Postmaster General Louis DeJoy recently assigned Oshkosh Corp. a contract to provide the U.S. postal service with the next generation of vehicles – but some members of the House of Representatives question that award after it was revealed that someone bought much of the company’s stock just before the award was announced.
A letter signed by Carolyn B. Maloney, Chair of the Supervisory and Reform Commission, reads as follows:
The night before the award announcement, an unknown party bought 524,400 shares of Oshkosh Corp. worth $ 54.2 million. According to Bloomberg News, “the size of that transaction was almost as large as the average daily volume of stock in the previous year.”
These concerns were derived from previous concerns about this decision of the entire fleet. Specifically, the fact that only 10% of Oshkosh’s fleet would be electric, while the second option, Workhorse Group, could have provided a fully electric fleet. Which is kind of important, from President Biden Executive Order of 27 January on Climate Change explicitly calls for “clean, zero-emission vehicles for federal, state, local and tribal government fleets, including U.S. Postal Service vehicles.”
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DeJoy was also a little vague about the exact terms of the deal until it was pressed on them. Here are more from the Committee’s letter:
Shortly after the announcement, reports raised concerns about several aspects of the award. While two vehicles from competitors incorporated electric propulsion systems, the winning bidder Oshkosh allegedly presented a prototype with a petrol engine. Although the initial announcement stated that Oshkosh’s vehicles would be “equipped with either fuel-efficient internal combustion engines or battery-powered electric propulsion systems”, you testified before the Committee that only 10% from the initial order for the fleet would be electric.
The Committee requests documents relating to the selection of Oshkosh as USPS carrier.