When FedEx vans reach the end of their package delivery lives, they are resold and reused for various purposes. Many of them have been converted into food trucks, as their size and shape are perfect for mobile kitchens. However, FedEx is facing a lawsuit over the sale of such vans, as it is accused of the largest odometer rollback fraud in history.
The lawsuit accuses FedEx of replacing the odometers in many of its vans with new ones that show zero miles, using the vans a little longer after that, and then selling them at auction with 100,000 miles or less on the new odometers. With such low indicated mileage, business owners bought the vans for top dollar, thinking they were still pretty fresh. However, their actual mileage was sometimes as much as four times the odometer reading, leading to countless mechanical problems that would cost customers much more money. In some cases, the problems would be so severe that the vans were unusable and businesses went bankrupt.
In accordance KTNV Las Vegas, Tom Layton of Henderson, Nevada first noticed FedEx’s odometer recall in 2017. Layton, who has been buying and selling trucks and vans for 36 years, bought a FedEx Freightliner truck with about 180,000 miles on it. When he sold the truck, the buyer hooked it up to a computer that told them the real mileage was around 400,000 miles. Layton filed his own lawsuit at the time, which is separate from the class action lawsuit FedEx is facing.
Since then, customers from California, Tennessee, New Jersey, Florida and Virginia have noticed rolling back odometers on former FedEx vehicles.
