Postal Service seeks to cut gasoline dependence

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. mail carriers are adding high fuel prices to the list of things that won't keep them from their appointed rounds.

The U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday said it is looking for vehicle technologies that are less dependent on gasoline to replace its 195,000 neighborhood delivery vehicles.

The Postal Service, which owns 220,000 vehicles in total, operates the world's largest civilian fleet. It has also been hard-hit by soaring gas prices in recent years.

According to Walter O'Tormey, the Postal Service's vice president of engineering, a 1-cent increase in the cost of a gallon of fuel adds $8 million to its annual expenses. Fuel costs are expected to increase by $600 million this year. They were $1.7 billion last year.

Letter carriers are testing a number of different technologies in 43,000 vehicles, O'Tormey said. They include vehicles that run on ethanol, electricity, natural gas and hydrogen fuel cells.

On Wednesday, the Postal Service announced a partnership with General Motors Corp to use two of the automaker's Chevrolet Equinox fuel cell vehicles for neighborhood delivery routes in Irvine, California, and Washington, D.C. The vehicles are being funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Meanwhile, the Postal Service is also using 10 Ford Motor Co Escape hybrid vehicles to deliver mail and is in talks with Ford about testing a plug-in hybrid in 2009.

"We know that we would be bankrupting the next generation if we were to make a decision to buy the wrong vehicle," O'Tormey said in an interview.

One issue for the Postal Service, O'Tormey said, is that electric and hydrogen vehicles make less noise than those with traditional combustion engines -- a potential safety issue.

"If you had kids out in the street and they weren't paying attention, they may not hear the carrier pulling up," O'Tormey said. "So the carrier has to be very sensitive to his environment."

(Reporting by Nichola Groom, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)