Your Fleet Data Profile

You might have the sneaking suspicion that you miss selling to a lot of fleets that use trailers? You see them driving by. And maybe you hear of them online. 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 fleets of vehicles and trailers. 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.

There is also state data available from a small number of partners. Because trailers need license plates, they must be registered with state Departments of Motor Vehicles. 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 with trailer assets 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.

The most common source of trailer data is from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA). If you’re experienced in working with trailers and heavy duty and possibly hazmat fleets, you may be familiar with this data.

If you are looking for fleets with trailers, 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 only 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 fleets with medium and heavy duty vehicle, and trailers. 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.

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.