AAA can change your flat tire, unlock your car when you’ve left your keys inside or tell you where the cheapest diesel fuel prices are. But the agency is not a fueling expert.
So when it came to managing the fleet fuel consumed by its own 250-vehicle fleet, AAA Mid-Atlantic turned to the Sokolis, a Warrington-based fuel management company.
Since signing up with Sokolis in 2006, AAA Mid-Atlantic has saved an average of $12,000 a month on mobile fueling, diesel fuel prices, diesel fuel additives, fuel cards and labor, said John Poholsky, the club’s fleet director. The program’s been so successful that the national automobile club has made Sokolis a recommended vendor for all of its clubs in the U.S. and Canada. These clubs have been able to get a fleet card, fuel card programs or in some areas mobile fueling that has allowed them to realize fuel savings that other fleet companies don’t get.
AAA Mid-Atlantic serves Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. “We buy a lot of fleet fuel each month,” Poholsky said. “We buy it in seven different locations in five different states. We realized we needed some help, or we needed to do something different. We know we’re not experts in the fuel industry. So we went to look for one.”
That someone was Glen Sokolis, who started the Sokolis, fuel management and fuel consulting comapny eight years ago after 14 years of owning a few different fleet fueling, mobile fueling, fuel card companies that provided fleet refueling services or also known as mobile fueling.
“A lot of companies … really didn’t understand what they’re being charged and what their true costs of fuel were,” Sokolis said. “There were a lot of clients that didn’t know the true dynamics behind the cost of fuel and diesel fuel prices”
Most consumers, for instance, see a 30-cent jump at the pump and think that’s how much the price of the gasoline rose. What they don’t know is how much goes into the price of a gallon of gas, including fuel delivery charges, taxes, the station’s profit and the cost of the fuel, Sokolis said. The Sokolis uses the Oil Price Information Service, OPIS an online pricing service, to track gasoline costs and diesel fuel prices around the country. From there, it helps clients negotiate prices with fueling companies.
“Oil is a dirty business,” Sokolis said. “Dirty not just in the sense of the word ‘oil.’ It’s a ‘pennies’ business. If someone can scratch out an extra penny, it could be worth tens of thousands of dollars to their fueling companies business.” You really need to make sure someone with the right knowledge is watching your fleet management and fleet companies pricing.
Most of the company’s clients have commercial vehicles that require diesel fuel. They don’t often use conventional gas stations to refuel, instead relying on mobile fueling stations that fill the trucks overnight, truck stops or “card locks,” which are unattended fueling stations located around the country. Drivers use access fuel cards, fleet cards or fleet credit cards to activate pumps and pay for the gas or diesel fuel.
For AAA Mid-Atlantic, the Sokolis set up different fuel-buying programs for each of the club’s seven fleet locations. In Philadelphia, the largest location, a company refuels vehicles overnight with mobile fueling. That not only saves on diesel fuel prices – the club had bought fuel at retail prices and now negotiates a discount – but on labor, because drivers don’t have to wait at gas pumps to fuel up, Poholsky said.
AAA Mid-Atlantic now uses card locks with its fleet card, fuel cards and has its own fuel management solution with a station in at least one location. The Sokolis tracks the club’s spending and generates reports to help it better manage the fleet management.
As gas prices have risen, Sokolis said his company has gotten busier. The client base has increased by about 10 percent over the past year, he said. Clients typically save between 10 cents and 14 cents a gallon, he said. For Sokolis, rising gas prices are a supply-and-demand issue. The world’s oil consumption is growing faster than the supply. It doesn’t appear to look like that right now but it will again soon.
“As a country, everybody wants to point blame: ‘It’s all speculation,’ ” he said. “I don’t believe that. There’s a little bit of speculation. But there’s good reason to speculate. You have a supply and demand issue that’s real.”
“I think they’ll go up,” he said. “Sometime in the first quarter. You can’t hold diesel fuel prices down for long.”
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