Article Summary
How does transaction data and analytics from fuel cards and telematics platforms help trucking fleets identify inefficiencies in fuel spending and driver behavior?
- Driver behavior like hard acceleration, speeding, and idling are the top factors in fuel consumption, and fleets now coach drivers on spending habits at the fuel pump
- Real-time transaction scoring and AI analytics help fleets identify which drivers spend the most and highlight missed savings opportunities at discounted fuel locations
- Predictive pricing tools tell fleets daily what fuel prices will be tomorrow, enabling them to notify drivers whether to fuel now or wait, saving millions without affecting merchant relationships
- Spend controls and AI receipt reading flag out-of-policy purchases and automatically redirect drivers to cheaper nearby alternatives
- Fraud prevention integrations use GPS data and vehicle location matching to detect mismatches between fuel card swipes and actual pump locations in real time
Driver behavior is the top factor in fuel consumption: hard acceleration, speeding and, especially, idling. Trucking fleets have been coaching drivers to change that behavior, but with the volume of data available to fleets via their fuel card providers, they are beginning to implement coaching beyond performance behind the wheel to spending habits at the fuel island.
Melton Truck Lines monitors fuel consumption by tracking monthly data for each truck, fleet and the company as a whole by “pinging” each truck’s engine control module every five minutes. But the company takes its fuel policy further.
“Additionally, we expect our drivers to purchase fuel at locations where we have negotiated the lowest prices,” said Jac Carpenter, who oversees the fuel bonus program at Melton. “Our program monitors discount prices from every truck stop nationwide, updating daily to ensure current information. When drivers receive a load assignment, they are provided with a list of recommended truck stops along their routes where they are asked to fuel, ensuring compliance with our fuel efficiency standards.”
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Though fuel prices have begun to decline as shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz slowly recovers, economists say it will take months for prices to stabilize because of supply chain lags and the potential for further conflict.
Because of that, trucking companies – large and small – continue to hedge around fuel prices by optimizing routes, reducing idling and coaching drivers how to operate for fuel efficiency. While most measures to increase fuel economy are happening inside the cab, fuel card providers like Comdata, which provides spend-management tools and fraud prevention, as well as telematics providers like Motive, Geotab, Samsara and others, are stepping in to help fleets mitigate fuel costs at the pump.
Identifying inefficiencies
Comdata has developed many ways fleets can measure or identify inefficiencies in their fuel programs, said Randy Morgan, president of North American Trucking and Enterprise at Comdata. While the provider’s associates have helped fleets manage drivers and fuel spend for more than four decades and will continue to do so, he said there is heavy dependence upon machines and data in today’s fast-paced world to help drive change and savings.
“From a machine standpoint, Comdata has developed the unique capability of ‘scoring’ the transaction in real time to measure not only driver behavior but educating to impact the deals that are in place with the merchants,” Morgan said. “We are now leveraging AI to help fleets measure the actual consumption of fuel and being able to coach the driver with AI campaigns based upon concepts in conjunction with the fleets.”
Comdata integrates with several major telematics and fleet management providers, including Geotab, Motive and Samsara. For example, the provider imports fuel consumption, date and time, and cost directly into Motive. By combining that data with Motive Analytics and Fuel Hub, fleets can track spending and fuel consumption and gain AI-generated insights into surrounding analytics to identify and fix inefficiencies.
“Fleets can actually go deeper, understand who is spending the most, where they're spending the most,” said Dhruvi Singh, group product manager for Motive Card. “We also spot inefficiencies and show them as AI insights that ‘This driver has spent the most, and they have the highest missed savings. Maybe you should go ahead and coach them.’”
Motive offers a dashboard that shows fleets what a driver should have done instead, like fueling at a different location where the fleet has a discount. Drivers also have access to Savings Finder, which highlights all fueling stations in the driver app and informs them on facility amenities, fuel prices and if the fleet has a negotiated discount at that merchant.
Singh said Motive is integrating additional data into its ecosystem and will add a missed savings feature and other recommendations in the future.
Fuel-spend tracking and post-transaction analytics can help fleets improve savings, but that’s a reactive measure. Morgan said it goes deeper than cost. Comdata provides those insights as well, but it also offers a predictive model.
“As we know, cost of fuel is now more dynamic, and even though most fuel is priced via a cost-plus pricing scheme, the cost changes dramatically in one day,” he said. “We launch tools like Predictive Pricing that can tell a fleet at noon every day what the price there will be tomorrow and if they should notify drivers to fuel or wait, saving fleets millions of dollars without impact to their merchant relationships.”
Controlling spend
Identifying inefficiencies via analytics comes on the back end, but fleets can address this up front by controlling spend.
Samsara recently partnered with Coast Fuel Cards to provide similar insights into fuel spend as well as controls like verifying the right vehicle is actually at the fueling location and comparing fuel purchased versus fuel tank capacity to ensure alignment.
Additionally, fleets can upload their fuel-spending policy directly into the Samsara platform and use AI to automate driver coaching on where and how to spend based on that policy. Similarly, Motive uses AI receipt reading to identify and flag if a driver’s spending is out of policy.
The provider will also send notifications directly to drivers following a purchase if the system identifies that a nearby location had cheaper fuel. Singh said Motive is also working to add a capability that allows fleets to automatically decline a transaction if the system identifies a driver is at an expensive merchant and automatically route them to a nearby cheaper alternative.
Motive, which offers its own fuel card in addition to integrating with other fuel card providers like Comdata, also allows fleets to identify which merchants or locations they will allow drivers to fuel and spend at.
“They have that control to set whether merchants are allowed, but we give them flexibility to define at a non-allowed location how many dollars of spend can be done,” Singh said.
Comdata also provides spend controls for fleets during transactions. Fleets can set a limit for a transaction, and Comdata will ensure the quantity does not exceed that limit. It also offers controls on what drivers can purchase with their fuel card.
“Also, during the transaction, we are repricing the actual price of fuel based upon what the fleet and merchant have agreed upon as the actual price,” Morgan said.
He also noted controls for fuel fraud.
Sabina Martin, vice president of product management at Geotab, said while reduced idling and optimized routing offer the most opportunity for fuel savings, fleets should assess if fuel fraud is a problem for them.
“I think fuel fraud is probably that last squeeze if you’re continuing to try to drive margin,” she said.
Geotab integrates with multiple fuel card providers, including Comdata, to identify mismatches in vehicle location and fuel station location to prevent fuel fraud. Comdata also uses Samsara’s real-time GPS data to check the physical location of the vehicle against the location of the gas station at the exact millisecond a Comdata card is swiped to identify mismatches.
Morgan said Comdata also offers pre-transaction controls.
The provider allows fleets to input a control that limits fuel to the amount the truck’s tank can hold, preventing a fuel fraud event such as a driver fueling another tank in one transaction.
“We are also leveraging our enhanced authorization controls to help stop fraud before we ever allow the pump to be activated for a purchase,” Morgan said.
