How to save money while fueling your fleet.
With recent high diesel and gas prices, saving money on fuel is a priority for many fleets. Star Oilco is here to help you contain the hidden costs of fuel with our fleet card solutions.
If you are a fleet manager or in charge of corporate fueling and you use retail gas stations, this article is designed to talk you out of it.
Every year, Star Oilco helps small businesses save labor and protect themselves from theft. It’s the little costs we don’t watch that can add up and really cost a business. We help businesses keep a complicated fuel bill easy to manage. Be it moving to mobile-onsite fueling, a totally secure fleet card solution, or a combination of the two consolidated onto one bill Star Oilco is here to make things easy.
With wages and fuel costs rising together containing those costs is a priority for every fleet. Both the labor cost sunk in fueling your own fleet as well as the actual cost of the fuel bought, many of our conversations are around how to structure a clear view of this. We have solutions and can provide a clear view of your fuel costs via Star Oilco’s Keep it Simple Fuel Audit.
Usually the only time a fuel bill is really examined is after a record setting month for overtime, a huge jump up in the commodity cost of fuel, or a giant volume of fuel theft was discovered. Essentially, when costs have ballooned out of what they should be that is when businesses dig in and pay attention.
If that describes your need, Star Oilco has a proven system to bring your fuel cards under control and return honest employees to the straight and narrow or document the thieves so you have red-handed proof. If you are local to Oregon and Washington we can also combine this with the labor savings of wet-hose fueling of your fleet.
Whether it’s with a secured cardlock program or on-site fleet fueling at your business location we can make fuel secure, simple, and at a lower cost than retail. We do this by tailoring your fuel cards to your actual business needs.
If you don’t operate on weekends and after 9pm at night, we make sure the fuel cards that serve that part of the business are not usable during those times. We also attach the name of the person fueling to the bill so you don’t have to research or wonder–you always know who it is. Additionally, we can send an e-receipt to your dispatch the moment anyone buys fuel. This ensures you are managing fuel buying habits in real time, not at the end of the month after the bill arrives. Also every transaction on your bill can show the name of the human being who got fuel to really shine a light on who is doing what.
At the end of every month most businesses are looking at their bottom line and considering how to control the expense side of the equation. With retail gas station fuel, it can be tricky trying to control cost. If you focus solely on the cost of fuel itself, savings can be allusive in the long run. In fact the greatest tragedies in business usually are the things you don’t see in any statistic, especially the price you pay up front versus over all. The two largest controllable fuel expenses we consistently see are labor and avoiding theft.
If you are curious after reading this, the first step with Star Oilco is a Keep it Simple Fuel Audit performed by our team. Call us if you want to audit your fuel process.
What’s in the price of a gallon of gas or diesel? At Star Oilco we Keep it Simple.
Keep it simple when looking at your bill. There are only a few things in the cost of a gallon of gas or diesel: the commodity cost of fuel, the taxes on fuel, and the margin of the person selling fuel to you. Regardless of where you buy or how high or low the cost, that is what influences your fuel cost. If they call it something else, it’s really marginal and you should negotiate as such. The commodity cost is about the same no matter what. Even the largest buyers in a market are only saving a few pennies and your price per gallon will not be influenced more than a few pennies by this. Taxes should be the same and are easy to verify on Google. Margin is all that’s left. So if you ask your vendor to provide you a cost plus basis it should be very doable. All businesses have cost including oil companies, but they should be able to clearly describe what it costs for them to deliver or supply a gallon of fuel to you.
The cheaper the retail price the longer the wait.
Focus on your business’s labor, not on the price per gallon.
If you analyze it, usually your cost of labor to fill up your own vehicles costs more than what the local gas station makes selling you fuel. Add up your cost of labor and the vehicle and know that you are losing probably twenty minutes to a half hour to pull out of route, pull over, and fill up. If you are routing your drivers to save money on a retail street price, you are paying far more for your driver’s to chase savings than you will ever see in savings. The bigger the posted retail savings the longer the line your drivers will wait in as well, making it even more costly to your bottom line.
Remember that if a convenient excuse exists, some will use it. If the answer to why it took so long is consistently because they had to stop and get diesel. Fix that permanently with a fleet fueling company that provides on-site refueling.
Prevent theft and keep honest people honest.
As fuel prices jump from time to time, fuel theft takes off as well. For some people, stealing fuel for their personal vehicles can be almost irresistible. Make it very clear that you do not tolerate theft and that you can verify it clearly. With a “Zero Tolerance Fuel Theft Policy” you can get ahead of this eventuality and stop it long before it starts. There are thousands of stories of thousands of dollars in fuel stolen by seemingly good people. It always starts with one person doing it and influencing other employees to think it’s okay. Make sure it is clear that it is not only not-okay, but will be seen and punished. A few years ago a $2.4 Million theft occurred by an unsecured fleet card policy. Though the size of this theft is unbelievable, know if you aren’t tracking fuel purchases with a secret PIN that attaches the name of who did it to the fuel bill, you might be positioning yourself for the same exposure.
As you look at your month end P&L Statement, think about the bigger picture, the bigger costs in your business and that you can engineer systems that give you more control over these costs. Though Star Oilco accepts Voyager, WEX and Comdata cards, we are passionate and feel the Pacific Pride’s solutions are the best for a small business seeking to control their fuel purchase and knocking out theft. If you have questions about how to save on labor and stop theft before it starts, call Star Oilco for a tailored examination of how you buy fuel and how you can save money. We provide Pacific Pride and Fuel Management solutions nation wide in the United States. We can help you get your fuel under control.
Contact Star Oilco to save money on gas and diesel.
Star Oilco is a proud independent Franchisee of Pacific Pride
