Since the first weeks of May fuel has been plummeting. While this sounds good, and eventually it may be good for the economy amongst other things, are you actually paying less with your fleet? What we have seen here at Sokolis is much higher margins at gas stations and truck stops across the country. I’m talking 25-50 cent margins and closer to 75 in California. If you stop and think about it, does that make sense? When fuel is on a downward trend one would assume that means less money spent on fuel, and more in your pockets.
What happens time after time is that as crude oil drops, especially this quickly, stations hold onto their higher prices as long as possible which creates these astronomical margins. Fast falling prices actually benefits fuel stations. Of course you’re still paying less for diesel fuel at the pump, but you could be paying much less. It’s important to have someone auditing your purchases and benchmarking to a market standard like OPIS. Negotiating fuel prices off that benchmark is a good idea too. That way when the prices rise or fall you’re still paying that low agreed to margin and can prove it.
If you don’t have a process like this in place currently, or would like to assess your current situation, contact me at 267-482-6159. We can help control fuel costs for your fleet whether you have 25 units, or 3,000 units. We’ve been successful in doing this with other companies across the country.
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