Virtually since he arrived, Postmaster General – and former trucking executive – Louis DeJoy has been ranting about eliminating the “half-empty trucks” moving within the Postal Service’s transportation network.

The term was used extensively in the Postal Regulatory Commission proceeding in which the USPS sought an advisory opinion (which it ignored) about reducing the service standards for First-Class Mail and some Periodicals, and has been often cited – such as during an April 16 Senate hearing – as a pervasive and chronic situation requiring the corrective measures advocated in the PMG’s 10-Year Plan.

If the PMG’s claims are to be understood, it would be useful to first understand exactly what “half-full” means – literally, as well as how it’s thrown around by the USPS. However, therein lies a degree of subjectivity that the USPS appears to use, or interpret, to its advantage and, in turn, to justify actions really meant to serve other purposes.

For over-the-road operations, the typical dry van trailer in use by most carriers is 53 feet long, with an interior cargo width and height of 100 inches and 110-112 inches respectively, yielding an interior volume of 4053.3 cubic feet. The maximum floor capacity of such a trailer is 24 to 30 pallets, depending on how they’re positioned, and the maximum weight capacity is about 45,000 pounds. Therefore, a “half-full” trailer would be loaded with 2,027 cubic feet of cargo, or 12-15 pallets, or 22,500 pounds.

But those dimensions are neither offered nor used by the USPS in its citations of “half-full” trailers.

At one time, long-haul trailers would be bedloaded, with sacks of mail or “bricklaid” parcels loaded by hand to fill a trailer end-to-end and to a height of seven feet or more. However, with the increased use of easier to load/unload containers and pallets, such a labor-intensive method is decreasingly employed.

Instead, particularly for medium stage length and shorter trips, the contents would be in postal mail transport equipment or on pallets or some combination. In those situations, what it meant by “half-full” can mean different things depending on how “full” is measured – or on how the speaker wants to characterize the load.

For example, a trailer loaded with general purpose mail containers or with pallets will be “filled” because its floor area is covered, long before its total cubic space is filled or its maximum load weight is reached.

A GPMC measures 42 by 29 inches, and is 70 inches high. So, theoretically, if the GPMCs were loaded three abreast for the length of the trailer, 15 such rows, or 45 GPMCs, could be carried. The floor area of the van would be covered – “full” – but the trailer would neither be “full” by weight nor by cubic capacity. Each GMPC is 49.3 cubic feet, so 45 would represent 2,218.5 cubic feet, or 54.73% of the trailer’s available cubic capacity.

In another example, a trailer loaded with 40”x48” pallets would make more efficient use of capacity. Under USPS standards, the maximum weight of a pallet (or of a stack of pallets) cannot exceed 2,200 pounds nor can it exceed 77 inches in height (84 inches for stacked pallets). Therefore, if each pallet (or stack) weighed 2,200 pounds, the allowable load for a trailer would be met by 20 pallets or stacks – well before the trailer was full (based on cubic volume or floor space). Moreover, given the trailer’s total cubic capacity, the maximized stacked pallets, consuming 93.33 cubic feet each, would represent only 1,866.67 cubic feet, or 46.05% of the trailer’s available volume.

(Pallet boxes – cardboard sleeves on pallets – or similar “Postal Pak” containers, are up to 69 or 77 inches, respectively, with a lower total weight capacity.)

If facilities used the over-the-road containers initially developed to transport bulk mail and parcels from a BMC (now NDC) to a P&DC, the result would be similar. Each OTR is 63.5 inches long by 43 inches wide by 70 inches high, with a maximum load weight of 2,000 pounds. Loaded two-across, a 53-foot trailer could carry only 18 (nine rows), (77.89% of total floor space) without reaching the trailer’s maximum cubic or weight limits.

In the foregoing examples, the dimensional measurements were of the containers without considering their contents. Therefore, the even more important measurement to use in the determination of “half-full” is the load of each container.

So, again using a 53-foot trailer, covering the available floor space with GMPCs that are filled to 80%, or pallets/stacked pallets that are 80% of the maximum height, or pallet boxes or OTR containers filled to 80%, would accordingly represent 43.82%, 44.21%, or 38.99% of total cubic capacity. Naturally, if the containers were less loaded, the percentage of total available volume consumed would be less as well. In no example load would the weight reach the trailer’s maximum.

Of course, all postal transportation isn’t in 53-foot trailers. The agency’s own trailers are shorter and lower, and its 26-foot box trucks (like those of contractors) are smaller still.

Nonetheless, regardless of the vehicle in which they’re carried, GMPCs, pallets, and other containers are the same, filling the same floor space, with the same available capacity. The air space above a pallet or container is unused in a 5-ton straight truck just as it is in a 53-foot trailer.

Regardless of the combinations of equipment and load that could be developed in real postal transportation situations, even if the floor of a vehicle were covered, it’s unlikely that the total available cubic capacity would be filled or the maximum load weight would be reached.

The Postal Service appears to prefer the ease and speed of loading and offloading containerized loads to the utilization of maximum cubic or weight capacity. Mail is not so heavy as to be a weight issue for a trailer load, and typical intra-service area loads are of containers that, regardless of their loads, leave over three feet of empty vertical space above them. So, compared to mail bedloaded wall-to-wall, front- to-back, and floor-to-ceiling, a typical truck loaded with mail on or in MTE would never, literally, be “full.” Therefore, the apparent meaning of “full” to the Postal Service is that the maximum content was loaded based on the nature of the containers used and the net usable capacity; logically, “half-full” would mean that half the usable capacity wasn’t filled.

Though that seems a sensible conclusion, if it is indeed that obvious, it’s curious why, in all its pleadings, filings, and responses to PRC interrogatories, the Postal Service has never offered such a simple explanation – if, in fact, the real issue of “half-full” isn’t about something else.

In all the statements about “half-full trucks,” the USPS has never explained why, if a vehicle isn’t being filled adequately, a smaller vehicle isn’t assigned in its place. A 53-foot trailer can be replaced by one that’s 48, 45, or 28 feet, or by a 26-foot or 10-foot box truck, or by a cargo van – whichever is most suitable. The USPS logistics and contracting teams aren’t incapable of making adjustments.

Accordingly, making “half-full” the symbol of inefficient transportation is disingenuous and deliberately misleading to say the least, but may be a cover for the PMG’s real purpose.

His latest use of “half-full” allegations is to excuse transportation reductions such as under the “Local Transportation Initiative” (“Optimized Collections”) that eliminates afternoon collection runs from processing centers to smaller post offices. If “half-full” trucks are indeed a major problem, it would seem reasonable for him to first adjust truck capacity (i.e., use a smaller vehicle) before simply eliminating the afternoon runs and delaying the mail that would have been collected.

Of course, it’s unknown outside L’Enfant Plaza whether such a course of action was ever considered. Moreover, no inquiry has ever sought to detail the scope and severity of the “half full” truck problem, nor has any ever asked why eliminating transportation was the necessary – or preferred – option to trimming vehicle capacity.

Similarly, no one has pressed the USPS to justify prioritizing “efficiency” and cost reduction over service.

The PMG’s apparent position, that the Postal Service, in the pursuit of financial self-sufficiency, should provide service only to the extent that it’s cost-effective, overlooks the fundamental nature of the agency – as a public service. Sometimes, providing service won’t be cost-effective or efficient, but it’s still the Postal Service’s obligation and mission.

As a result, it seems reasonable to conclude that the PMG’s “half-full trucks” problem is an equally half-factual condition that he’s chosen not to resolve simply by smaller trucks, but rather to use as a convenient excuse to cut service.

Leo Raymond is owner and managing director, Mailers Hub.

This article originally appeared in the July/August, 2024 issue of Mailing Systems Technology.