Are you someone who is considering buying a fuel card or someone who is interested in getting to know more about it? A fuel card can be a huge asset for your trucking company whether you are a business owner or have a fleet. This helps you greatly in saving your fuel costs to a great extent and streamlining all your back-office processes.
There are countless benefits of using fuel card services for business owners, especially those who own trucking businesses. As mentioned before, they are a big way of improving cash flow, saving money, and also, reducing the overall time taken to process big administration tasks.
Fuel cards give you galloon discounts on diesel fuel and also, aid you with the management of the fleet. They also give you additional discounts and common security features. A fuel card is basically loaded by the trucking company, and the drivers who work under that company use it to get discounts.
Moreover, the users of fuel cards are offered financial services alongside for example trucking. Another benefit of making use of a fuel card is that your fuel card company will negotiate for discounts with different truck stops and then tell you which discounts are the best for you.
Below are some detailed benefits of owning a fuel card for a trucking business owner.
Reduce Fuel Expenses
One of the biggest reasons why trucking and other transportation companies use fuel cards is the fantastic fuel savings. Let’s put this in an example, people who use the Viva fuel card program can get an average saving of up to 40-50 cents per gallon which is good.
If we sum all the savings up, it gathers to around $12000-13000 of annual savings. Moreover, you also have the opportunity to get the cash price and also eliminate the transaction fees.
Convenient For Truck Drivers
If a trucking company doesn’t offer its employees the fuel cards, it’s a big hassle for the employees because they are then responsible for the fuel themselves, and have to collect all the fuel receipts so that they can show them to their employer who then can reimburse on their paycheck.
This act full of hassle is something that can turn out to be a headache for your drivers because sometimes they can’t even afford to buy the fuel, plus, it creates a further overhead for your trucking business.
When you have a fuel card with you, you can have all the peace of mind that you won’t have to get into any hassle of taking the responsibility for the fuel yourself, rather you will have the money in advance in your fuel card. Most fuel cards give an opportunity to set a limit for different supplies such as foods so that your employees can only spend what they are allowed to.
Manage Budget Better
It is good to allow your drivers to grab snacks at truck stops, but let it be clear, that most drivers misuse these perks. It is common to see truck drivers spending overly and perks like these are often too abused.
However, you don’t have to worry about this problem anymore as with the correct fuel program you can successfully set limits on various fuel products, and even cash. If you are an owner-operator, you get out of the hassle of constant budgeting and also monitoring the accounts on the road; all you have to do is to set your budget in advance and good to go.
Accurate Records
Let it be clear that tracking fuel expenses are a great challenge regardless of what you are; whether you are the owner-operator or have many other trucks on track and have to keep an eye on them. This is where the fuel card programs can come into handy.
Modern fuel cards are just not only cards that offer you discounts on fuel but also allow you to track your trucks. For example, Viva’s programs come along with various dedicated apps and give you an opportunity to see the activity of your company, and even give out full reports. This also makes tracking the expenses, and the budgeting a lot easier.
Prevent Fraudulent Charges
It is common to see drivers getting robbed of credit cards and cash. However, when it comes to using fuel cards, theft is significantly reduced mainly because they require a PIN and are tied to the driver.
However, let it be known that there is still a chance of internal theft by the drivers and unfortunately it is difficult to detect if you are still using the receipt system. What most drivers do is, stop at a gas station, fill their pump and then pass on the pump to a friend who then can fill their tank as well. However, some fuel cards allow you to set spending limits and the chances of theft are greatly reduced.