The mail Jeeps: AM General's Dispatchers, and a South Bend assembly line

1971 — 1984

The vehicle: The Dispatcher — the DJ series — was the postal Jeep: a two-wheel-drive derivative of the CJ, built to the Postal Service's own specification with right-hand drive, sliding doors and a sorting table, so that a carrier could deliver from the driver's seat to curbside boxes without leaving the vehicle. The line began under Willys and Kaiser Jeep in the 1950s and 1960s; it passed to the American Motors years and then, from 1971, to AM General, which built it to the end in 1984. The lettered series runs DJ-5A (1968–70, a Chevrolet Nova four of 153 cubic inches with a two-speed Powerglide, the fully enclosed postal body from 1968), DJ-5B (1970–72, the AMC 232 six), DJ-5C (1973–74), DJ-5D (1975–76), DJ-5F (1977–78), DJ-5G (1979), DJ-5L (1982, the GM Iron Duke four) and DJ-5M (1983–84, the AMC 150 four) — the last of the line. The Postal Service's own display text states that over 130,000 of these Jeeps were built; other estimates run to 150,000 or more; alongside them the record counts 35,000 FJ-8 and 4,000 FJ-9 postal vans of the Fleetvan line, whose production seat the sources reached do not state, and which are printed here as totals only.

The seat, printed as the record states it: Where the Dispatchers were assembled is carried in three statements, and all three print at their strengths. The general references list DJ assembly at Toledo, Ohio — the Toledo Complex — and at AM General in Mishawaka, Indiana. Against those, the Jeep-specialist record carries AM General's own photograph of a Dispatcher assembly line at "the former South Bend Studebaker plant" — the Chippewa Avenue plant, which this history's record places in South Bend, Kaiser Jeep having bought Studebaker's Chippewa facilities in 1964 — and identifies the earliest white Jeeps on that line as likely DJ-5E Electrucks, the electric variant of the next entry. A Dispatcher line photographed by the company itself inside the old Studebaker plant is the strongest seat evidence the record holds, and the Toledo and Mishawaka listings stand beside it unreconciled, as the references give them.

Sources:

1. The Jeep DJ catalog record — the series by letter and year, the engines, the postal specification; assembly listed at the Toledo Complex and at AM General in Mishawaka.
2. Derek Redmond's CJ3B.info, the Jeep-specialist record — AM General's own photograph of a Dispatcher assembly line at the former South Bend Studebaker plant, the earliest white Jeeps on the line identified as likely DJ-5E Electrucks, and the photograph caption's 1967 purchase date printed against the record's 1964.
3. The United States Postal Service's display text — over 130,000 Dispatchers built; the marque estimates to 150,000 and more, and the FJ-8 and FJ-9 van totals, as the record states them.
4. The Businesses section of this history — the Chippewa Avenue plant's passage from Studebaker to Kaiser Jeep in 1964 and the formation of AM General in 1971.