The facts, laid out plainly. Download the documents and read every line — that's what they're for.
| Coverage | Term |
|---|---|
| Structural body warranty | 5 years / 100,000 miles — included on every bus |
| Bumper-to-bumper warranty | 3 years / 36,000 miles |
| PerformMAX 500 (Huber) subfloor | 7 years / unlimited miles — the longest floor coverage in the shuttle bus market |
What the 5-year / 100,000-mile document covers (Revision 1, effective September 2026): the body structure, framing, roof structure, sidewalls, floor structure and body attachment; HLE-built interior conversion components; HLE-installed body electrical — wiring, harnesses, panels, relays, circuit breakers, controls and connectors; and HLE paint-application workmanship. Parts and reasonable labor, at no charge, for the full term. Chassis, lift, HVAC and other third-party equipment stay on their own manufacturers' warranties, but HLE's installation of them is covered under the HLE term.
The subfloor term has one condition. The 7-year coverage applies to material or installation defects that result in rot or water damage. The owner inspects and maintains roof, window, door and body sealants at least every six months and keeps dated records. Do that and the floor is covered into year seven; skip it and a water-intrusion claim gets harder. The maintenance plan that ships with every bus lays out the schedule.
Every bus also ships with a complete owner's manual and a bus-specific maintenance plan — so the owner knows exactly how to care for it and keep it covered. It's a level of documentation most shuttle buyers never get.
Nothing in an HLE warranty prorates. Coverage in year five is worth exactly what it was on day one — no depreciation schedule, no sliding scale. Several competitors publish proration schedules that step coverage down to 50% and then 25% as the bus ages. Read any warranty’s proration table before you sign a purchase order.
The federal Altoona program’s current 7-year/200,000-mile test publishes every repair and every maintenance hour — not just a pass/fail. The HLE MAVRYK passed — on our first attempt. The bus we sent was the fourth bus HLE ever built. The STRYKR is in testing now, and the KAVLYR is being built for the Altoona test track.
The FTA required 1,500 additional proving miles on two repairs before it would close the test. Both held. The bus ran 22% more punishment than the protocol calls for.
The quietest seat in the bus is the driver’s. Altoona plays 80 decibels of noise against the outside of the bus and measures what gets through at six seating positions. In the MAVRYK the driver’s seat came in lowest, at 47.0 dB(A). One-piece laminated sidewalls with no beltline seam, 1.5″ cut-to-fit foam (1″ on the STRYKR), and a body isolated from the frame on rubber pucks are what that number is measuring.
Most builders treat an Altoona report as a certificate. We treated ours as a work order. Based on the results, today’s bus is built differently from the one that passed:
Ask any other builder what they changed after their Altoona test. Most can’t answer — the old test never told them.
A test report covers one body, on one chassis, in one service-life class, as it was built on the day it was tested. It does not cover a brand. It does not cover a lineup. And it does not expire — which is why a report written when a bus was a different bus can still be sitting in a quote package twenty years later.
The federal rule is specific about this. Under 49 CFR 665.5, a change expected to significantly affect structural integrity makes it a new bus model, and a new bus model requires a new test. Change the body. Change the frame. Change the plant it’s built in. That is a new bus, and the old report describes something else.
Nobody polices this. The regulation puts the burden on the buyer — the transit agency spending the federal money certifies it has the right report, not the manufacturer. So the question has to come from your side of the table.
Two questions, and they take a minute:
What report number covers the bus you’re quoting me, and what year was it run?
Was the body built the same way then as it is now?
The MAVRYK’s report is 2024-04. It was run in 2024, under the scored standard, on the bus we build today. It’s public, it’s 151 pages, and we’ll send it to anyone who asks.
Rain booth: 15 minutes minimum under full spray, longer when a spec calls for it, with a person inside hunting leaks. Straight into a 25-mile road test — hard braking, hard acceleration. Then a final inspection packet signed off by every department. FMVSS compliant. ISO certification in progress.
HLE holds state transit contracts with WSDOT (Washington), Oregon, and Minnesota.
Download the documents: 3-Year/36,000-Mile Bumper-to-Bumper Warranty (PDF) · 5-Year/100,000-Mile Structural Body Warranty (PDF). The 7-year subfloor coverage is written into the 5-year document (Revision 1, effective September 2026), not issued as a separate paper. Questions or a claim? Email [email protected] or call 574-343-2150.
Refurbishment work carries its own warranty: two years on the work we do, on top of the remaining chassis coverage. Details on the refurbishment program page.