Most vehicle data tooling is built for cars. Send it a 7.5-tonne box van and things start to go quiet: the test history comes back empty or in a shape you weren't expecting, the valuation is meaningless, and the specification fields describe nothing you care about. If you run a mixed fleet, and almost everyone does: that's two integrations and two suppliers for what ought to be one job.
This post covers what's actually different about commercial vehicle data in the UK, and how to handle vans, HGVs, buses and coaches through the same registration lookup you already use for cars.
The MOT is not the only test
For cars, vans and motorcycles up to 3,500kg, the annual roadworthiness test is the MOT, carried out at a garage with DVSA approval. Straightforward enough.
Above 3,500kg it's a different regime. HGVs, buses, coaches and trailers take an annual test, carried out at an authorised testing facility (ATF) — usually an operator's or a dealer's premises, with a DVSA examiner attending. It's a different test, at a different kind of site, recorded through a different route.
What matters for integration is that the resulting record is still test history: a date, a result, a mileage reading where applicable, and a list of defects. If your supplier surfaces it in the same shape as a car MOT, a mixed fleet needs one code path. If it doesn't, you're writing two.
Our MOT History product returns both in the same JSON structure, so you don't have to know in advance which kind of vehicle you're looking up.
Vehicle classes you'll actually encounter
A typical commercial fleet is more varied than the phrase suggests:
- Car-derived vans and small panel vans: tested as cars, valued as cars, no special handling
- LCVs up to 3.5 tonnes: Transits, Sprinters, tippers and Lutons. MOT-tested, and the busiest category in most fleets
- HGVs from 3.5 to 44 tonnes: annual test at an ATF, and where valuation coverage starts thinning out
- Buses and coaches (PSVs): annual test, plus their own operator-licensing regime
- Trailers: tested, but the data available on them is considerably thinner than on powered vehicles
Be wary of a supplier who doesn't distinguish these. "We cover commercials" can mean anything from full HGV test history to a DVLA lookup that happens to return a wheelplan.
What you can and can't get
Honest summary, for our own catalogue:
Reliable across all classes. DVLA registration data: make, model, colour, fuel type, engine capacity, tax status, wheelplan, date of first registration. This works for a 44-tonner exactly as it does for a Fiesta.
Reliable, with the caveat above. Test history. Car MOTs and HGV annual tests both come back, in the same shape.
Reliable. Provenance: outstanding finance, write-off records, plate transfers, mileage history. Commercial vehicles carry finance far more often than cars do, which makes this the check most worth running before a used purchase.
Thinner on heavier vehicles. Valuation. Coverage is strong on cars and light commercials and falls away above that. Where a valuation isn't available, you shouldn't be charged for it: check that with whoever you buy from.
Thin. Trailers. If trailer data is central to what you're building, establish exactly what you'd get before you scope the work.
Building a test calendar
The most common commercial use case is also the simplest: knowing which vehicles are approaching their test date, across a fleet that mixes classes.
The pattern is a scheduled sweep. Take the registrations you already hold, send them in batches of 50 to the bulk endpoint, and store the expiry dates that come back.
POST /products/mot-history/api/live/bulkLookup
X-VEHICLEMATIC-KEY: your_key_here
{ "vrms": ["AB12CDE", "CD62FGH", "EF15JKL"] }
Run it weekly. You're charged per successful lookup, so a sweep of 400 vehicles at 2p is £8, which is less than the fuel for one van going to a test it didn't need to attend because the date was wrong in a spreadsheet.
Add ?format=csv if the person who owns the calendar would rather have a spreadsheet than JSON. In our experience they usually would.
Buying a used commercial
A used van or lorry's test history tells you a great deal about how it has been run. Read it for:
- Failure rate over time. A vehicle that fails first time every year has not been maintained on a schedule.
- The advisory pattern. Repeated brake or suspension advisories on a vehicle doing motorway miles is a different signal from the same advisories on a multi-drop van.
- Mileage progression. Does the annual mileage match the work the seller says it's been doing? A vehicle sold as "light local use" with 60,000 miles a year isn't.
- Gaps. A missing year usually means the vehicle was off the road. Worth asking why.
Pair that with a provenance check for outstanding finance before money changes hands. Commercial vehicles are financed more often than cars, the sums are larger, and an agreement you didn't know about doesn't go away because you didn't know about it.
Getting started
Same endpoint, same key, any vehicle class: you don't have to tell us what you're sending.
POST /products/full-vehicle-check/api/live/lookup
X-VEHICLEMATIC-KEY: your_key_here
{ "registration": "AB12CDE" }
There's more on the commercial vehicles page, and you can try the response shape in the sandbox without an account. Every rate is on the pricing page.