Four fleet fuel management questions answered

Key takeaways:

Regardless of technological advances to prevent it, fuel fraud is still a problem, as “fraud is the mother of invention,” Daniel Simon, Coast CEO said.
While it might seem like an easy way to save fuel costs, relying solely on rebates to save on fuel could cost more in the long run.
Yes, it's different than ICE vehicle fueling, but managing EV charging doesn’t have to complicate fuel management.
Like it or not, payment infrastructure in the U.S. isn’t likely to support digital and touchless payments anytime in the near future.

In a room full of fleet professionals, Samsara hosted an interactive panel discussion on current perceived problems and predictions about future fleet fueling. The audience was polled on four different topics, and panelists shared their opinions.

Before the discussion began, panelists and audience members were given a card with one side reading "Brilliant," which indicated agreement, and the other side reading "BS," which indicated disagreement.

“We want to see what you believe,” Zack Maier, chief revenue officer of fleet fuel management platform Coast, said. Then “we're going to have panelists talk about … their reaction.”

After the audience indicated whether they agreed or disagreed with the discussion prompts, the panel of fleet leaders and those in the fuel card space then shared their opinions.

The panel discussed fuel fraud, fuel rebates, managing EV charging, and plastic fuel cards.

Fact or fiction: Fuel fraud is a problem

Despite the technologies put in place to prevent fuel fraud, everyone in the room agreed that it remains a major problem.

“We had an incident where a guy stole $15,000 in gas and fuel,” Ronald Callahan, director of fleet and facilities at Vortex Companies, said. “As much as you tell [drivers] not to, PIN numbers still get shared. And yeah, we got hit for $15,000 in a 45-day period.”

Callahan said that not only did the company lose that $15,000 due to fraud, it also had to pay court fees and lawyers to get that money back. “It’s all the other things that go along with it that are crazy,” he said.

But Vortex Companies isn’t alone.

“Fuel fraud is definitely still a big issue for us,” Tim Weisser, fleet operations manager at Milestone, said. “We had a bad driver actually write his fuel PIN on his card and lose his card. So for about three to six months, we actually did catch that and lost about $4,000, so it's definitely a big issue still.”

One way to prevent fraud is to employ chip-enabled fleet fuel cards with all sensitive data encrypted within the chip. Switching to chip-enabled fuel cards helps with two types of fraud, Nareg Guregian, fleet partnerships director at Visa, said. Chip cards prevent external fraud, such as skimming, as well as fraud due to unauthorized use.

“With the chip, we're able to add a lot more prompting and controls,” Guregian said. “If you wanted to switch it from simply using a PIN as a prompting or other methods, you can do that with the chip card. [Visa is] absolutely addressing all of those concerns through the chip.”

Despite the best preventive technologies in place, combating fuel fraud requires fleet leaders to take a proactive approach, since technology by itself will not solve the issue. After all, just as technology evolves, so do fraudsters' techniques.

“Fraud is the mother of invention,” Daniel Simon, Coast CEO, said, citing different ways he’s seen fleet drivers fool the system.

His advice for fleet leaders to combat fuel fraud is to layer fuel management platforms on top of telematics systems to determine if the card is being used within close proximity to the vehicle’s location in the system, whether the gallons purchased equate to the gallons filled into the fuel tank, and so forth.

Fact or fiction: Fuel rebates are the best way to cut fuel costs

fuel management fact vs fiction BS — Panelists and audience members were given a card with one side reading "Brilliant," which indicated agreement, and the other side reading "BS," which indicated disagreement.
Here, each panelist indicated they do not believe fuel rebates are the best way to save money on fuel.

While there are many methods to cut fuel costs within a fleet, one way is to max out rebates by fueling up only at stations within a certain network. But is this the best way to cut costs? The audience gave a healthy mix of answers for and against this method, as nearly half held up their “Brilliant” sign, while the other half held up “BS.”

According to the panel, the short answer is that while rebates can help save costs, other methods are more effective. Milestone’s Weisser said that giving his drivers the freedom to choose which fueling station they visit instead of driving out of their way to a specific one has actually benefited his fleet more than rebates would have.

“We would rather our team be able to go anywhere than to limit them to a specific kind of gas station,” Weisser said. “In 2024, we had 30,000 transactions. We did the math: Let's say we saved [our drivers] one minute and even one mile of having to go out of their way to another gas station—that's a lot. So we definitely think freedom of choice is better than just focusing on rebates.”

Other fleets don’t see rebates as a way to cut fuel costs at all.

“I don't believe rebates are the best way to get a reduction in fuel costs; I think it’d be more on the idling side,” Christian Duarte, fleet manager at Alterman, said. “We see more rebates coming from that—educating the driver and the operator on how to use the machine. We have quite a bit of equipment, so a lot of idle time for us is what really saves money. We look at the rebates as more of a bonus.”

Prediction: Electrification will complicate fuel management

Fueling an internal combustion vehicle with diesel or gasoline is quite different than charging an electric vehicle. As more fleets are integrating EVs into their operations, will fuel management get more complicated?

While no panelists admitted to having EVs in their fleet, Duarte said there are EV chargers at the Alterman location where he works, and at some point, the company hopes to add EVs to its fleet. In the meantime, it’s working on a solution to ensure EV charging is just as simple as ICE fueling.

Using a telematics system to determine how much electricity the vehicle is drawing per charge, as well as Coast to determine the cost, Duarte hopes that once Alterman begins integrating EVs into its fleet, its EV charging management will be as similar to its fueling management as possible.

Visa’s Guregian said that, already, Visa has partnered with EV charging networks to bring a seamless experience to EV drivers, and he said that as the months and years pass, those partnerships—and partner networks—will only expand.

As far as management platforms go, Coast is also working on EV charging solutions—some of which its mixed fleet customers are already using.

“Today, we’re supporting public charging pretty well,” Coast’s Simon said, “but we know there's also in-depot [charging and] at-home reimbursement. Having a single platform to give you visibility and to manage payments across all of them is the vision. We're going to be working with Visa on that for months and years to come.”

Prediction: Plastic fuel cards will be obsolete by 2030

Alternative modes of payment, such as Venmo, Apple Pay, Tap to Pay, and more, have proven to be a more convenient method of payment. Will these new methods push plastic fuel cards into a more digital realm within the next five years?

Many audience members believed it would. However, the panelists offered a different perspective, and it all comes down to infrastructure.

As a fleet driver, “you need to know that you're always going to be able to fuel up wherever you are,” Simon said. And that isn’t always the case with digital payments. Fueling stations move at their own pace, and while popular chain stations might have contactless payments available at every pump nationwide, smaller mom-and-pop shops might not have the resources to make such changes.

While Simon referred to them as “antiquated and archaic,” plastic fuel cards are accepted mostly everywhere, ensuring that the industry can count on using plastic fuel cards for the foreseeable future.