Tight margins compel fleets to reduce overhead or leverage existing staff and resources. One ally in the battle for profitability is automation of routine processes. Because fuel is the most-often purchased commodity, managing those transactions is a major task.

Electronic pre-authorization with fleet cards has become the standard method for automating fuel purchasing and cash disbursements to drivers. Besides security and control over company funds, carriers also use captured data to automate other internal processes such as payroll and settlements, fuel-tax reporting and auditing of logbooks.

While many companies use one fleet card per driver, it’s not uncommon to find fleets that issue two or more cards to drivers. The reasons for having multiple cards include: pricing, access to more truck stop chains, and just to “play the credit game,” says Cynthia Cunningham, product manager of Fleet One LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of TransPlatinum.

With fierce competition in the marketplace and huge financial backing from major banks, fleet card service providers, such as Comdata, Fleet One, TCH, T-Chek and Concord EFS, continue to beef-up their services to secure more of your financial and information needs. When looking at the number of services fleet cards offer today, the traditional “fleet card” used solely to purchase fuel at certain truck stops is obsolete, argues Mike Brewer, Comdata’s director of corporate communications.

Management controls
Although fuel purchases comprise the bulk of over-the-road expenses, many carriers use fleet cards to control all driver expenditures, thus having a single-source for all cash transactions. One advantage of single-source processing is that it allows fleets to audit drivers’ purchases and reconcile cash advances with payroll settlements – even before drivers turn in receipts.

Drivers for Tampa, Fla.-based Quality Carriers can purchase fuel, supplies, and get fast access to cash with almost zero administrative work, says Keith Margelowsky, the carrier’s vice president of performance planning. Management sets the company’s T-Chek card system with pre-authorized daily and weekly amounts for fuel purchases and cash advances. As Quality Carriers’ drivers – 85 percent are owner-operators – swipe their T-Chek cards at the pump or at the retail counter, the purchases are tallied against their personal file and automatically deducted from driver settlements.

Quality Carriers uses sophisticated software that integrates card data into accounting and payroll systems. But even carriers that can’t afford or handle such integrated systems can still achieve a level of automation by pre-authorizing purchases for certain expense categories. With the Fleet One card, for example, fleets can separate cash disbursements to drivers into different “buckets,” Cunningham says.