Every trailer record is built from up to two independent sources:
Element Fleet System — the official ARC fleet management database. Contains administrative data: VIN, unit number, license plate, registration, driver assignment, in-service date, and location on file. Element Only trailers appear in Element but were not captured in the field survey.
Field Survey — physical inspections conducted by chapter staff. Contains condition, hitch ball size, tire size, physical measurements, and on-the-ground location. Survey Only trailers were found in the field but have no matching VIN in Element — possible data entry gaps or unreported acquisitions.
Both Sources trailers (1,208 of 2,479) are the highest-confidence records — verified by both systems.
Many states issue permanent license plates for trailers that never expire — including Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Wisconsin, and others. Trailers registered in these states receive a one-time plate; no annual renewal is required.
Element's fleet system requires a date in the expiration field and cannot store blank. It uses 2049-12-31 as a sentinel to mean "permanent / no expiry." These records carry a Permanent badge in this app and are excluded from plate expiration alerts. They are not overdue — they simply have permanent registrations.
802 of 2,479 trailers (32%) carry permanent plates.
When the "Missing or Stolen" query shows trailers with Unit Status = ACTIVE, that is not an error — it is a data quality gap that needs follow-up.
Unit Status (Active, Inactive, etc.) comes from the Element fleet system and reflects what was officially recorded at last update. Missing/Stolen flags are extracted from free-text Notes entered by field staff or chapter managers — a separate field that Element's status does not automatically sync with.
In short: someone wrote "missing" or "stolen" in the notes but nobody updated the official status in Element. These trailers need one of two actions: (1) locate the trailer and remove the note, or (2) update Element's unit status to reflect the actual situation.
Three trailers could not be decoded by the NHTSA vehicle identification database. All three VINs are 16 characters long — one digit short of the required 17-character standard. These are transcription errors at data entry; the missing digit cannot be inferred. NHTSA spec columns (make, model, year, body type, axles) will be blank for these records.
Trailer locations are geocoded from the address on file in Element. Most records are geocoded to rooftop or parcel accuracy. A small number were corrected after the geocoder matched a city name to the wrong state (e.g., "Schofield" matched to Wisconsin instead of West Virginia). Those records are marked zip_centroid_corrected and placed at the ZIP code centroid of the correct state.
Map location reflects the address on file in Element — not necessarily where the trailer physically is today. Trailers assigned to a chapter office may be deployed elsewhere during disaster operations.
The "Decommission" flag is extracted from free-text Notes (words like "decommissioned," "retired," "surplused," "sold," "scrapped"). As with missing/stolen, the Element unit status may not reflect this if it was never formally updated. These trailers should be reviewed and removed from the active fleet in Element if confirmed decommissioned.
Expired — plate expiration date is in the past (39 trailers). Expiring soon — expires within 90 days (92 trailers). Trailers with permanent plates are excluded from both counts. Expiration data comes from Element and is only as current as Element's last update.
This dataset reflects Element fleet data and field survey data as of June 2026. It is a point-in-time snapshot. Acquisitions, disposals, reassignments, and plate renewals that occurred after the extract date will not appear until the data is refreshed.
| VIN | Chapter | Region | City / ST | Status | Plate Exp | Condition | Year | Len |
|---|