Postmaster General Louis DeJoy recently awarded a contract to Oshkosh Corp to provide the United States postal service with its next generation of vehicles – but some members of the House of Representatives are questioning the award after it was revealed that someone ‘ a large stake in the company just before the award was announced.
A letter signed by Carolyn B. Maloney, chair of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, reads as follows:
The night before the announcement of the award, an unknown party bought 524,400 shares of Oshkosh Corp’s worth $ 54.2 million. According to Bloomberg News, “the volume of trading was almost as much as the average daily volume in the stock in the previous year.”
This concern stems from previous concern over this whole naval decision. Specifically, the fact that only 10 percent of Oshkosh’s fleet would be electric, while the second option, Workhorse Group, could offer a fully electric fleet. This is quite important, as President Biden’s January 27 Executive Order on Climate Change explicitly calls for “clean and emission-free vehicles for federal, state, local and tribal government fleets, including vehicles of the U.S. Postal Service.”
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DeJoy was also a bit vague about the exact terms of the deal until he was pushed into it. Here is more from the committee letter:
Shortly after the announcement, reports expressed concern about various aspects of the award. While two competing vehicles included electric drives, the winning bidder Oshkosh apparently submitted a prototype with a petrol engine. Although the initial announcement said that Oshkosh’s vehicles would “be equipped with fuel-efficient internal combustion engines or battery-powered electric power stations,” you explained in the testimony before the committee that only 10% of the initial order for the fleet would be electric. be.
The committee is requesting documents related to the selection of Oshkosh as USPS carrier.