Your Fleet Data Profile

You might have the sneaking suspicion that you miss selling to a lot of fleets? You see them driving by. But you don’t see them in the data you get.

This is because, not all fleet data is the same.

Data can affect your ability to reach potential customers, and you deserve to know the inside baseball about this.

Once you know, you can make better investments in data. You’ll be able to ask questions of data vendors and evaluate if they can meet your needs. (And of course ask these questions of us too, if you explore our data.)

For some fleet suppliers like retail locations, maintenance and repair services, mobile and onsite fleet services, it’s critical to find nearby businesses and governments with vehicles. And beyond that (literally!) businesses with headquarters elsewhere – all across the country – can have fleet locations in your area.

But most fleet data has only the headquarters location.

Here’s an example of a waste management company, where you can see its headquarters location in Houston, versus all of its fleet locations:

The problem is, if you are not in Houston, you would not get information about this company. But what if they have fleet locations in your area?

This is only one example of tens of thousands of companies that have locations regionally or nationwide.

The reason you don’t find enough data …

Because most data vendors use Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) data. If you work with heavy duty fleets, you may be familiar with this data. The FMCSA focuses on fleets that must follow federal regulations. These are fleets that:

• Have vehicles that exceed a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 10,001 lbs., which would be medium and heavy duty
• Cross state lines, for interstate commerce
• Employ drivers with commercial driver licenses
• Haul hazardous materials
• Carry a larger number of passengers

So, the FMCSA will have data about all heavy duty fleets. But the FMCSA data has only headquarters locations, not all the locations with heavy duty vehicles.

Let’s get an idea of what this means for you. Here are the number of locations with 5 or more heavy duty fleet vehicles in Arizona:

• Fleet database with many sources: 3,100 companies and 29,200 locations
• FMCSA data: 3,300 companies, but it is unknown how many of these are heavy duty versus medium duty

So if you are looking for the heavy duty fleets you see on the roads around you, and you aren’t finding enough of them, you need data that comes from a different source than only FMCSA data.

There is also state data available from a small number of partners. But some states have privacy laws that limit how commercial fleet data can be used. If you sell in any of the 10 states below, there may be very little or no data about local fleets available:

If you need info about local fleets or fleets in these states, there are options for you. We talk more below about data that could meet your needs.

Meanwhile, if it’s been hard to find enough relevant local fleets to grow your business, this explanation about federal and state data should shed light on why.

If you want more detail about these data sources, we have a longer article with more information.

If you are looking for heavy duty fleets, you likely won’t find all these fleet locations in “trucking databases.”

Why? It’s the same reason we explain above for local data. Because most of these databases are using the FMCSA data, and the FMCSA has information about headquarters locations.

Now, we’re not here to criticize FMCSA data. Not at all. We include it in our database because it’s good data if you’re looking for heavy duty fleets. We include that data in our ProsperFleet database.

To get the most complete view of the fleet market, it’s better to use a database where information comes from many sources.

Let’s compare some numbers. Here’s a search for fleets with 5 or more heavy duty vehicles in the Los Angeles/Long Beach/Santa Ana metro area:

• Fleet database with many sources: 3,100 companies with 6,500 locations
• FMCSA data: 3,200 companies, and it’s unknown how many of these have 5+ heavy versus medium duty vehicles

Let’s try another one. Here are fleets with 5 or more heavy duty vehicles in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metro area:

• Fleet database with many sources: 1,500 companies with 2,600 locations
• FMCSA data: 1,800 companies, and it’s unknown how many of these have 5+ heavy versus medium duty vehicles

Note, the much larger number of local locations with heavy duty vehicles when data is not sourced only from FMCSA.

This shows how data can be very different when it comes from different sources. A database that combines these two searches would give you a more complete fleet market.

When you’re trying to find enough fleets to sell to, it’s important to know that the vast majority of fleets have fewer than 5 vehicles. This is true from any data source:

If you are looking for the small fleets, this is good news for you.

But if you’re looking for larger fleets, well, as an example, fleets of 50+ vehicles are only 2% of all fleets.

So it’s important to invest in the data that has enough fleets for your prospecting.