State of Wyoming Has 2 EVs In Its Fleet of 1,100 Vehicles And Not Likely To Get Any More

Mail delivery driver Roger Russi loves the new Ford E-Transit electric-powered cargo van that he sometimes cruises around the streets of Wyoming’s capital city to deliver mail for government workers.

The EV has some pop when the pedal is pushed to the metal, Russi said.

“If you step on it too hard, they’ll scoot away from you. They are fast,” he said of the van’s pick-up. “But they’re really comfortable and nice to drive.”

Co-worker Danny Barela didn’t have any problems driving the EV cargo van Friday through slush and snow piles that buried entrances to government buildings.

“It’s handling well,” he said.

Other positives: The EV is quiet and has a 360-degree-angle camera in the rear that displays what’s happening from behind on a big 12-inch screen next to the driver. The camera takes the place of a rearview mirror mounted on the front windshield, as the van has panels instead of windows on the sides and in the rear.

There also are some negatives.

This EV cargo van model has a range of only 126 miles, the battery takes too long to charge up (overnight), and sometimes the 120-volt outlet that is used to juice up the battery shorts out when it rains, snows or is too cold.

“Snow blows up into the GFCI (outlet) socket and shorts out the charge,” Russi said.

Before this week, the state’s General Services Division (GSD) only had one of these $57,046 vehicles used for picking up mail, flats and packages from the U.S. Postal Service on Converse Avenue. That mail is brought back to the state’s central mail facility on 18th Street, where it’s sorted and then delivered to state offices.

On Monday, GSD added a second, much larger electric powered cargo van.

The two EVs have divided up the workload of picking up mail and running delivery routes in the downtown area – which is the only place where Wyoming-owned EVs are traveling around.

And they’re not always light loads that they haul, either. On any given day, the central mail facility can handle up to 150 certified pieces of mail, up to 500 parcels and flats, and six to eight tubs of mail.

Only In Cheyenne

GSD Administrator Andrew Kuhlmann said that the two EV vans are unique to the service of delivering mail, and he doubts more will be added to the state’s fleet of 1,084 vehicles. That’s because their range is limited, and Wyoming is a spacious state with few charging stations, Kuhlmann said.

“Central mail has a unique purpose for the new vehicles,” said Kuhlmann of the short driving range of the vans.

“Getting these vehicles of this size works for this use,” he said. “We have a lot of pickup trucks, and with oil and gas inspectors, and DEQ (Department of Environmental Quality) engineers using them, we didn’t want them to get stuck driving in the back country.”

Wyoming also doesn’t have the charging infrastructure to support a larger EV fleet, he said.

Kuhlmann said that he’s hopeful the EVs used around Cheyenne will cut down on maintenance costs.

The cost of fuel, maintenance and repairs for vehicles in Wyoming’s fleet in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2023, was $2.7 million, or the equivalent of an average of 24 cents per mile driven, according to figures provided by Kuhlmann’s office.

Reliability is everything for central mail, where drivers traveled a total of 17,619 miles last year.

They Pull Their Weight

The smaller Ford E-Transit cargo van, which GSD has owned since August, is parked in the rear lot of the central mail facility on Cheyenne’s westside.

The big EV van is parked inside a heated garage in the industrial-sized building, though they can be swapped if the one parked outside encounters a charging problem — which has occasionally happened in Wyoming’s unforgiving weather.

The smaller van, which was bought from Greiner Ford of Casper, has a roof height of about 83.6 inches and cargo volume of 277.7 cubic feet.

It’s good to hold hundreds of letters and flats.

The GSA paid $60,554 to buy the larger van from Ken Garff Ford of Cheyenne.

The big van can do the same thing as its smaller version. But since it is 100.8 inches tall and has an overall cargo volume of 357.1 cubic feet, its interior is spacious enough to hold a few wheeled, crate-shaped gurneys from the post office.

When parked in the garage, the gurneys can be rolled out of the van’s side door and onto a ramp that gently slopes to the floor.

A negative for the big EV van: Its range is about 108 miles (18 miles fewer than the small van), and it can’t pull into the Pioneer Avenue Garage across the street from the Wyoming State Capitol, if it ever needed to.

The maximum entrance height to the garage — 8 feet, 4 inches — doesn’t offer enough clearance to handle the big van by less than an inch.

The big van has only been driven for a week, but Russi understands what could happen if he does pull into the garage.

“You don’t want to go in there because it would scrape the top,” Russi said.

On The Road

There are a handful of routes that fan out from the central mail facility.

The small EV typically travels the so-called Hathaway route with stops at places like the Wyoming Public Defender’s Office on 20th Street, Hathaway Building along Capitol Avenue, the Wyoming Department of Agriculture along Carey Avenue, and the Wyoming Administration and Information offices in the Idelman Mansion across from the Capitol.

On Friday, Barela completed this route in about an hour. His biggest worry was how fast the van would heat up in the 25-degree Fahrenheit temperature in Cheyenne.

“The older trucks took forever," he said, but with the EV there are, “No issues. It heats up quickly.”

Expansion not Likely

The big EV takes the Quest route, even though state government doesn’t have administrative offices in the abandoned Yellowstone Road building. It takes a longer route around town navigating to more buildings.

It travels a route that takes it the farthest away from downtown.

The van ranges five miles south of the central mail facility to Wyoming’s public laboratory, called its Combined Labs Facility, located along South College Drive. It also has a stop six miles away at the Wyoming Liquor Commission along Campstool Road.

Dale Spiess, the fleet manager for the Wyoming State Motor Pool, which is responsible for the procurement, replacement, maintenance and disposal of all vehicles owned by the Motor Pool Division, doubts Wyoming will be in the market for more EVs anytime soon.

“This is a kind of test case experiment with EVs. They are compatible with what we need to deliver mail,” said Spiess, adding that he is getting his mechanics certified to perform repair work on EVs.

“We don’t have to take them to a dealership to get fixed,” he said.

Kuhlmann agreed.

“Cheyenne is unique,” he said. “We’re not sending them out into Wyoming, with 98,000 square miles. We are not looking to convert the state fleet.”

Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.