Fuel risk management, a significant operational efficiency and cost control component, has seen substantial advancements in the past few years.

To explore these advancements, Work Truck sat down with Rush Akin, chief revenue officer at RoadFlex, to discuss the differences between modern fuel risk management platforms and legacy fuel cards.

Understanding the Technology: Platforms vs. Point Solutions

Fleet managers must first understand the difference between a platform and a point solution to grasp the true value of modern fuel risk management platforms.

"Point solutions are standalone, specialized tools designed to solve a single problem. They often don't integrate well with other systems, limiting their effectiveness in addressing broader challenges," Akin explained.

In contrast, platforms offer comprehensive solutions that provide a 360-degree approach to managing business problems, integrating seamlessly with various business tools.

For instance, fuel management platforms go beyond mere fuel purchasing. They integrate data from multiple sources, such as telematics devices, which monitor vehicle routes, speeds, and idle times, offering a holistic view of a fleet's fuel consumption and efficiency. 

The Limitations of Legacy Fuel Cards

While historically useful, legacy fuel cards come with several limitations that modern platforms overcome. According to Akin, these limitations include:

• Lack of Control Over Spending: Legacy fuel cards often lack real-time visibility into transactions, including hidden fees, making it difficult for fleet managers to monitor and control spending.

• Limited Acceptance: These cards may be accepted only at specific fuel stations or brands, restricting refueling options. Unlike cards built on Visa or Mastercard networks, they are not universally accepted.

• Lack of Reporting and Analytics: Without detailed reporting and analytics, fleet managers struggle to analyze fuel consumption, track expenses, and identify cost-saving opportunities.

• Potential for Misuse and Fraud: Limited oversight makes traditional fuel cards susceptible to misuse and fraud.

• Administrative Burden: Monthly invoicing and manual reconciliations consume significant time and resources.

• Inflexible Payment Terms: Legacy cards often lack flexible payment terms or discounts, limiting negotiation power with fuel providers.

Enhanced Security with Modern Platforms

Modern fuel risk management platforms significantly enhance security through advanced technology and real-time data integration.

“Fuel Risk Management platforms offer significantly superior security than legacy fuel cards through real-time data, technology integrations, and advanced analytics,” Akin noted.

Key security features include:

• Advanced Card Controls: These allow fleet managers to set spending limits per transaction or by time, restrict fuel types, and even deactivate cards instantly in case of suspicious activity.

• Real-Time Alerts: Platforms can automatically block transactions that don’t meet pre-set spending controls, preventing fraud before it happens.

“We often hear from prospects they had a fraud incident where an employee gets fired and immediately goes and swipes thousands of dollars in fuel purchases in retaliation for getting fired. This is because legacy fuel cards take one to two business days to be deactivated, and businesses cannot avoid card misuse and abuse,” Akins shared.

With modern platforms, you can cancel cards instantly, preventing misuse.

Preventing Fraud and Fuel Theft

Modern fuel risk management platforms utilize telematics and transaction data to prevent card misuse and fuel fraud. These platforms offer features such as:

• Automated Fuel Management: Integrating odometer readings, fuel gauge, and GPS location with fuel purchase data to ensure legitimacy.

• Location Validation: Syncing with telematics to verify that the vehicle is near the purchase location.

• Fuel Level Validation: Ensuring purchases don’t exceed a vehicle’s tank capacity.

• Card Lock/Unlock: Cards can only be used by authorized drivers, and each one is linked to a cell phone number for security.

• Retroactive Fuel Analysis: For each vehicle, RoadFlex ties back gallons consumed to the number of miles driven, identifying potential fuel fraud or vehicle performance issues.

"At a very high level, fuel risk management platforms will offer full accountability within your fleet so that you can attribute every dollar spent to a specific driver and vehicle. At the time of purchase, the platform will also validate the card, vehicle, driver, and fuel tank level in real-time to ensure a purchase is legitimate by nature,” Akin explained.

Real-Time Transaction Monitoring

One significant advantage of a fuel risk management platform is real-time transaction monitoring. Bonus: the categorization of merchant type is also more accurate. These real-time transactions include detailed fueling data such as fuel type, price per gallon, and purchase location.

Real-time monitoring enables fleet operators to enable transactional controls such as:

• Set work hours for each card, flagging transactions outside of these hours.

• Automatically block suspicious transactions.

• Prevent drivers from purchasing incorrect fuel types.

Efficiency Through Automated Expense Management

Legacy fuel cards often result in inefficiencies due to:

• Bad Data: Legacy fuel card companies often classify fuel purchases as “merchandise,” which is incorrect. The correct categorization helps fleet operators better understand fuel spend, and the raw transaction data can be used for more advanced analytics.

• Manual Expense Report Creation: creating comprehensive expense reports for a specific period requires hiring a full-time employee.

• Manual Filing of IFTA: it takes significant time to attribute fuel consumption in different states, and this can be easily automated instead

• Management of Multiple Cards/Systems: It can be tedious to manage business cards for non-fuel expenses while also managing fuel cards for fuel-only expenses.

Modern platforms automate these processes, saving valuable time and reducing errors.

“From our customer base, the above combined takes an average of about nine hours weekly to complete. These are tasks that can be automated by a fuel risk management platform while also leveraging more advanced analytics,” Akins shared.

Modern fuel cards would also be able to send real-time alerts and blocking for any suspicious transactions.

“Additionally, operators can have the expense management platform send them scheduled reports to their emails detailing insights such as the total fleet spent the last week, most popular merchant types, drivers/vehicles that spent the most,” he added.

Comprehensive Analytics for Informed Decision-Making

Fuel risk management platforms proactively use fleet payment data to prevent fuel theft and address it with drivers.

“They also provide a detailed breakdown of card activity, showing all transactions in real time. The data can be broken out by card, merchant, fuel type, gallons, prices, taxes, discounts, tag, location, associated driver, associated vehicle, transaction status, and more,” Akins explained.

Modern fuel risk management platforms offer detailed analytics, providing insights such as:

• Identifying vehicles and drivers with the highest fuel consumption.

• Detecting patterns of fuel misuse.

• Benchmarking drivers and vehicles based on fuel efficiency.

With real-time data, operators can see when and where a driver tries to commit a fraudulent act, such as purchasing more fuel than their vehicle’s fuel tank capacity, and it can block these purchases before they happen.

“The fuel risk management platform can also map out and visualize the missing fuel data from past purchases. This allows fleet managers to easily compare fuel card usage and use the graphs as evidence to talk to drivers when issues arise,” Akins explained.

The most advanced platform will also automatically allow fleets to benchmark drivers and vehicles with each other.

“By combining vehicle telematics data with payment activity, you’ll be able to automatically rank your drivers or vehicles based on specific metrics such as fuel efficiency,” Akins noted.

Competitive Discounts and Expense Management Capabilities

Beyond fuel purchases, modern platforms offer competitive discounts for various expenses, including maintenance, repairs, and non-fleet-related purchases.

“It is worth looking for a business card designed for fleets that allows you to purchase anything your business needs while also allowing you to lock your cards to fuel-only if needed,” Akins noted.

Integration with accounting software simplifies bookkeeping, while mobile and online account management tools provide real-time tracking and detailed account reviews.

Advice for Fleet Managers Ready to Make the Switch

Ready to make a switch? For fleet managers considering a switch from legacy fuel cards to modern platforms, Akin offered the following advice:

1. Start the process early.

2. Choose a platform with universal acceptance.

3. Ensure integration with existing fleet management and telematics solutions.

4. Avoid hidden fees.

5. Verify top-notch customer support.

6. Look for comprehensive expense management features.

7. Prioritize advanced security features.

8. Ensure ease of use with quick card deactivation and reissuance.

Driving Thoughts on Modern Fuel Risk Management 

Modern fuel risk management platforms offer substantial advantages over legacy fuel cards, from enhanced security and real-time monitoring to comprehensive analytics and automated expense management.

“Modern fleets need the flexibility and convenience of a fuel card that allows them to transact at any gas station of their choosing at any time,” Akins noted. “Modern fuel cards are universally accepted at all gas stations and truck stops nationwide. Unlike legacy fuel cards that are limited to certain branded gas stations, modern solutions reduce the need to drive extra miles out-of-route to find an ‘in-network’ gas station, which can be costly.”

It's time to evaluate your current fuel management solutions and consider the benefits of more modern platforms.

Creating a connected fleet through a comprehensive fuel management platform will help you automate manual tasks, prevent fuel fraud, and gain valuable insights into your fleet's performance.