Ask the Fuel Expert

How many invoices from suppliers come into your office each month? If you took the time to count them all, I am sure you’d be surprised. Chances are you don’t even see them; it’s likely someone in accounts payable who reconciles all the bills.

If you’re the boss you might sign the cheques or glance at the monthly cash flow statements as a review of where all that money went. But if you’re like most fuel-dependent companies, fuel is your highest expense after labour and when there’s lots of money at stake, mistakes are costly.

Fuel Storage Tanks:
If you fuel from your own storage tanks, then you buy in bulk and paying for thousands of litres of fuel on a single invoice. But make sure you check them.

Are you receiving an exact detailed volume report or a monthly estimate of fuel delivered? What is your pricing arrangement – cents per volume or is there a delivery fee, too. How do you confirm the volume on the invoice matches the volume in your storage tank? How do you ensure that the fuel in your storage tanks goes into your vehicles and only yours?

And finally, how are you measuring the productivity versus fuel – that is, the return you’re getting on your second highest operating cost?

Wheel-To-Wheel Fuelling:
Wheel-to-wheel refuelling solves the issue of getting fuel into the right vehicles and it simplifies accounting by including deliveries on dockets and billing them together on a single invoice. But how accurate is it?

Many wheel-to-wheel providers use hand-written dockets, faxed records and paper invoices which leave room for human error in every step. In addition, clients often can’t view a break-down of deliveries or easily review dockets. In most cases, you’re at the mercy of the invoice.

But what if you could see how much fuel went into each vehicle. What if you could access any transaction by date, price, volume, time or vehicle identification number equipment tag? What the accuracy of every transaction was assured by automated data tracking and radio-frequency identification tags?

In that case, you’d be dealing with something called Total Fuel Management (TFM).

Total Fuel Management (TFM) represents a combination of fuel logistics and delivery with automated tracking and online reporting. It’s an end to end solution that enables businesses to manage their fuel resources as accurately as human resources – and drive a higher return on investment.

TFM streamlines fuel logistics from the source with better purchasing direct from producers. Fuel is then distributed to your national operations – even international operations through a network of mobile delivery units. And no matter where the fuel is collected or where it is delivered, the data is all available in a single place – an online fuel management portal. Sound intriguing?

The best news is, Total Fuel Management already exists.

TFM uses closed loop technology to gather data from every point of fuelling and report it all to a central point of reporting. Whether fuel is dispensed wheel-to-wheel, from fuel islands, at card-locks or from company fuel trucks, the data can be captured and uploaded to a powerful web portal called Fuel Management Online.

In the case of wheel-to-wheel fuelling, the data capture process details every transaction where fuel is pumped into vehicles and equipment. A radio frequency identification chip about the size of a loonie is attached to your equipment and registers it uniquely at time of fuelling. This information appears on your invoice so you can track fuel consumption, by unit.

With Positive ID you know where your fuel is going and with TFM operating data is recorded too. This feature gives you the ability to measure one piece of equipment against another so you can get the maximum productivity from your fuel investment.

With TFM there are no personal errors, no wasted time reconciling invoices, no time spent trying to track down who pumped what fuel, when. It is all there in a report delivered to your desktop via email. Reconciliation is easy…it takes the guess work out of tracking your fuel so you know exactly how much fuel you got, where it went and what you are paying for, to the penny.

Some fuel suppliers will give you a low price guarantee based on volume purchases which may appear to save you money. When you look at the real cost of fuel, there are other factors to consider. Ask yourself these questions:

- How will the fuel be delivered to each piece of equipment?
- Will each refuelling occasion be time stamped, equipment identified and fuel measured?
- Is all invoicing accurate?
- Am I getting the data I need to calculate the best return on my fuel investment?

Fuel is a non-renewable resource so it is important to try and minimize consumption wherever possible. When you have consumption data available in addition to accurate invoicing you are prepared to make operating decisions that can cut the amount of fuel; you use.

Total Fuel Management uses state of the art digital technology that will make your life easier and the benefits translate to your bottom line.

Jack Lee
President/CEO
4Refuel Inc