Ryder upgrades rental truck fleet

Ryder upgrades rental truck fleet    Ryder System will expand and upgrade its North American rental fleet with 6,700 new trucks, tractors, trailers and vans.
   The new vehicles, which represent multiple classes of tractors, trailers, refrigerated equipment, box trucks and light-duty vans, will expand Ryder's commercial rental fleet to about 30,000 vehicles and replace older models that are being retired, the Miami-based company said in a statement Tuesday.
   The new trucks join another 4,900 new vehicles introduced to the fleet in 2010. Together, the nearly 12,000 new vehicles raise the percentage of model-year-2010 or newer vehicles in the fleet to more than 40 percent and the total fleet count to nearly 30,000.
   'This investment represents the second phase of a fleet refresh we launched last year in anticipation of increased demand from both rental and lease customers requiring supplemental capacity in a recovering economy,' said Mark Cicchini, Ryder's vice president of rental.
   To determine the types of vehicles to order, Ryder examined use and market trends across its customer base. 'Last year we identified increasing demand across all classes of vehicles — light-duty vans and trucks, medium-duty trucks, heavy-duty day cabs and sleeper tractors and dry, refrigerated, and flatbed trailers. This year, we're seeing even more of an uptick in demand,' Cicchini continued.
   In the past two years, Ryder has added more refrigerated equipment to help its customers comply with recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration Food Safety Modernization legislation and new emissions standards in certain regions.
   All of the model-year-2010 or newer vehicles comply with the latest Environmental Protection Agency 2010 emissions standards, the company said.
   Ryder has already started to integrate the new equipment into its fleet and will continue to roll out new vehicles through April. As vehicles are retired from Ryder's rental fleet, they will become part of the company's used vehicle inventory.