction between two powerful men. And Democrats stand ready to reap the rewards.
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Musk and the Millers Got Cozy Outside the White House
During happier times at the White House, Elon Musk was known to spend large amounts of time with Stephen Miller and his wife, Katie, even outside of work. Katie Miller, an aide in the Department of Government Efficiency, was with Musk 'almost all the time' while he was at the White House, before opting to follow him out the door last month, The Wall Street Journal reports. Her departure is thought to have caused friction among White House officials. Miller was reportedly on Musk's payroll the entire time, even when her official role was as a special government employee, according to Politico's Playbook. 'And, like … who was she looking out for?' one unnamed administration official said. The idea that Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, was a close companion of Musk now seems far-fetched. The two have since had a public falling-out after Musk condemned President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act as a 'pork-filled' spending bill and a 'disgusting abomination.' Miller, one of Trump's most loyal allies, fired back with a thinly veiled attack on Musk on X on Thursday, writing: 'The only 'new' spending in the bill is to defend the homeland and deport the illegals—paid for by raising visa fees. All the other provisions? Massive spending cuts. There is no 'pork' in the bill. Just campaign promises.' Musk unfollowed Stephen Miller on social media around the same time his attacked him online. The Journal highlighted the fallout between Musk and Miller as yet another example of Musk burning bridges and irritating allies during his stint in the White House. Of course, there was an even more explosive falling-out between Musk and another former close ally on Thursday. The simmering tensions between Musk and President Donald Trump reached boiling point with an extraordinary back-and-forth playing out on social media. Trump lashed out at Musk for opposing his One Big Beautiful Bill Act and accused him of going 'crazy' over his plans to eliminate the electric vehicle (EV) mandate implemented under the Biden administration. Trump also suggested that the quickest way to save billions in federal spending would be to terminate the government subsidies and contracts awarded to Musk's tech companies. Earlier in the day, Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz that he believes Musk has 'TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome].' Responding with a furious post, Musk claimed on X: 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election,' and reposted in agreement a call for the president to be impeached and replaced with JD Vance. He also warned that Trump's import tariffs would trigger a recession later this year. Musk then dropped a 'really big bomb' in the spiralling feud. 'Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,' Musk wrote. It is well known that Trump and billionaire child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019, were at least acquaintances. Epstein partied with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in the 1990s, and Trump flew on Epstein's private jet multiple times during that period. The two reportedly fell out around 2004 over a property dispute in Palm Beach, Florida. There is no evidence Trump was connected to or aware of Epstein's crimes. In a statement regarding the public falling-out, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: 'This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted.' 'The president is focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again.'
