By Fleet Management Weekly Staff
June 26, 2024
Fuel cards have long been accepted by fleets to manage fuel costs across an array of drivers and vehicles. However, fuel cards have changed dramatically over the years. Traditional fuel cards came with certain limitations that stymied control, such as:
- Lack of control over spending: Traditional fuel cards lack real-time visibility into transactions, which can also include hidden fees, making it difficult for fleet managers to monitor and control spending.
- Limited acceptance: Traditional fuel cards may be accepted only at certain fuel stations or limited to specific fuel providers, restricting fleet drivers’ refueling options.
- Lack of reporting and analytics: Traditional fuel cards often lack detailed reporting and analytics features, making it challenging for fleet managers to analyze fuel consumption, track expenses, and identify cost-saving opportunities.
- Potential for misuse and fraud: With limited oversight and control, traditional fuel cards are susceptible to misuse and fraud, leading to unauthorized fuel purchases and inflated expenses.
- Administrative burden: Managing traditional fuel cards can be time-consuming and complex, requiring manual reconciliation of transactions, tracking receipts, and processing financials, budget, and paperwork.
- Inflexible payment terms: Traditional fuel cards may not offer flexible payment terms or discounts, limiting fleet managers’ ability to negotiate better pricing with fuel providers.
According to Rush Akin, RoadFlex Chief Revenue Officer, modern fuel cards like RoadFlex address many of those problems, ensuring the utmost control over expenses. With modern fuel management platforms like RoadFlex, fleets can manage fleet costs in one platform while preventing fuel card misuse and fuel theft.
“Our proactive Fuel Risk Management Platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) to extract valuable insights from a fleet’s fuel expense data,” explains Akin. “By spotting anomalies in fuel expenditures, our platform allows fleets to catch fuel card misuse as it happens. Additionally, through our partnership with VISA, our fuel cards can be used at all fuel stations and truck stops nationwide that accept VISA, giving fleets greater freedom over where and when they fuel.”
To get a complete picture of the RoadFlex solution, Akin explained how RoadFlex’s unique approach to fuel risk management can help fleets save an average of 11-15% of fuel costs each month.
How does RoadFlex help fleets?
RoadFlex is fast-growing. We’ve been nicknamed “The Disrupters” within the industry, and I think it’s all about our proactive approach to fuel risk management. We have about 4,500 customers deployed today across the network. More and more are coming every day because, as you can imagine, cutting down on fuel costs can save hundreds of thousands of dollars for fleets wanting to get control of their fuel expenses. About five years in, business is growing like crazy, and we’re having a great time teaching this industry a new way to see what a fuel card is.
Modern fuel cards aren’t just made for the trucking industry. They can be used in many industries like utilities, field services, HVAC, plumbing, final mile delivery, and healthcare. These are great examples of folks we need to keep on the road to help our local communities survive and thrive.
What do modern fuel management platforms offer compared to standard fleet fuel cards?
It’s an exciting time in our industry right now as fleet managers start to see fuel cards in a much different way. A modern fleet card or fuel card platform combines the card and the platform. Having an AI-based platform behind the card helps drive the behavior of each one of the cards across the entire fleet. This allows fleet managers to control all of their fuel costs and can save them a tremendous amount of money. Most fleets report an average savings of about 11-15% by using a platform coupled with their cards, which allows them to control the behavior of that card to prevent fuel fraud, fuel theft, and unaccounted-for fuel.
With a modern fleet management program like RoadFlex, you’ll see that our cards are generally branded Visa or MasterCard. They’re not unique to a particular brand and are universally accepted at all gas stations and truck stops nationwide.
Unlike legacy fuel cards that are limited to certain branded gas stations, RoadFlex reduces the need to drive extra miles out-of-route to find an “in-network gas station,” which can be costly. This alone minimizes labor/payroll costs, while saving time and fuel and avoiding any unnecessary vehicle wear and tear.
Further, fleets can use RoadFlex for more than just fuel–they can use them for towing services, fleet maintenance, and even at the hardware store to buy parts for things they might need for their job site. So, it’s become more of a business card well beyond just a fuel card – this is another way fleets can save a ton of money, as well as time, labor, energy, and fuel costs.
The 11-15% savings are also significant because fuel is the number one cost expenditure to run a fleet. It’s not the purchase of the vehicles or maintenance – fuel is the number one highest cost line item in their P&L and budget. As modern card providers, we can come along and help bring back 11-15% in fuel expenditures each year. That’s a considerable number to these companies, hundreds of thousands of dollars up to a million in some cases, depending on the fleet size.
What is proactive fuel risk management? How does it differ from legacy solutions?
Proactive fuel risk management is new to the industry. With a modern fuel/fleet card and an AI-driven expense platform, we can proactively monitor and prevent fuel theft and fraud while maintaining accountability for where the fuel goes. Most fleets can’t reconcile what happened to about 11-15% of their fuel at the end of the month, which is a significant cost for the fleet.
It’s a proactive approach compared to the reactive one with some traditional card providers. With these legacy card providers, typically, a customer gets a statement with all their fuel transactions at the end of the month. Then, a team of people sort through those transactions to find anomalies, such as fuel theft, fraud, or fuel going into the wrong vehicle. That adds up to a lot of labor, hours, and costs for the fleet.
With a proactive approach, we have three authorization points before issuing a single drop of fuel. We don’t issue fuel unless we know the vehicle, the driver, and the fuel card are all physically located at the pump. This prevents theft from happening in the first place rather than calling a driver 30 days later to ask, “what happened,” which can lead to an awkward he-said, she-said conversation between the fleet and the drivers.
Can you share an example of a fleet utilizing proactive fuel risk management and how it worked?
One of our fleets is Appalachian Utilities, which is located in Kentucky. They deployed our program about four or five months ago. Anytime the platform or the AI senses something doesn’t feel right about the fuel transactions, it sends them an alert saying, “This driver, Jim Smith, consumes ten times more fuel than all his peers across the fleet.” So, they can then talk to the driver about whether there’s some siphoning or whatever might be happening.
The AI also identifies fueling trends of certain fleet vehicles regardless of who drives them. For example, this F-250 consumes ten times more fuel than all of its peer F-250s across the fleet. Something might be going on with the engine, the transmission, or the fuel pump, but you might want to bring it in for service and have it looked at.
There’s a great story about Appalachian Utilities using our platform’s real-time controls. Their fleet manager ordered 30 additional cards from us to deploy across their growing fleet, and she was out distributing the cards when her car was broken into. They stole everything from her vehicle: her purse, backpack, everything. She called us in a panic at 10 pm, and we advised her to simply log into her platform so we could deactivate all the cards in real time. We got it done in about five minutes, and within 30 minutes to an hour after her car was broken into, we started seeing the cards declining. Not only were we able to prevent fuel theft, but she was able to send that information to the local police, who caught video of these thieves trying to get fuel from the cards at convenience stores.
This happened months ago; even today, we’re seeing declined transactions from the stolen cards. It’s a remarkable story. I think she would have had to call a customer service line and fill out a ‘contact us’ form with some of the legacy card providers. By the time some of the legacy companies were able to deactivate those cards off the network, she could have easily been out $18,000 in lost fuel. So again, modern cards can be deactivated within seconds of hitting the button.
Can you tell us about instant virtual cards?
There’s another story about Appalachian Utilities where, after a storm event, they had over 50 trucks out putting up power lines and restoring power in towns five states away. They needed fuel – these guys were practically frontline responders for that particular town, and to go without cards and fuel would have been a significant problem for their operation. Within about 10 minutes, we could issue virtual cards to those drivers. They received an SMS text RoadFlex card, which dropped right into their Apple Pay or Android wallet. They can hold their phone to the pump like you would Apple Pay. It was all real-time, hands-off, and the fleet manager didn’t need to call us to do that. She just issued all the virtual cards out of the platform so the fleet could back up and run power lines for the entire town.
What’s the price difference between modern and traditional fuel cards?
Pricing with a modern fuel card has a few advantages. Unlike traditional or legacy fuel cards, modern cards typically have no hidden fees. They’re generally a flat rate, and we offer competitive rebates at the pump.
The second advantage is that we have two options for fleets to deploy: a prepaid account card and a traditional credit card. A lot of the customers who choose the prepaid account are brand-new businesses. For example, we worked with one utility company that had yet to establish business credit, so we set them up on our prepaid account card and reported good credit to the credit agencies for them. After a few months of reporting to the credit agencies, helping them build their credit, we switched them over to our credit card offering. Good credit helped build their business, allowing them to buy 16 brand-new utility trucks and get a loan from the bank. They couldn’t get a loan from anybody when they started, but they can now open a second office in Pensacola by building up their business credit on our prepaid program.
To learn more about RoadFlex’s Proactive Fuel Risk Management Platform, click here.
