Fleet Fuel Card Discounts, or rebate as they’re sometimes called are intended to save customers at the pump. So it should be no surprise that these discounts are a key feature of a card’s marketing. What should come as a surprise however, is that they rarely if ever make good on their promise.
When selling something, one of the most attractive things a seller can do is make it cheaper. The same principle applies to fuel. However, there is another principle that applies to the sale of fuel and it is this. When demand for a product is high, maybe even to the point where a customer can’t live without it, a seller has no need to lower the price. In simpler terms, fuel doesn’t really go on sale.
Let me show you what I’m talking about.
Take for instance the Wex FlexCard, a hugely popular card that claims that it will save you 3 cents a gallon. For perspective, a typical trucking company that has around 10 trucks purchases 60,000 gallons a year. Let’s call the company BBB Trucking. Next, let’s average the cost of a gallon of diesel to $3. That means that that trucking company spends $180,000 a year on fuel. However, if a 3 cent rebate on every gallon is included with the purchase then only $178,200 is spent on fuel. Which means there’s an extra $1,800 that can be put back into BBB Trucking. Unfortunately, that money saved is a one time deal and really not even that.
If you read the fine print you’ll find the 3 cent rebate offered is good for only one year, or up to the purchase of 6,000 gallons per account. So the savings that were calculated above won’t be even close to the actual savings because the rebate is only applicable on 1/10 of the fuel purchased by BBB.
Let’s look at another popular fleet fuel card with discounts, this time from Fuelman. Fuelman’s Deep Saver Regular Fuel Card promises 8 cents back on diesel and 5 cents back on unleaded, with a few conditions of course. The biggest condition is that the rebate is only applicable at certain stations within the Fuelman Network. Meaning purchases at stations like Chevron/Texaco, ARCO, Pilot, Wawa, Walmart/Sam’s Club, Love’s, QuikTrip, Kum and Go, OnCue and Buc-ee’s will not receive the benefit of a rebate. Secondly, Fuelman explicitly states that they have the right to alter or even terminate their rebate program any time after a year of the account’s opening. So as a result, a customer cannot reasonably trust that the rebate they earn when they first open the account will be there for much longer.
Before wrapping up we’ll look at just one more card, this time from ComData. The Comdata MyFleet Fuel Card makes a very different promise than the ones made by the other cards already discussed. First of all, there’s no time limit. The discounts given when the account is opened will remain until it is closed. Second, each discount is negotiated with the different fuel stations that ComData can be used at. Which means that the discount is applied at the pump. However, ComData is only able to do this because their card is accepted at 7000 locations.
Final Thoughts
So it can be seen that due to the widespread demand for fuel, discounts are often only intended to attract customers and not necessarily to keep them. Because the need for fuel will typically always outweigh the burden of the cost to pay for it.
To learn about another obstacle to potential savings through a fleet fuel card with a discount click here, to learn about fuel card fees.