The University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley campuses in Edinburg and Brownsville faced a challenge of apparently conflicting priorities in the new shuttle vehicles they wanted for their campuses.
They needed eight-passenger vehicles to shuttle students around each campus. Eight passengers is the maximum allowed in this class of low-speed vehicle — which is U.S. Department of Transportation-certified to travel on roads with speed limits of less than 35 mph — because of a weight ceiling of 3,000 pounds. The standard market configuration is six forward-facing seats and two rear-facing seats.
But UTRGV also wanted to maximize student safety, and people in the two rear-facing seats are vulnerable in rear-end collisions.
That is where Sarasota, Fla.-based Cruise Car Inc. entered the picture through the Sourcewell contract. Cruise Car’s unique strength of custom-designing street-legal vehicles for any need paid off for UTRGV. Cruise Car’s modular vehicle design provided tremendous building flexibility and the ultimate solution for the University.
After the University published their RFQ in January 2019, Nathan Kalin, President of Cruise Car, flew to the University to meet with the Fleet and Transportation departments and get details on vehicle routes, daily driving distances, hours of fleet operation, number of students transported and, importantly, their safety requirements.
Cruise Car engineers immediately set to work creating a vehicle model with all eight seats facing forward, meeting UT’s dual priorities of maximum passenger count and maximum safety. The back occupants in this new design are protected by the body of the vehicle, not just a step plate.
8 Passenger Street Legal Shuttle. Rendering (Left) Finished Product (Right)
“Designing this entirely new type of vehicle arrangement to meet the University’s specific needs required critical thinking and real creativity from our team,” Kalin said. “But part of our company’s core competency is to use our modular basis to provide unique, customer-centric vehicles to meet any need. And that’s what we were able to do here.”
Cruise Car has won an original contract to provide a fleet of 23 eight-passenger vehicles to UTRGV — 21 8-passenger shuttles and 2 wheelchair accessible carts — and the University has continued to purchase specifically designed vehicles. All of the vehicles are street-legal low-speed vehicles.
Since the delivery of the passenger fleet at the University, Cruise Car’s high-quality customer service has continued to support UTRGV with the maintenance of the fleet. The quality of the customer service and maintenance combined with the flexible custom-designing abilities has prompted the University to continue to award Cruise Car with more sales. Most recently, UTRGV has contracted Cruise Car to produce a myriad fleet of utility vehicles to assist them with their wide-ranging campuses and operational needs.
“We’re happy to be able to solve their problems and have a very satisfied customer,” Kalin said.
