D61 nailed it in their comment, and sounds like they’ve been through it first hand; and unfortunately FourteenEyes too… and take my word with a grain of salt lol this is all second/third hand. My dad was a rural carrier then postmaster ~ 1980s-~2010s. On the crashing note - I think one of his colleagues had at least a few duis before they fired her lol but that was usually driving in their own car with the light on top so maybe the standards are different. I digress though.

There was restructuring in the 70s and then more and more- the gov determined the USPS needs to turn a profit - and rather than doing so through diversifying into things like postal banking (they used to cash checks, do wire transfers etc) the gov sought to increase volume via subsidized junk mail, and applied austerity elsewhere. They’re also restricted on how they set rates - which has fucked them since the boom of e-commerce- but I’ll get back to that.

Basically all of the smaller rural stations were consolidated to regional hubs, routes became longer, but staffing didn’t adjust for that. They also didn’t adjust infrastructure as most of the transportation is contracted I believe - so with the increase in e-commerce they’re trying to move exponentially more through the same old systems. If the gov would’ve decided to double down on infrastructure development like Amazon has done (with subsidies obvi) - maybe even nationalize it (!?) - they could have a highly efficient system which sustains itself. But again I digress.

They’ve basically just ripped all of the copper out of the walls - so yes - the lights don’t work great.