9/11/2009  Successful Fuel Management Program Equals Discipline
By Glen Sokolis

It's the beginning of football season, so let's talk about blocking and tackling your fuel management program. When you say "blocking and tackling," it sounds so hard. It's like watching a football game with the big lineman down in the trenches.

It is hard. If you want to really save money on your fuel program, you have to work at it.

The first thing you need to do is have the proper fuel planning. How are we going to fuel? Where are we going to fuel? Who is going to do the fueling? What is our process for buying fleet fuel? When is our fuel buying and fuel management going to take place?

There's a list a mile long that goes along with those questions, and we'll cover them in the coming weeks and months with this new weekly fuel management report.

The most important thing to remember is a fuel management program is a basically a living, breathing animal. If you are setting your fuel planning and forgetting about it, you are losing money, every day. A solid fuel management program needs to be managed all of the time. Negotiations, fuel audits, supplier audits, tax reviews, and drivers following directions on where to fuel. What's the cost for fuel additives? How about DEF for 2010 engines?

A successful fuel management program is like a successful football coach. You have a fuel game plan, and every week that plan changes. Just as in football, your opponent changes. In the case of fuel, what is changing is the fuel environment; bulk fuel cost, over the road fuel cost, transaction providers, fleet fuel companies. Your routes change and therefore you must change.

Are you doing these things for your fuel management program today? Your company needs to be. Fuel planning is not going to get any easier as time goes on. What is your company going to do when prices go back up over $4 a gallon for diesel fuel? Through this column, we will help you get to a place that will provide you with some education to better buy your company's fleet fuel.

Glen Sokolis is president of the Sokolis Group, a nationwide fuel management and fuel consulting company, www.FuelManagementSokolisGroup.com. He will be making a presentation on blocking and tackling your fuel program at the OPIS Fleet Fueling Conference later this month.




The Bottom Line: Related News

9/3/2010 - Fuel Management and Seven Tips for Putting Together an Effective Fleet Fueling Program People are always surprised to learn that over 1.5 percent of a company's fleet fueling budget goes to theft and that 81 percent of fuel thefts are an inside job... More >

8/27/2010 - Cheap Diesel Fuel Prices? A Distant Memory For as long as anyone can remember, until recently that is, diesel fuel was always less expensive than gasoline which made things easy for fleet fuel managers.... More >

8/6/2010 - Fleet Fuel: A Look Back and a Glimpse Ahead What a difference eight years makes in the world of fleet fuel. In May 2002 the average diesel fuel price was $1.30 a gallon and the percentage of that price collected in federal and state fuel taxes was 37 percent.... More >

7/22/2010 - The True Costs of Congestion Truckload carrier Jet Express hauls dedicated, closed-loop freight, and has to give customers updates on delivery times every two hours.... More >

7/21/2010 - The Basics of the Heavy Vehicle Use Tax Return Do the numbers 2290 and the date of Aug. 31 ring a bell? If not, you had better keep reading.... More >

7/16/2010 - Wow! My Fleet Fuel Card is Burning! Every day we deal with thousands of fleet fuel transactions. Some fleet fuel card companies are better than others for customer service, discount deals, acceptance and information... More >

7/2/2010 - Fuel Management When You Least Expect It My guess is that most of you have a fuel management program. It is either real or it's in your head, but you believe you have an effective fuel program that is money saving when it comes to buying fleet fuel.... More >

6/25/2010 - Protecting Yourself From Lawsuits Part 2: Employment Bombshells In employment there are a number of litigation bombshells waiting to explode into your face if you don't hear - and respond to - the ticking you should be hearing.... More >

6/16/2010 - The Changing Face of Trucking Part 2: Riding the Rails In late 1989, truckload pioneer J.B. Hunt ventured into the intermodal business, moving truck trailers "piggyback" on flatbed railcars. The company moved 20 loads that first year. In 2009, it moved more than 900,000.... More >

6/14/2010 - In-Cab Navigation: How Did We Go So Long Without It? Today, navigation capabilities using GPS technology are everywhere. Many new cars have built-in navigation units. You can find the nearest gas station or ATM on your smart phone.... More >

6/11/2010 - Life Is Like Fuel Management: You Never Know What You're Going to Get I had a pretty moving experience last week, and it has led me to think about a lot of things in life.... More >

5/28/2010 - Take the Wild Card Out of Fuel Management Have you have been to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or the horseracing track? Have you ever bet on a football game? Do you ever feel like you're going to win?... More >

5/21/2010 - Protecting Yourself From Lawsuits New safety initiatives under way at the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration will reshape the legal landscape for trucking, say industry lawyers.... More >

5/14/2010 - Et Tu Greece? Makes For Crazy Ride on the Fleet Fuel Express Greece provided help last week to the fleet fuel markets helping drive down fuel costs by over $11 a barrel for crude oil and near 30 cents a gallon for diesel fuel.... More >

4/30/2010 - Fuel Prices are Pumping Up! If you read last month's feature article we talked about all of the negative things that were happening that we believe will cause fleet fuel prices to go up throughout the rest of the year.... More >

4/16/2010 - Can Fleet Fuel Fraud Happen to You? In fleet fueling there are many ways your employees can steal fuel from you. Most companies truly believe, it can't happen to me.... More >

4/2/2010 - Is Bio Fuel Dead for Your Fleet Fuel Program? We aren't going to say that just yet. But Congress has sure made it difficult for that market. As most of you know, the $1 a gallon tax credit went away at the end of 2009.... More >

3/19/2010 - Spring is in the Air.....and There's Water in my Tank! April showers bring May flowers ... but you might already have water in your fuel tank!... More >

3/12/2010 - The Changing Face of Trucking: Part I Once upon a time, you had truckload companies, less-than-truckload companies, warehousing/logistics companies, rail intermodal companies, port drayage companies, and brokers. But today, the lines are blurring.... More >