Rising fuel expenses are one of the top concerns for trucking fleets in the United States.
A fuel card is designed to help truckers feel less burdened while they are performing their daily operations. In fact, a trucker can take advantage of gallon discounts by using the fuel card, which helps to bring down the overall expenses.
Benefits Of Having A Fuel Card
1. Fuel Cards Reduces Fleet Fuel Expenses
If you own a truck service or a transportation company, you should get fuel cards since it is one of the best financial tools for substantial fuel savings. For instance, some fuel card programs can help you save an average of 8% per gallon on diesel, gas, petroleum, and oil.
This significantly helps to reduce the overall trucking expenses of the company, which allows you to improve the management of your services. Besides this, drivers can avail of the cash price and avoid transaction fees while filling their trucks with gas.
2. Convenient For Truckers
Some trucking companies don’t offer fuel cards to their drivers; therefore, drivers often end up paying the expenses for the fuel with their own money. Moreover, they have to wait for a long period till the company reimburses their expenses on their paycheck.
This creates a lot of inconveniences for the drivers, but a fuel card can eliminate the financial burden on their shoulders. Fuel cards allow the trucking company to set a cash limit for their drivers, which helps to lower fuel expenses. In addition, many cards allow the company to set a limit for food and other allowances.
3. Additional Discounts And Perks
Another benefit of owning a fuel card is that it provides the users with additional perks and discounts, which can help to lessen trucking expenses. For instance, if you own a fuel card, you are eligible for major discounts on emergency repairs, credit, maintenance, and tires.
4. Manage Better Budgets With Spending Control
If you want to improve the overall budget while operating a trucking company, then you should try out the spending control feature of the fuel card. By setting a spending control, you can monitor the drivers’ spending and ensure they are not crossing a certain expenditure limit.
Apart from this, you can set other allowances, such as grabbing snacks from the stations. Similarly, you can check if the vehicles comply with the current International Fuel Tax Agreement so that you can avoid unnecessary penalties.
You can also focus on higher-value tasks since the card will easily monitor the budget without any supervision. As such, you can improve the overall productivity of the business while reducing costs.
5. Provides Accurate Records And Analytical Reports
Apart from being a convenient financial tool to cut down fuel expenses, you can use the car to prepare an accurate record of your expenses. ,Most fuel cards these days offer programs that help owners to check real-time expenses and records by simply downloading an app.
Moreover, the app can be used for other types of facilities, such as identifying issues, preventing fraudulent gas charges, and preparing analytical records for the entire year. If you look closely at the analytical record, you will find a better way to improve the business by cutting down unwanted expenses.
6. Encourages More Flexibility
Most of the time, a carrier will tie themself to specific companies or brokers since they offer fuel advances to reduce the burden on budgeting. However, this practice can reduce overall productivity since it limits the drivers to a few brokers only. Therefore, truckers are forced to turn down high-paying loads if the broker/company refuses to give fuel alliance in advance.
Nevertheless, this problem can be fixed if truckers apply for dedicated fuel cards for themselves. This allows them to have better control over their expenses, and therefore, they can work with different brokers and shippers.
7. Prevent Fraudulent Gas Charges
If a trucker carries cash or a credit card while operating the vehicle, they become an easy target for theft. However, a fuel card can prevent such theft since the card is tied to the driver and requires a PIN to operate.
But in some instances, a trucker can try to steal from the company itself, and this is considered internal theft. For instance, the trucker can allow their friends and close acquaintances to use the fuel alliance for their personal use. This is hard to detect if the company uses a receipt-based system to track all expenditure records.
On the contrary, the chance of internal theft is reduced if the truckers use a fuel card since you can monitor their expenditure in real time. In addition, you can set a spending limit discouraging them from stealing since they have a fixed budget for the entire month.
Also, owners can deactivate the card at any time if it gets stolen or lost. This prevents the business from incurring a heavy loss since it adds a layer of protection.
8. Offers Centralized Billing
Lastly, the fuel card provides better budget management since all the road expenses can be tracked from one place. The app is built to provide a comprehensive record of all the billings that took place over a period. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about losing a physical receipt since the app maintains all records in the system.
To sum up, a fuel card is one of the most important financial tools a trucker should possess if they want to maintain a better budget for fuel expenditure. Transportation companies can also benefit from this tool since it helps them monitor the drivers and exercise better control over their expenses.