Truck Stops – Are Your Diesel Fuel Prices Right?
No, when we talk about the correct prices for diesel fuel at truck stops, this is not going to be another article about anyone direct. This article is about truck stop pricing errors and fuel card process errors.
Oh, you thought they made no mistakes. Well, think again. Although everyone talks about their brilliant systems and all this great information, let’s take a look. We will not discuss any company directly or call any company directly. And please, at no point are we saying that they are trying to stop one of the fleets. We’re just pointing out that mistakes happen and if you don’t realize it, you should. These are all quality truck stop providers and fuel card providers.
Many of these truck stop and fuel card systems are not as up to date for 2013 as you might think. Marketing their product, they can do very well, but real and real are probably not the same. For them, making fleet fuel price changes in their systems is difficult for a variety of reasons.
It could be old technology, poor customer service, or just pure bugs. Yes, the old “crash, system errors, bad data, data backup, etc.” have you ever heard this?
Well, if so, because that means you actually knew your fuel data and asked the questions. Even when these “glitches” happen legitimately, unless you point it out, don’t expect your truck stop or fuel card provider to point it out. Most of the time they don’t even know what’s going on until they’re told. Thank goodness your fuel management system is aware of this.
Can you imagine how bad your fleet management program or diesel fuel prices would look if you didn’t have all of this under control? You may be spending a lot more money than you should, but we know that everyone follows this information very closely.
People discovered and solved more than 350 fuel price problems. That’s almost 40 a week. Okay, mistake, how much is that costing your fleet management budget? Let’s say you were supposed to get a cost plus 3.
Instead, your deal fell off the table at 1 truck stop and you’re paying full retail price. His purchases of diesel fuel there per month are 5,000 gallons at a difference of 0.28 cents per gallon compared to his retail cost plus 3. That mistake alone cost him an extra $1,400 a month in diesel fuel or more than $16,800 a year.
That’s 1 mistake at one location, with a truck stop only buying 5,000 gallons a month. As a YTD company, we have caught (including mobile fueling) errors of over $400,000.
As a Fleet Manager, Director of Transportation, Vice President of Strategic Sourcing, mistakes can really add to your profit/loss. That is a very small sample of what we see.
The trucking industry is too tough to just flush money down the toilet. Audit, validate, reconcile, or possibly close, because your fleet fuel cost ratios will kill a business if no one really runs it.