Features
1 nov 22

Tips to preparing class 3 vehicle fleet in US

There are a few simple things to prepare for when putting together your operational fleet, also known as tool-of-trade vehicles, in the United States.

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Unlike some countries where benefit vehicles for executives dominate corporate fleet, much of the fleet operations in the US are made up of work trucks and vans which are directly related to the revenue of the company.

First of all, most vehicles over 10,000 GVM (gross vehicle weight) - or to say Class 3 vehicles and up - require a CDL (commercial driver’s license). Moreover, these drivers are obligated to provide electronic logging data (ELD) which is reported to the Federal Highway tax system for interstate travel.

“What the federal government does is collect vehicle data and then report it to all the states your drivers have driven in,” says Senior Vice President of Fleet Sales and Consulting for Merchants Fleet Tom Coffey (pictured left).

You will also need a special IRP (International Registration Plan) license plate for commercial vehicles of 10,000 GVM or more, according to Mr. Coffey.

With that said, “larger vehicles such as these require a higher level of reporting and for this, fleet managers need to have Device Enabled units, meaning a truck with telematics devices that are physically plugged into the vehicle,” the executive told Global Fleet.

Remember that you are reporting information associated with fuel tax and IRP plates, data that smaller vehicles are not obliged to at all. For these smaller vehicles, a newly growing trend is telematics through LIS (Laboratory Information System) Connectivity which does not require a plug-in device.

For Merchants Fleet, nearly 50% of all the vehicles it leases or manages are set up with LIS, so no device is needed. In terms of management, however, the company is set up to integrate both Devise Enabled vehicles and LIS Connectivity vehicles into a single customer database if needed, said Mr. Coffey.


Top Photo: 2022 Ford F-450 XLT Commercial Truck (courtesy of Ford) 

 

 

Authored by: Daniel Bland