Fuel cost question

Unless its THEM getting the deal, then they dont mind for instance not bothering to have redundancies in place so they dont have to halt all gas deliveries for a week... oh noes, they might loose a few million, better cause critical shortages in 1/3 of the country

 

I can't say for sure but I'd bet you'd be shocked how tight the margins are on fuel. I've heard our fuel supplier say once before what he was charging for bulk delivery and it wasn't much.

And think about it, if there was a dollar difference between what a fuel stop paid for fuel vs what they were selling it for how long before someone else said oh I'll sell it for .95 then the next guy says oh I'll sell way more fuel for .85.

 

If you’re a one truck show you can get the NASTC card or run the Mudflap app with your credit or debit card.

 

When I was at Landstar we paid Cost Plus for fuel from TA/Petro. Someone already explained it. We paid the same price for the fuel the truck stop paid at the rack/terminal for fuel. That's the Cost. Then we paid a pumping fee for every gallon we pumped at the truck stop. It was 3-4 cents per gallon, that's the Plus part. So I usually was paying 30 -50 cents less per gallon then the price on the pump. So if I pumped 200 gallons the truck stop only made $8 from me.

Love's gave us something like 20 cents off the pump price

 

During some lean times a couple years ago, I considered a dedicated carrier agreement with the mega-reefer outfit in SW Missourah. I got through some of the info before ultimately being DQ'd due to the age of one of my trucks. It was a blessing, but that's another issue I could write a page about.

Bottom line was: their wholesale fuel price was about 10¢/gal cheaper than NASTC.

But there's a catch. It wasn't uniform. These guys grind every nickel out of their deals by committing to certain volume at specific stops, and can only take advantage with fuel planning down to the ounce. That is, their drivers must strictly follow the planned routes, stop only at the specified station, and put in a specific number of gallons there. A quick scan showed most of the cheapest stops were like a who's who of the absolute worst and most congested Pilots and Loves. Choose not to stop there, expect a sharply reduced discount or full cash price.

In other words, they get to those low prices by cooperating with the truck stop chains to shift their massive purchasing volume to make the deal a win/win for the chain as well. They also gain advantage with terminals big enough to store and pump their own fuel.

I never lost any sleep over it. It's the sort of thing where their gain is offset by massive inefficiencies elsewhere. It also requires their kind of scale to make sense at all. Maybe I spend another $50 on the same lane, but I'm stopping in places I can get in/out of in 15 minutes versus the peelot or Loves that's 5 trucks deep at the fuel island. In my case that's just $50, in their case it's easily 7 or 8 figures, so it matters to them a lot more.

 

So!!!
You’re the one who gave them that idea.

Broker I use all the time just this week started paying FSC, but loads went from 57/ton to 52/ton plus FSC.

In hoppers, percentage pay is the way most get paid, and drivers get none of FSC, so now driver would get percent of 1300$ gross instead of 1425$gross

 

Well $3,00 a gl pump price. My discount price is $2.35 @ 7.5 mpg makes my fuel cost .315 cpm... BUT WAIT my fuel surcharge this week is .56 cpm.... do the math... my fsc is .25 cpm HIGHER than my fuel cost...

 

The carrier I haul for has about 2,200 company trucks. Their terminal fuel prices are at cost to us. Atlanta terminal is $2.75 a gallon. That includes IFTA credits. I'm pretty certain they have some sort of pre-purchase at cost or cost plus deal with Loves because that's the only place I ever see the company drivers fueling at, and they all get like 300 free shower credits a month.

 

Quite sure they pay spot plus road tax and a handling/delivery fee.

Today spot is $1.39 road and sales tax could add 80 cents. So figure about 2.50 a gallon. I pay 2.89 with my fuel card thru the lease company I run for.

 

Fuel surcharge is for contract freight, load stays the same but can make the minor tweaks with the price of fuel

I just use my credit card with cash back

 

I turned down a contract a couple weeks back because they wanted to give me a fix rate for fuel with no adjustment and I told them fuel surcharge only tied to fuel purchased, not a weekly adjustment tied to the doe site.