Motor Vehicle

Almost every public fleet keeps two lists, and the boundary between them is the phrase principally for highway transportation. A dump truck, a patrol car and a refuse packer are motor vehicles. A mower, a skid steer, a generator, a trailer-mounted pump and most of what sits behind the parks garage are not, because they are not principally for road use.

The practical consequence is that fleet size is not one number. The same department can honestly say it runs 400 units or 620 depending on whether equipment is counted, and both figures can appear in different documents in the same budget year. Before benchmarking your fleet against another agency, or quoting a size to a council, establish which of the two you are comparing. A great many apparently alarming comparisons dissolve at that question.

The split also decides practical things: what gets a license plate and a title, what falls under motor vehicle insurance and driver licensing, and what your management system is actually tracking.

Where the line falls in writing varies by jurisdiction. Federal agencies have it defined for them at 41 CFR part 102-34 as “any vehicle, self propelled or drawn by mechanical power, designed and operated principally for highway transportation of property or passengers”, which is a clear articulation of the same idea, binding on federal fleets only. Most states and cities draw a comparable line in their own vehicle code or fixed-asset policy.