USPS Sticks With ICE's Despite Biden's Executive Order -- March 3, 2021

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For those interested in e-trucks, this is a must read: Workhorse Electric delivery van builds are lagging, but backlog swells.

Over at FreightWaves via Yahoo!Finance, March 2, 2021.

WKHS:

• trading in the mid- to high-teens
• one year ago: < $3/share
• market cap: $2 billion
• P/E: N/A

Their truck plant is located in Union City, Indiana (a red state, which will be important later on as we will see).

So, this $2 billion company. How many trucks rolled off its assembly line in December, 2020? I don't know.

How many rolled off its assembly line in November, 2020?

I don't know that either.

But for the 4Q20, a whopping -- are you sitting down? -- a whopping seven trucks were built by the company. Seven trucks. And the company is worth $2 billion.

Okay.

But there is good news. The CEO says the company is scaling up [one would hope so]. 

We are facing various supply chain challenges, both internal and external," CEO Duane Hughes said on the company's Q4 earnings call Monday. "Given our backlog, we cannot sacrifice future build volume for current-year production. Scaling up manufacturing properly has to take precedence."

So, Workhorse will continue to take it slow, striving to build three of its composite-body battery-electric trucks a day in March with a plan to reach 10 trucks a day by the end of June.

The full-year goal of producing 1,800 trucks is a stretch, Hughes said. [At least he seems honest.]

The negligible volume also means Workhorse is paying more for parts and for delivery to the plant.

Now, back to that "red state" bit.

See another Freightwaves article, dated March 1, 2021:

Workhorse Group will meet face-to-face with the U.S. Postal Service on Wednesday and may fight to be included in the program for next-generation mail delivery trucks. 

The Cincinnati-based company was stunned last Tuesday when the Postal Service awarded a 10-year contract worth an initial $482 million to defense contractor Oshkosh Truck Co. for the Next Generation Delivery Vehicles. 

Workhorse was the only finalist in the competition offering a full battery-electric vehicle (BEV). 

Oshkosh submitted a gasoline-powered prototype for evaluation. 

It recently said it could provide about 10% electric trucks within the 50,000 to 165,000 mail trucks initially planned. 

Politics are becoming a factor in the Postal Service award, which followed years of delays. 

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a holdover from the Trump administration, reports to a nine-member board of governors. Three members were appointed by Trump. 

President Joe Biden recently filled three openings.Biden signed an executive order Jan. 25 requiring the nation’s 645,000-vehicle fleet to convert to electric vehicles. The Postal Service accounts for about 35% of those. 

DeJoy told a congressional subcommittee that he did not see reduced maintenance cost of electric vehicles providing a significant advantage over internal combustion engines. He also said charging infrastructure was expensive compared to maintenance. 

Both Ohio, home to Workhorse, and Wisconsin, which is Oshkosh’s base, are hotly contested states politically. Trump won Ohio in the November presidential election. Biden was victorious in Wisconsin.