GSA is proud to do our part to support our servicemen and women who sacrifice much to serve our country. GSA’s Office of Motor Vehicle Management, in partnership with Travel, Motor Vehicle and Card Service’s Office of Acquisition Operations, has been working with U.S. Forces in Afghanistan over the past two years to provide non-tactical vehicles to support their mission. GSA acquired 1,099 vehicles for lease to the troops in Afghanistan to replace costly commercial leases. The overall savings from the new GSA vehicles and services combined are estimated at $37 million annually.
These vehicles include passenger vans, pickup trucks, SUVs, armored SUVs, and buses, all of which have been delivered and put into service at Kandahar Airfield, Bagram Airfield, Camp Leatherneck, Shindand Air Base and Kabul. In addition to the vehicles, GSA has put contracts in place to provide fleet management and maintenance services for the GSA vehicles, as well as for U.S. Forces in Afghanistan owned vehicles. This effort provides better management and oversight of the fleet including improved vehicle maintenance and control of fuel.
One of the most successful aspects of the program are the buses that GSA provided for the troops. We procured a total of 39 Nissan Civilian 26-passenger buses to replace very expensive commercially-leased buses. Seventeen of those buses were purchased for use on the Shindand Air Base where they are being used to shuttle air crews and personnel twenty four hours a day. Sixteen were delivered in November and immediately went into service. The final bus was delivered on December 23, 2012. In the first two weeks of service, they were each driven almost 1,800 miles. At that rate, they will travel an average of 46,000 miles in the next year. The savings just for the Shindand buses is estimated to be $374,000 per year with theater-wide savings for all of the buses expected to be approximately $858,000.
GSA is currently exploring the possibility of expanding support to U.S. Forces in Afghanistan.
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