If you are looking into fuel cards, you’ll notice fuel card discounts are often always exclusive to one brand or a small set of brands on a fuel card. Why is that?
Fuel Card companies negotiate discounts with merchants (gas stations) in exchange for sending their customers to their stations to receive discounts. Some fuel card companies even market brand specific cards that will give discounts at one brand location, but may even charge fees for locations that are considered out of network.
More Accepted Locations Equals More Savings Opportunities
Sure, over the road truck drivers sticking to one specific brand may be beneficial since using the brand’s specific fuel card may offer discounts on food, showers, etc.. However if you operate a fleet of light duty, medium duty, or even local 18 wheelers, brand loyalty doesn’t pay off since you don’t utilize the gas station amenities. You’re just looking for fuel as cheap as it comes.
In this case, a fuel card that is accepted at more locations can save you money. More access means more opportunity to find cheaper fuel prices.
If you type your zip code into gasbuddy.com you’ll notice that prices can vary sometimes up to 50¢ per gallon. For example let’s look at regular gas prices for 92120.
As you can see there is a 41¢ per gallon price difference between the highest and lowest price. If you had a fuel card that provided a 5¢ per gallon discount at Chevron you would still be paying 36¢ per gallon more than the cheapest location in the area.
How To Get Drivers To Fuel At The Cheapest Locations
You might be thinking this is great, but is there really a practical way to get drivers to fuel at the cheapest locations?
This is where the Voyager fuel card mobile site locator app comes into play. The app pulls up locations based on proximity or along a route and will show the reported prices for the stations.
Once you start choosing the cheapest locations along your routes you’ll notice that the cheapest locations are usually consistently the same locations. It won’t take long to change fueling habits and start saving money.
