Fleet Gear Ordering: My 7-Step Checklist for Audio, Radios, Lighting, and Battery Care

If you're the person your company hands a list to that says "we need radios for the guides, a light bar for the bikes, and something to keep the van batteries alive over the off-season," this checklist is for you. I'm the office administrator for a 45-person tour and transport company. I manage all equipment ordering—roughly $180,000 a year across 11 vendors—and I report to both operations and finance.

So I get the fun stuff (car audio, two-way radios, auxiliary lighting) and the boring stuff (battery tenders, invoices, warranty paperwork). What follows is the seven-step order I run through before I place almost any vehicle-electronics order. It's not glamorous, but it's kept me out of trouble since I took over purchasing in 2020.

Step 1: Audit the vehicles and the power before you request a single quote

I walk the lot with a clipboard. Every vehicle gets a line: year, make, model, whether it has a factory accessory socket, and—this is the one that matters—whether that socket stays live with the ignition off.

On a lot of vehicles it doesn't. It's ignition-switched, which means anything plugged into it stops working the moment the key turns off. A vendor sold me a socket-powered maintainer kit that did basically nothing in our vans for six weeks because nobody caught it. That was a $600 lesson, and it wasn't the vendor's fault—it was mine for not checking.

Checkpoint before you move on: one page, every vehicle, ignition behaviour noted. If you can't answer "does this socket stay live?" for all of them, you're not ready to order.

Step 2: Work out what the audio actually needs

Audio is where people overspend, in my experience. The first question isn't "which amplifier"—it's "does the head unit have preamp outputs?" If it doesn't, an amp won't do anything without extra hardware, and I've watched two departments buy amps they couldn't install.

If you're shopping used—and honestly, that's where the value usually is—an old Kenwood car amplifier is generally a pretty safe bet, as long as you check four things:

• Does it use standard remote turn-on wiring, or something proprietary you'll never find?
• Are the RCA inputs and outputs on the unit itself, or on a separate cable the seller may not include?
• Does the listing show the heatsink and terminals, not just the top plate?
• Is there a model number you can look up, or at least a manual?

Kenwood has been in car audio long enough that documentation and parts for older units are usually findable, which matters more than a spec sheet when you're buying something 15 years old. But the amp is rarely the real cost. It's the wiring kit, the labour, and the second trip to the shop when something doesn't match. Budget those in, or the "cheap" amp isn't cheap.

I'm not an installer, so I can't speak to gain setting or tuning. What I can tell you from a purchasing perspective is that fitment varies by vehicle. I don't care what a listing claims about "fits most"—I confirm the specific year and trim with the vendor in writing before ordering, because returning installed electronics is a nightmare.

Step 3: Order radios and earpieces as two separate decisions

The radio is the durable part. The earpiece is the part that dies, disappears, or gets chewed by a dog. A Kenwood walkie talkie earpiece is the single most-replaced item on our equipment list, and it's the one people order last and in the wrong quantity.

Two things to nail down before you buy:

• Connector type. Most of our handhelds take a two-pin connector, but not all of them do. We run two different models, and I've ordered the wrong plug twice. Photograph the socket on your actual radio and send that to the vendor.
• Earpiece style. Acoustic-tube earpieces sound clearer in noisy environments and the tube is replaceable; in-ear units with an inline PTT are more convenient but harder to clean and easier to lose.

Order roughly 1.5 earpieces per radio. Not two, not one. One-point-five absorbs the losses without a shelf full of dead stock.

Also worth checking: FRS radios don't require a licence in the US, GMRS does, and business or industrial radios on Part 90 frequencies need coordination. Verify current requirements at the FCC before you standardize the fleet on a frequency band—it's a lot easier to do it upfront than to explain it later.

Step 4: Size the lighting to the bike, not to the photo

This is the step most people skip entirely. When I ordered a 6 inch LED light bar for motorcycle use, I went straight to the lumen number, because that's what the listings sell. The number that actually matters is your charging system's spare output.

Most small-bike stators put out somewhere in the low hundreds of watts, and a chunk of that is already going to the headlight, ignition, and fuel pump. A 6-inch bar is often only 18–36W, so on paper it fits easily—but add grip heaters, a phone charger, and a heated vest and you can push past what the bike replaces at idle.

Three questions to ask before ordering:

1. What's the stator output for this exact model and year?
2. What's already drawing on it?
3. Does the bike hold voltage at idle with everything switched on?

Then think about wiring. Run the bar through a relay, not straight through the switch—cheap switches get hot and fail. And on legality: FMVSS 108 covers your factory headlamp, not your add-on bar. Auxiliary lighting rules are usually set at the state level and often restrict on-road use. Check before you wire anything to the high-beam circuit.

Step 5: Read the fine print on "trickle charger"

People ask me to find the best 12 volt trickle charger, and the honest answer is that there isn't one best model—there's the right one for your battery chemistry and how long the vehicle sits.

Three different products get called the same thing:

• Trickle charger — constant low output, not smart, fine for a top-up, not for months of storage.
• Battery maintainer — charges, then floats, and can stay connected indefinitely. This is what you want for stored vehicles.
• Jump starter — different job entirely.

Chemistry settings matter more than brand. Flooded, AGM, and lithium all want different voltage profiles, and using a flooded setting on an AGM battery can shorten its life. Lead-acid batteries left at around half charge will start to sulfate within a few weeks, and once that happens you don't get the capacity back—you get a new battery.

Hook the maintainers up before the vehicles go into storage, not after. And label them, because chargers walk.

Step 6: Don't forget the line item that isn't a part number

Every equipment list I get has one entry that isn't hardware. Last season it was a team day—a snorkel with turtles Tulum experience for the guides and office staff after a rough quarter. It landed on my desk because it involves a deposit, an invoice, and a vendor, which means it's my problem.

Treat it like a supplier, not a favour. What I check before paying anything:

• Is the operator registered with the tourism authority, and can they give you the registration number?
• Does the quoted price include marine park or reef fees, or is that collected separately at the dock?
• What's the group size cap, and is it enforced?
• Is there liability insurance, and what happens if weather cancels?

I'm not a marine safety expert or a licensed tour operator, so I can't speak to whether a given operator's in-water procedures are sound. What I can tell you is to get the registration number, the group cap, and the cancellation policy in writing before a deposit goes out. Even after we'd paid one, I kept second-guessing myself—what if we'd picked the wrong operator and it turned into a bad day for 30 people? It wasn't until everyone came back sunburnt and happy that I stopped worrying about it.

Step 7: Close the paperwork loop before anything ships

In 2021, I found a great price from a new vendor on a batch of dash cams and mounting hardware—about 20% under our regular supplier. Ordered 30 units. They couldn't produce a proper invoice, just a handwritten receipt with a stamp on it. Finance rejected the expense report and I ate $1,900 out of the department budget.

Now I confirm three things before any order ships: can they issue an invoice with our PO number on it, is the warranty in writing, and who do I call if half the shipment is wrong. It takes one email. It's saved me more than once.

Where people usually get burned

• Buying accessories before confirming fitment for the specific vehicle. "Fits most" isn't a specification.
• Ordering earpieces without matching the connector to the actual radio.
• Setting every maintainer in the fleet to the same chemistry profile.
• Wiring a light bar through the switch instead of a relay, then replacing the switch twice.
• Skipping the invoicing conversation, then chasing it through accounting for a month.
• Assuming the lowest quote is the lowest total cost. It rarely is once returns and labour are in it.

None of these steps are clever. They're just the ones I've learned to do in order, because skipping one usually costs more than the equipment did.