Fuel Card

NASTC Fleet One is the best fuel card program for the one truck or small fleet owner currently available.

 

I think fuel cards are the best because then you can make sure your driver isn't stealing from you. I guess I could recommend the fleet card I use. check out cosbyfuels.com

 

Pretty easy for a driver to steal from the company by selling fuel at a discount, paying with the company card and pocketing the cash.

 

keep tabs on fuel mileage, you need to do it for IFTA anyways. If someone is stealing fuel you will see a quick drop in mpg's. TAB bank's card seems to be the most honest deal out there. You can use it at all the major's for cash price, and 0.02/gallon off at Pilot's and J's. Some of the costplus cards like NASTC's only save you money if you fuel at the high priced stops to begin with. And their "discount" is based off of the credit price, not cash. At least with the TAB card you know what you're paying before you pump it and they don't have a bunch of fees either.

 

NASTC has a fairly large network of fuel stops. No fee if you fuel out of the network, flat $6 per month access fee, and it applies the discount to cash price, not credit. Maybe it has changed since you had it, Danny? Average savings is in the neighborhood of .27 per gallon at the moment, with petro / TA in the network, and franchised pilots/ flying J's, plus most mom and pop's.

NASTC also lets you lock in the pricing for 24 hours. So if you trip plan and find a good price, you have 24 hours to fuel at that price even if the cost goes up.

The FleetOne card is the same as the NASTC but with a floating discount (again off the cash price) of about .2-.8 cents per gallon. Same fee structure, I believe. If you go thorough fleetOne for that card, you don't have to pay NASTC membership or any of that crapola.

 

I guess it has changed, I was told when I signed up there was a hefty fee for fueling out of network, or at least you had to pay credit price. Here is my problem with all "cost-plus" cards. Today I fueled in Oklahoma City, Petro "cash" price was $3.649/gal, credit price I think was $3.719 (not positive). I fueled across the street for $3.499 / gal cash. Now, let's say you fueled at Petro with QPN. First off, you have no idea what you are going to pay other than it is going to be cash price or lower, you may pay the full $3.649. However, let's say you do get a discount and pay the same as I did across the street. ($3.499). QPN will say you "saved" 0.22/gal, right ? cash price - 3.499 = 0.22. Yet you paid exactly the same as what I paid across the street with cash. IDK, Petro's and TA's are nice, if you prefer them I guess the NASTC card is a good way to insure you don't get gouged. I guess what really turned me off on it was the ridiculous e-checks for funding. It was like I had to fill out a form and make a phone call or two to find out if the money went through, and do it all between 8 and 4. I probably would have liked the card a lot better if I could have gone online and funded my account 24/7. I still have it, I might throw some money on there one of these days. Probably owe them money with access fees piling up....

 

Hmmm, I don't remember but you might be right about paying credit price for out of network fueling.

They have a pretty good selection of fuel stops that are not Petro/TA, so in your example, it's likely that I could go across the street and fuel, getting the $3.49 - <discount>, too.

I totally agree with you about the funding options. If you're using a pre-paid instead of a line of credit account, you need to be able to have funds on the card anytime, with ease. The darned process for funding prepaid is a real inconvenience. There should be no reason why I couldn't login to my online banking and do a direct transfer to them. Especially if they use the same bank!! For a solo owner op without a business office to deal with it, the funding process becomes a hinderance. I don't want to have to hail a taxi, or try to bobtail to downtown Chi-town looking for a bank just to eventually buy more fuel 2 hours later.