U.S. General Services Administration
Need a specialty vehicle for your agency? GSA has you covered
If you’ve visited Zion National Park recently, you may have enjoyed a ride on a new fully electric transit bus. These buses, acquired by GSA on behalf of the National Park Service, are part of the federal government’s transition to clean energy vehicles — offering riders an enhanced experience while showcasing a small piece of GSA’s evolving fleet services.
“These buses are clean, quiet and efficient. When you turn on an electric bus, you can actually hear the birds chirping; you can hear passengers enjoying the landscape,” said Len Fedoruk, director of purchasing for GSA’s Travel, Transportation and Logistics’ Office of Fleet Management on a recent GSA Does That!? podcast episode called I’m A Car Guy.
Transitioning the park’s gasoline-powered fleet to zero-emission vehicles supports GSA’s clean energy goals and also contributes to our key priority of supporting agencies in their own sustainability goals. The Zion National Park electric buses are just one example of how we’re working across government to provide clean energy automotive solutions that help meet GSA’s and the Biden-Harris Administration’s goal of 100% ZEV acquisitions by 2035.
Solutions for every mission
We support a variety of agencies, customizing vehicles to meet their unique needs. When we receive a request, our team sits down with the customer to put together a project plan. By using the federal government’s purchasing power, GSA gets the best price for the technology, products and services that our agency partners need.
“We go out and do the market research, come up with cost estimates and work with customer agencies to make sure they have their funding in place. Then, after signing an agreement, we work with our acquisition team to procure the mission-critical vehicle. Agencies are kept in the loop from start to finish, through design reviews, so everything is built to their specifications and there are no surprises,” Fedoruk explained.
In 2021, we worked with the Veterans Affairs’ Office of Rural Health’s “Prosthetics on Wheels” program. The Fleet team helped design and procure special vans that served as mobile prosthetic labs, supporting veterans in rural communities.
Other custom vehicles previously created for federal partners include dental and imaging labs; mobile pharmacies; and customized trucks, vans, trailers and disaster response vehicles with specializations that include solar panels, exterior flood lighting and onboard generators.
Driving new partnerships
The U.S. Marine Corps is also taking steps to meet federally directed ZEV acquisition goals, as outlined in Executive Order 14057. The USMC is leasing three new electric buses to support military funerals, parades and concerts for the Marine Corps Drum and Bugle Corps. These are the first electric buses leased by GSA to a federal customer and represent the first ZEV buses of any kind within the USMC fleet.
“There’s really something amazing and humbling when you walk down the street and you see a vehicle with a GSA plate on it,” said Fedoruk. “It’s great to see how the work we do every day helps drive other federal agencies’ missions and gets them where they need to go.”