As a fleet manager, you need to know what your vehicles are doing today, while also asking yourself questions about what your fleet will look like five years down the road. For example: What will oil prices be like in the future? As Automotive Fleet’s Sherb Brown noted recently, fuel prices aren’t expected to increase too dramatically this year, and
As we write this, the price of oil has dropped to $27 a barrel, a 12 year low, and down from the $100 per barrel mark about a year and a half ago. The national average price for diesel fuel is at $2.07 a gallon. It seems like good news for fleet owners, but…Well, there’s always a “but,” isn’t there?
Fleet Managers can be certain of one thing; fuel price volatility. Fuel prices have been on a roller coaster that has recently been climbing after several months of significant declines. Volatility will continue into the foreseeable future which makes a Fleet Manager’s job even more difficult. Managing fuel costs to the annual budget set months ago is nearly impossible.
The past few months showed how fast diesel fuel prices can change. During most of 2014, fuel prices were not very volatile although they declined slowly. Then, at the end of November 2014, a rapid decline began which continued through February 2015 that shaved about 40% off of average wholesale prices and 25% from retail prices.
January was another great month for fleets as diesel fuel prices fell sharply again. The average retail price reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration dropped by 41 cents compared to December. This was the largest decline since prices started falling back in March 2014 and, arguably, it was a bit overdue.
For the past few months, we’ve all been watching the price of crude oil decline rapidly. Even when you start to think it’s going to stabilize and can’t go much lower, it goes down even further. As I write this article, a barrel of crude is now trading in the high $40’s which is less than half of where it
The old expression, “What goes up must come down” is happening again with crude oil. Over the past several months, we have seen a barrel of crude oil go from $107 back in June 2014 to under $65 earlier this week. And, it doesn’t look like the price of crude oil will be rebounding much higher anytime soon. Fuel purchasers
The average retail price of diesel fuel continues to hover near $4.00/gallon. When you look at the total retail price of diesel fuel, it’s important to understand the components of the price to know where there may be opportunities to reduce the cost.
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of headlines that highlight companies that are adding or replacing vehicles in their fleets with natural gas units. Various suppliers are also investing millions of dollars to expand their distribution networks so that CNG and LNG can be obtained more conveniently.
Years ago, companies were hesitant to direct drivers to fuel stop networks. They were fearful drivers would get upset and leave. Today we are facing the same issues we did back then. “Driver Shortage” But, a lot has changed since then. The need for a company to manage their fuel cost has become a necessity and drivers understand this more
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