All in the tank?
30 Commercial Carrier Journal September 2008 W ith fuel more than $4 a gallon, a driver with a company fuel card might be tempted to sell discounted fuel to owner-operators and other motorists at truck stops. By peddling only a few gallons, he probably could earn some easy money and his company might never know. Electronic payment systems have become the main weapon for controlling fuel pur-chases. These systems, often referred to simply as fuel cards, allow fleets to set up parameters for each driver such as dollar amount, gallons, location and even distance travelled each day. Yet drivers' routes and fuel needs change every day. To gain more control and visibility over fuel transactions, more fleets are working with technology providers to adjust controls in lockstep with their daily operations. Drivers at A.D. Transport now have to call in each day for their fuel plan. The Canton, Mich.-based company uses a fuel card system from T-Chek that integrates with its fuel purchase optimization system from ProMiles Software and its AS400 dispatch system. Using dispatch information, the ProMiles software calculates an optimal fuel purchase plan and route. In turn, T-Chek automatically allows each driver to purchase a specific num-ber of gallons at a specific location during a certain time window, says Dave Konopka, director of quality. Fleets that integrate the Comdata fleet card with their dispatch software can restrict fuel purchases automatically by using the number of miles for each trip plus a factor for deadhead miles. Fuel purchases can be limited further by a certain gallon or dollar limit. Fleets also can require drivers to enter the correct trip number at the point of sale to authorize a fuel trans-action, says Scott Phillips, senior vice president of Comdata Corp. Fuel-card provider EFS Transportation Services recently developed a new application to fight fuel theft. When a driver wants to purchase fuel, he first sends a message through the in-cab communications system to request a spe-cific number of gallons. The application looks up the last fuel transaction and determines, based on the number of gallons purchased and miles traveled since the last stop, whether the driver has burned enough fuel to justify the purchase. If so, the card is authorized automatically for the requested gallon All in the tank? High fuel costs call for tighter control of fuel purchases By Aaron Huff technology n Logistics Council of the American Trucking Associations announced that its 2009 conference and exhibi-tion would be held March 22-25 in St. Petersburg, Fla. For more information as it becomes available, go to http:// itlc.truckline.com. n (www.mile.com) announced the release of FleetTrax version 3.5, a sig-nificant update of its fleet maintenance and inventory management system. n TMW Systems (www.tmwsystems.com) released TMT Fleet Maintenance for Windows Version 9. The application is offered by the TMW Asset Maintenance Software business unit, previously known as TMT Software. n added a new alert system to its wire-less fleet management system called Activity Alerts, which allows fleets to create e-mail or SMS (text) exception notifications for specific vehicle events. n announced that Dallas-based FFE Transportation Services will implement its trailer asset and information manage-ment solution in its American Eagle fleet. n received a $7 million working capital line from Transportation Alliance Bank. n said it now accepts electronic signa-tures from drivers to authorize the Web-based retrieval of their motor vehicle records. in brief More fleets are working with technology providers to gain more control and visibility over fuel transactions. (Continued on page 32)