Safety and reliability really matter.
Safety is and will always be our #1 priority when designing, engineering, and manufacturing veterinary and pet grooming vehicles. We can proudly stand behind our track record. Wag’n Tails has approximately 4,000 vehicles on the road and has never had a significant safety issue.
Wag’n Tails is a listed manufacturer with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is the governing body for vehicle manufacturers and converters. We comply with all of its requirements. View our listing here: https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/mid/manufacturer/details/8927.
If you want to research which manufacturers and converters are listed, just go here: https://vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov/mid/ and do a search using the company’s name.
Wag’n Tails is also a certified exporter. We are registered and recognized by Transport Canada (TC). The process of certifying with TC is also a very involved process and some of its standards even exceed those of NHTSA. We build each vehicle to comply with both NHTSA and TC standards, and we use the stricter standard of the two when they differ.
Wag’n Tails complies with all required safety standards set out by the FMVSS here in the U.S. The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards comprise a wide range of requirements that cover the entire vehicle and everything involved in the conversion process.
We meet or exceed these required standards of the FMVSS on every vehicle. For example, these standards include items like:
- Fuel system integrity (Standard #301)
- Flammability (Standard #302)
- Noise emissions (Standard #1106)
NHTSA and FMVSS are the federal agencies that Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, Mercedes and all the vehicle companies sold in the U.S. must comply with. If those standards are tough enough for them, we think they’re tough enough for Wag’n Tails.
To ensure FMVSS compliance, our practices are verified by Progressive Engineering, Inc. (www.p-e-i.com), an independent testing laboratory with customers all across the U.S.. Progressive was founded in 1979, and its accreditations include ISO Guide 17020 and 17025 for independent testing laboratories and quality control inspection agencies.
Behicle Being Tested at Progressive Engineering
In addition to FMVSS standards verification, Progressive Engineering also conducts other tests on our vehicles that go beyond any governmental mandates. They perform center of gravity testing, axle weights in relation to axle weight ratings, weight compliance tests at all 4 wheels, and overall weight compliance in accordance with weight ratings of the vehicles.
To the best of our knowledge, Wag’n Tails is the only vehicle conversion company in the industry that takes this expensive and time consuming extra step to be completely sure that our vehicles are as safe as we can make them for our customers. We order our vehicles from OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) suppliers like Ford and Mercedes/Freightliner with maximum Gross Vehicle Weight Ratings (GVWR) and maximum Gross Axle Weight Ratings (GAWR) to ensure safety and longevity. The payload capacity is absolutely crucial to manufacturing a safe vehicle. You can’t just take any old van and convert it into a specialty veterinary vehicle. All vans are not created equal! Lesser vans are not designed to carry the weight of the conversion and veterinary equipment… you get the idea. A lighter-weight chassis just isn’t safe for our type of veterinary or pet grooming conversion.
Our Onan generators are installed by Onan Indiana technicians in Elkhart, IN. They are a “factory” Onan store meaning they are owned by Cummins, Inc. They have the highest level of expertise, training, and engineering talent so we’re sure that our vehicles receive the optimum installation of their products. This is yet another step that we take to be certain that our veterinary and pet grooming vehicles are the best available.