Fuel Cards - How do they work?

No honestly for the life of me I cannot remember what its called. Heard some TSL drivers talking about it one day wanted to get some for my cab...ya know for educational purposes

 

The fuel card is similar to a debit card in how it works. With a fuel card, you have to verify certain credentials before you can get fuel. This is done to prevent fraudulent transactions. The fuel card company authorizes fuel purchases and then at the end of the week, your company pays the fuel card company for all of the amount of fuel purchased. Everytime you swipe your card, fuel, and hang up the pump, it basically records the transaction and then sent to the fuel card company via satellite, and then to your company by your company logging into their fuel card account. Most companies have a preset daily limit in fuel purchase by dollar amount or gallons. Lastly, your company can authorize certain purchases with your fuel card, and put cash advances on them as well

 

the last 2 companies told me within 30 minutes. so i keep within 15 minutes of before or after.

i don't think i've ever seen my fuel reciepts time stamped. and i've looked quite a bit as sometimes i will forget. now i record time and mileage into my phone with a voice recorder program.

 

Every carrier is different . Some specify where and how much to buy and where per each load .
While some fuel receipts don't have time stamps the time is recorded on card invoices to the carrier and that is what auditors check .
When I was driving for QC I could go on my Blackberry and see a record for the past 6 weeks of where I bought fuel and what I paid for it .

 

Price. All truckstops advertise a fuel price that is $0.05 to $0.06 per gallon cheaper for "cash" i/o credit cards. Fuel cards are the same as cash to them.

 

Most fuel cards require the following to work: Truck #, Driver ID #, Odometre Reading. Then you cycle through an endless menu of optional choices (cash advance, additional products, ect). Be sure you grab a Rewards Card from all the major petrol stations you visit. They usually give you 1 cent of store credit for every gallon of fuel tanked. Doesnt sound like much but it adds up to about $20 or more a month... even more when some petrol stations have extra rewards program if you tank a certain amount of fuel.

 

Fuel companies also pay additional rebates . That is how Pilot got in trouble . They were shorting carriers on rebates .

 

Actually doesn't they advertise its more for credit cards ,thought there was some funky law where they couldn't advertise cash discounts so everyones like "lol well were actually just charging more for credit cards"

 

Fuel cards give you cash price at worst, and offer major discounts off cash price at best. You can get cost plus pricing with NASTC as an owner operator. It's the same pricing I get at Landstar. The other day I saved .50 a gallon in NJ at a TA. Average savings is about a .25 a gallon. When fuel futures are dropping I've saved .80 a gallon before, but that is rare.