Commercial Van VIN OCR for Upfit and Delivery Fleets

Where to Find the VIN on a Commercial Van

Cargo and passenger vans carry the VIN on the windshield plate and driver-side door-jamb label; upfitted vans often add a second-stage manufacturer label.

Capture and Extract It Reliably

Separate the original VIN from upfitter labels so the right identifier reaches the fleet record. Then send the photo to the VIN OCR API, which returns the VIN and the surface it was read from. Test with the free VIN scanner.

Where This Fits

• Delivery fleet onboarding: Replace manual transcription of 17-character identifiers with a photo.
• Upfit work orders: Attach the extracted VIN and its source surface to the record for audit.
• Lease returns: Send low-confidence reads to a review queue instead of saving them.

Python Example

Send the image as Base64 JSON and read the VIN fields.

Prerequisite: Python 3.9+, `pip install requests`, and a STRUCTOCR_API_KEY

import base64
import os
import requests

with open("vin.jpg", "rb") as image_file:
    image = base64.b64encode(image_file.read()).decode("ascii")

response = requests.post(
    "https://api.structocr.com/v1/vin",
    headers={"x-api-key": os.environ["STRUCTOCR_API_KEY"]},
    json={"img": image},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
data = response.json()["data"]
print("vin:", data.get("vin"))
print("confidence:", data.get("confidence"))
print("carrier_type:", data.get("carrier_type"))

Sample VIN Response

Illustrative response using the Wikipedia sample VIN. The API returns the VIN as read; decoding happens in a separate step.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "vin": "1M8GDM9AXKP042788",
    "confidence": "High",
    "carrier_type": "metal_plate"
  }
}