A common question we receive in California is where is the nearest truck stop? The answer is 38.8 miles away (45 mins – 2 hours in California traffic). That’s because our office is located in Santa Fe Springs, a small city within the very populated Los Angeles county that has no room for truck stops. So where do all the commercial trucks fuel in California?
The short answer is CFN (Commercial Fueling Network) cardlock locations. Let’s explain.
Why Most California Trucking Companies Fuel At CFN Cardlock Locations
California has two populous regions with two very large shipping ports, the Bay Area and Southern California. This is where all the commerce happens, but if you drive around you’ll notice there are no truck stops until you get out into the rural areas of California because truck stops require a lot of land and land is expensive in California.
In these large urban areas CFN cardlock locations are the primary source of fuel for business fleets. CFN cardlocks are like a truck stop without the truck stop. These locations have everything a truck stop has for fueling such as 18-wheel access, high flow diesel pumps, DEF, off road diesel, gasoline, etc. with none of the c-store and parking resources that a truck stop has.
This makes sense because many of the fleets in California have local/regional routes where drivers go home after each shift so there is no need for showers, parking, etc..
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California Truck Stops Vs. Cardlock Locations
CFN Cardlock Locations – 616
Truck Stops – 106
As you can see there there are over 5X as many cardlock fueling stations as there are truck stops in California. So if your fleet uses a truck stop card they will be 5x as limited as a CFN cardholder in California.
How To Fuel At Truck Stops and Cardlock Fuel Stations With One Fuel Card
Fortunately the CFN network offers the CFN FleetWide card that allows drivers to fuel at both CFN cardlock locations and truck stops so drivers can get the best of both worlds.
However we always recommend CFN FleetWide cardholders to fuel at CFN stations first because customers will receive wholesale based pricing as opposed to the retail based pricing that is offered at truck stops.
Wholesale based pricing is often much more competitive than retail pricing. You can check out our weekly CFN price update listing here.
