All around the country, if you ask fleet managers or company owners what is the single biggest company expense – they will tell you fuel. On average, transportation companies spend 25% or more on fuel purchases. When I say fuel, it can mean both gas and diesel.
A 1% reduction in fuel costs can result in thousands of dollars in profit annually. A recent study done by Continental showed that fuel management systems are ranked 1st on the fleet manager wish-list.
What does fuel management actually means?
Fuel management is set of activities and procedures companies implement in order to optimize fuel usage and reduce costs related to fuel purchasing. Usually it is a combination of technology & procedures required to generate maximum optimization.
Most companies focus only on few things when thinking about Fuel Management. Usually the focus is on company fuel cards because the savings are easy to calculate and it’s visible immediately. But fuel purchase routing works great with existing fuel cards and provides an extra layer of savings.
Fuel management in today’s fleet
Part of the reason why fleet managers focus only on this is fuel card aspect is that simply there is a lack of alternatives or better solutions on the market. We at Fueloyal developed a new set of features custom tailored to any business operating fleet of vehicles.
It’s called Fuel Purchase Routing and we take the fuel management one step above a fuel card focused program. It is extra layer of savings customized for each company delivering up to $250/vehicle per months savings.
What is Fuel Purchase Routing
Fuel purchase routing takes in consideration multiple unique factors your company has such as:
- fleet size
- geo location of your fleet
- vehicles type and model
- vehicle usage patterns
- fuel tax rates
- fuel card discounts if applicable
- fuel tank level
- realtime fuel prices
- fuel type
After taking in consideration all the above mentioned factors, our system will autonomously recommend the cheapest location to buy fuel. Your driver will get notification and in realtime can proceed to the location recommended. This way companies can easily start saving up to $250 per vehicle/month.
Who can use Fuel Purchase Routing
Fuel purchase routing can be used by any company small or large that wants to optimize the fuel expenses and save money. The recommended minimum fleet size is 20 vehicles as the system needs to be customized per each company.
The biggest savings can be expected by the companies operating in the following areas:
- trucking industry
- city delivery / last mile
- taxi services and ride sharing companies
- service industry
- construction and maintenance industry
Can we use Fuel Purchase Routing if we have a fuel card?
The simple answer is – Yes! Actually those two systems works great combined. Fuel purchase routing integrates the data of your fuel card and will recommend the cheapest location according to your fuel card discount plan.
This way you just added turbo boost to your company fuel card program and can often provide discounts up to $.30 per gallon. It is truly amazing how this custom Fuel Routing system can deliver ROI in first month upon launching.
How Fuel Purchase Routing works
The first step in implementing our Fuel Routing system is we integrate all your data into the system. This begins the customization phase. Next we develop the algorithm that will maximize the data collected from the device installed in the vehicle. Around 1000 data points are collected daily.
This data is processed by algorithm and results are delivered to the vehicle driver in real-time. Since the vehicle driver is the decision maker, the system is informing him with intelligence as to where the cheapest location is for the fuel purchase.
The most popular way to inform the driver is by SMS text message. We have other options also available. Each SMS is stored for the detail analysis and savings calculation. This allows easy monitoring and accountability of each driver following the recommendations and actually saving the money for the company by participating in the program.
How long does it take to implement
The time and procedure to customize the system and test it is quite fast and takes around 30 days. The process starts with a discovery phase where we collect information from you and start with the algorithm development and implementation.
Let’s talk and reduce fuel expenses
If you’d like to learn more about the fuel purchase routing please contact me at kc@fueloyal.com. I’d be happy to help and save your company more money and deliver ROI in first month.
