WASHINGTON - The stock price of an Ohio company that plunged after losing its bid for a lucrative postal service truck contract took a slight upward bump after a published report said that a congressman plans to fight a decision to give that contract to a Wisconsin business.

Stock of the Cincinnati-based Workhorse Group plummeted from $31 a share to $17 a share on Tuesday after the US Postal Service announced that it had awarded a multi-billion-dollar contract to modernize the United States Postal delivery fleet to Oshkosh Defense.

Workhorse, which was one of the companies vying for the ten-year pact, saw its stock value increase from $15.21 to $18.87 per share late Thursday after Bloomberg reported that U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) vowed to block the contract.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Huffman expressed concern that only 10% of the 165,000 next-generation postal vehicles manufactured by Oshkosh would be powered by electricity.  The remainder would be fuel-efficient internal combustion engines.

Workhorse was the only bidder offering all-electric vehicles, according to Bloomberg.

In signing an executive order to close the loopholes in "Buy American" policies for the federal government last month, President Biden said he would promote electric vehicles for government use.

"The federal government also owns an enormous fleet of vehicles which we are going to replace with clean, electric vehicles made right here in America by American workers, creating a million autoworker jobs and clean energy and vehicles that are net-zero emissions," said Biden.

In late January, Huffman introduced the Federal Leadership in Energy Efficient Transportation (FLEET) Act that would require the postal service to reduce their petroleum consumption by 2% each year over the next 10 years.

After learning that it had not been awarded the contract, Workhorse announced that is seeking additional information from the postal service and is awaiting a response at this time. “The Company intends to explore all avenues that are available to non-awarded finalists in a government bidding process,” Workhorse said in a statement.

Steve Burns, the former CEO of Workhorse and now the CEO of Lordstown Motors said in 2019 that if Workhorse won the postal contract, he would try to convince Workhorse to manufacture the postal vehicles in portions of the same former General Motors Assembly plant in Lordstown where LMC is planning to make the all-electric Endurance pickup trucks.

Following news that Workhorse didn’t win the contract, Burns admitted that winning the contract would have been nice, but told 21 News that it wasn’t a “big deal” for Lordstown Motors since making the all-electric Endurance pickup truck is the core focus of LMC’s business.

In 2019, Workhorse signed a three-year intellectual property licensing agreement with Lordstown Motors regarding the Workhorse W-15 electric pickup truck in exchange for an initial equity stake of 10% in LMC.