In May 2019, former President Donald Trump tweeted that Workhorse, an electric vehicle manufacturer, would purchase GM’s shuttered factory in Lordstown, Ohio, greatly increasing Workhorse’s inventory. Workhorse’s stock has pretty much gone up since then, along with a suspicion that it might the next USPS mail truckFriends, it won’t be.
The US Postal Service announced Tuesday that instead, Oshkosh Defense, a Wisconsin contractor, will make it, cutting Workhorse’s stock price in half almost immediately. Wednesday, Workhorse issued the following statement, which is identical to the statement I issued in high school after asking someone for a prom and getting turned down:
On February 23, 2021, the USPS issued a press release announcing that it had awarded an award under the NGDV contract to a competing finalist, details of which can be found hereAfter being notified of the USPS decision, the Company has requested additional information from the USPS in accordance with the bidding process rules and is currently awaiting a response. The company plans to explore all of the options available to non-award-winning finalists in a government bidding process. As more updates are made, Workhorse plans to share that information through appropriate communication channels, to the extent permitted by the company.
According to The New York Times, Workhorse had less than $ 1 million in revenue in the first three quarters of 2020, while Oshkosh had $ 8.4 billion in revenue in 2019 alone. Workhorse also has only about 130 employees, while Oshkosh has more than 14,000. The mail truck contract, meanwhile, calls for up to 165,000 new mail trucks over a ten-year period, meaning it’s possible Workhorse’s small size alone doomed it.
All of this means that this is a major, potentially fatal, miss for Workhorse, although it still is its other business lines, in addition to the ten percent investment in Lordstown Motors, the electric truck manufacturer that unveiled their Endurance at the Trump White House. That day, thanks to his investment in Lordstown, Workhorse saw its share rise 16 percentIt’s a good thing Trump is still in the White House to give it a boost … wait, I hear it different … hmm.