New patrol vehicles will be added to the St. Joseph Police Department’s fleet again next year.

Commander Mike Wilson said six Ford Tauruses and two Ford Explorers will likely be delivered in January.

“The purchase order just came through. Once that’s done, Anderson Ford will order them. So probably in January is when they will show up and we will start the process of getting them ready for spring or maybe early summer,” Wilson said.

The fleet has around 25 patrol vehicles. Wilson said every year vehicles are either auctioned off or removed from service to become parts vehicles.

“They’re just replacing some of our older vehicles. We have some of them that have 100 or 120-plus miles. When they’re driven every day those are pretty hard miles in the city,” Wilson said. “We drove 1.4 or 1.5 million miles on the whole fleet last year. It’s gone up.”

Wilson said once the vehicles come in they will have to be outfitted with gear and decals before they hit the road.

“We do a lot of that work in house,” Wilson said. “Other then putting the radios in; we do the camera installs, we put the back seat in, we do the decals, we get the lights. We have two in fleet maintenance and they are the ones that help get the cars prepared and set up.”

Wilson said they will not have any new vehicle models hitting the road next year that are not already in service.

“We do research and we try to buy the best vehicles we can buy for what’s budgeted,” Wilson said.

The department is currently working on getting an Explorer that was purchased last year into service. Wilson said it is still waiting on decals.