Turning The Grumman LLV Postal Vehicle Into A Camper Was A Stupid Idea So We’re Doing It Again With The New Oshkosh NGDV

In many ways, animals are probably smarter than humans. If you walk your dog up to the edge of your “invisible fence,” the pooch gets a mildly unpleasant tingle and learns to stay out of the Tingle Zone. Meanwhile, a human being will get stay up way too late on a work night, be miserable and barely productive the next day (an hours-long unpleasant tingle), then do the same damn thing all over again without a second thought.

I have to say that I exhibit similar not-learning-from-your-mistakes behavior. Recently, I spent precious hours of my ever-diminishing life doing drawings showing how to convert a nearly-forty-year-old mail truck into a camper. The ill-suited postal vehicle in question was the Grumman LLV; this stands for “Long Life Vehicle” but neither the manufacturer or the USPS ever thought “long life” would mean four decades.

A few of these government-owned vehicles have come into the hands of the public, and other than the fact that it’s made of aluminum there are no good reasons to try to turn this thing into a motorhome. There’s barely enough room for a table, seating, and kitchenette; I had to make a pop-up roof in order to provide room for sleep. I think I proposed an electric powertrain and removing the wretched Iron Duke four-cylinder from the ancient S-10 chassis.

Interior space was minimal. Apparently, I put hibachis in place of the old motor in the engine compartment, but you’ll need to re-read the post to find out since I have no time or interest in revisiting this silly idea.

Produced from 1986 to 1994, the newest of these LLVs are now thirty years old, so if you think that you’re the only one patching up your hooptie to be a serviceable vehicle you are not alone. Keeping this aging fleet afloat is no longer really feasible for the government, and the Postal Service has finally made a choice of a contractor and design for a new mail truck. After wasting time inexplicably changing a letter-carrying vehicle into a mobile living space, I certainly won’t make the mistake of trying to do that again, will I?

Who are we kidding? Of course I will.

Going Not As Postal

The Oshkosh Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) is the Postal Service’s selected machine to replace the dying LLV. Supposedly they’ll start appearing on the streets very shortly, though when I mentioned this to our postal carrier he scoffed and said that he’d “believe it when he sees it” and shook his sweat-covered head in the ninety-degree heat of this uncooled metal box. At that moment his LLV died; he cranked on it for about half a minute, eventually bringing the Iron Duke back to smoky life and stumbling away.

The NGDV is far larger than the old LLV, especially in height, and the aesthetics have been described by a number of critics as “really dorky looking”.

Indeed, anything twenty feet long, nine feet high, and seven feet wide with an engine compartment sticking out of one end would prove a challenge for even Pininfarina to make look good, so it’s no surprise that in the hands of a defense contractor like Oshkosh this thing didn’t exactly come out with the unparalleled beauty of a 365GTB Daytona.

Honestly, I’ve seen the interior layout and I’m still not quite sure why it had to be made so tall. Instead of questioning this choice, I’ll just go ahead and use this decision to my advantage. Maybe, just maybe, this conversion will work out after all.

Mailing It In

If nothing else, the NGDV is far better suited to being a camper than the old LLV that I converted, but that’s sort of like saying that a Chevy Tracker is far better for the Acropolis Rally than a Chevette. Actually, that’s a bit harsh to say, since the chassis of the NGDV was reportedly derived from a Ford Transit, something that actually has been used for overlanding RVs already. The NGVD will offer the options of gas or electric and two- or four-wheel drive. A 2.0 liter Ecoboost four-cylinder doesn’t sound like much, but compared to the 70 horsepower diesel engines powering 1980s motorhomes such as a Winnebago LeSharo the 245 horsepower that Ecoboost pumps out is rocket power. That’s also something on the order of a 150 percent increase over the old LLV. A larger 2.3 liter Ecoboost would make it more than respectable.

Starting with the standard NGDV, I’ve added much bigger wheels and tires, a brush bar, and high intensity light bar to allow our camper to do mild off roading with the standard front wheel drive. Up top, skylight windows with white tinting film allow in light and reflect the sun’s heat. A small stripe around the top of the roof attempts to break up the visual mass, but that’s a bit too much for anything to work on.

In back, the roll-up rear door is now a fixed panel with a huge window; more glass appears on the rear side door.

I’ve reused my idea from the LLV of the “envelope” rear side windows. This graphic nod to the NGDV’s mail truck origin can provide minimal ventilation by opening the “envelope flap”, or you can tilt the whole thing up to let in more air.

Thankfully, very few people buy a motorhome based on its appearance, since with a few notable exceptions most of them are quite lacking in that department anyway. No, they care about what it’s like inside, and that’s where the NGDV surprisingly shines. I’d even venture to say that the NGDV will best any other mail-carrying vehicle in the world as an RV candidate, even if that’s like saying Richard Nixon’s piano playing skills would have decimated Bill Clinton’s saxaphone abilities on Star Search.

Interior capacity is where the NGDV shines over the LLV. In fact, without the pop-top sleeper, the LLV really would never have even begun to work as a micro motorhome. The vast interior space of the NGDV with the cathedral-like ceilings gives us plenty of room for not only ample living space, but also options for overhead sleeping areas to maximize use of the square footage.

I’ve kept the NGDV as a right-hand drive vehicle, but with effort it could certainly be converted to the other side. The mail sorting tray thing from the postal format is replaced by a passenger’s seat and possibly a center jump seat as well. A pop-up table means this area will become part of the living space when the motorhome is parked; the seats can swivel to face each other and create a conversation nook. A fold-down desk on the wall behind the passenger’s seat means this could be the impromptu “office” of the motorhome.

Unlike the LLV, we now have room for a self-contained small-footprint bathroom with shower, sink, and toilet. On the outside wall of the bathroom is a kitchenette unit with sink, cooktop and overhead microwave. Inward-facing seating at the very back has the main dining table between it; four could sit here and enjoy the view out that massive rear window. This space could convert to a double sleeper if needed, but you likely wouldn’t.

Why? That’s because the NGDV has another double sleeper above this space, a similar sleeper would sit above the front driver’s compartment, meaning that the NGDV might be able to sleep at least six people. That isn’t even counting if we find a way to make the driver’s compartment area sleeping space as well. This is where the extra height comes in quite handy. In the center of the NGDV, the extra height could be used to sink the roof-mounted air conditioning unit down to help avoid being the subject of one of those viral videos of low bridges or gas station awnings doing a guillotine job on your A/C.

Mail Enhancement

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw famously said “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.” Of course, I believe that if I told George of my interest in turning a postal delivery truck into a camper I’m fairly certain that he’d say “damn, that’s a fucking stupid idea!” Indeed, it probably is, but at least it makes more sense than my earlier rendition on a vehicle that was poorly matched for such duties even before it became the worn-out decades-old piece of crap it is today.

Here’s the best news: there likely won’t be another new mail truck released in the next thirty years, so there’s no need to fear that I’ll waste any more time on this idea again any time soon.

How Our Daydreaming Designer Would Turn An Old Mail Truck Into An Amazing Mini Camper – The Autopian

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Does A Daydreaming Designer’s Semi Sleeper Concept from 1990 Make Sense? – The Autopian

Our Daydreaming Designer Imagines The Ultimate Autopian Tour Bus – The Autopian