USPS PO'ed at E85
The United States Postal Service is the single largest buyer of E85-compatible vehicles. According to Bloomberg, from 1995 – 2005, the government agency has used your tax money (and customers') to purchase some 30k corn juice-compatible trucks and minivans. So how's that going then? "You're getting fewer miles per gallon, and it's costing us more,'' according to Walt O'Tormey, P.O. engineering veep. In specific, the mail carrier's gas consumption jumped by more than 1.5m gallons. Well, duh. E85 doesn't deal the mpgs like regular. Still, a Postal Service study put a number to their pain: the new vehicles got as much as 29 percent fewer miles to the gallon than their previous trucks. Oh, and the post office only fueled a thousand of their E-85 compatible fleet with Iowa's best, due to availability. (Stroke of luck, that.) The rest of the article bashes E85, but good. Including news (to us) that the Sierra Club's lining-up against the bio-fuel. "Not only does this [CAFE credit for E85 vehicles] do nothing to improve fuel efficiency,'' says Daniel Becker, an environmental lawyer and former head of Sierra Club's global-warming program. "It's also ensuring that we're going to use more gasoline.'' Yeah, that sucks. Unless, of course, you're a corn farmer.
More by Robert Farago
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When corporations use the force of government to swindle taxpayers, it's a form of leftist socialism called "fascism". eg. IBM/Dehomag, GM/Adam Opel AG, Ford-Werke, Exxon/IG Farben, Du Pont, Krupp, Union Carbide, Westinghouse, General Electric, Gilette, Goodrich, Singer, Eastman Kodak, Coca-Cola, ITT, J. P. Morgan, Union Bank who all supported the German WWII effort. It's an old scam that works well.
Whenever i read about E85 i want corn on the cob.
I work for the Post Office and NOTHING the clowns in management does surprise me. We have a gas pump at our office,and fuel our LLV's as needed. No records of miles between fuel are ever recorded,just gallons used. As a experiment,I recorded the miles and gallons on my truck. A 4 cylinder(S-10 drivetrain) automatic that drives 25 miles a day,never going over 50 mph and I get 9 miles a gallon.The trucks were built in 1992 and are falling apart but management is spending billions of dollars on new sorting machine. I put in a suggestion that we monitor fuel useage and move trucks around to but the higher mileage ones on routes that drive more.Never heard a thing.