Mysterious, sudden blaze chars mail truck along North Carolina route, firefighters say

Neither snow nor rain nor heat will stop the mail from coming, the USPS motto goes. But fire? That might cause a delay.

A mail truck making deliveries in Wilmington, North Carolina, suddenly caught fire around noon Monday, turning the boxy, white truck into a charred wreck.

Two engines from the Wilmington Fire Department responded and not only extinguished the burning vehicle, but also rushed to remove parcels from the hot metal heap, saving all the mail inside, department spokeswoman Rebekah Thurston told McClatchy News.

“#sorryyourbillswillstillarrive,” the department wrote in a tweet, along with photos of what’s left of the mail truck.

No one was injured, Thurston said.

It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the blaze, but the fire marshal determined it was accidental, “electrical in nature and started in the front engine compartment,” Thurston said.

The USPS’ Long Life Vehicles, or LLVs, are the most common and instantly recognizable in the postal service’s fleet — and many are old and deteriorating, Vice reported. Since May 2014, over 400 LLVs have caught fire, with 125 burned so thoroughly that no cause could be determined.

“USPS vehicles catching fire is becoming more frequent as the fleet ages and is in dire need of replacement,” a 2015 newsletter from the National Association of Letter Carriers said, according to Vice. “This is a very dangerous situation and union leadership must educate the membership and monitor managements [sic] compliance with vehicles scheduled maintenance requirements.”

This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 3:09 PM.