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The COVID-19 pandemic has been disastrous in so many ways, and the myriad calamities stemming from it have forced various efforts to adapt and compensate. Due to this, there are many industries, methods and tools that have benefited to some extent in recent months. The standard of remote working is the biggest success story, of course. So many companies have now decided to give up their offices and continue operating through the cloud.
But what about all the COVID-19 winners you haven’t heard about? One of them is the practice of using fuel cards, particularly in the freight industry. It’s already been highly useful, and it’s only going to play a bigger role in the coming years. If you’re not familiar, don’t worry, because we’re going to explain. Here’s everything you need to know about this understated success:
What exactly are fuel cards?
This is easy enough to explain: similar to credit cards or loyalty cards, fuel cards are linked to accounts held with the fuel card providers and used to pay for fuel. There are many fuel card companies on the market, and each one offers something slightly different.
One fuel card might allow the user to pay for fuel at store fuel stations, for instance, or give them a significant discount on a particular type or brand of fuel. Another might provide a discount on a different type of fuel, or even grant the user access to further loyalty incentives.
Some fuel cards can be used for free, while others require subscription fees. Paid fuel cards will usually provide better deals and have further benefits such as getting custom card designs.
Why are fuel cards so worth using?
In addition to saving money on fuel, something that’s extremely valuable for any transport companies with large fleets that regularly cover great distances, fuel cards make it so much easier to track fuel spend. Any decent card will feed every transaction record into a log that the business owner can review at their leisure.
Combining their GPS tracking data with the fuel spend data will allow that business owner to choose more economical routes for their main trips, something that will save them even more money through reducing their fuel requirements.
When a fuel card is free, there’s no good reason not to use it. When it requires a subscription fee, the cost will almost-inevitably be dwarfed by the amount saved: the bigger the transport fleet, the more valuable even a modest reduction in fuel spending will be.
How has COVID-19 affected demand?
Even though the pandemic has forced many offices to close down, the reliance upon haulage has actually increased because so many more people are having essential supplies delivered instead of shopping for them as they would have before this all started. The supply chain has had to hire many new drivers to cope, and fuel costs have inevitably gone up.
This means that even a basic fuel card is now more desirable than ever before. At this point, every company that needs to cover a lot of ground for its daily basis should be using fuel cards for all viable transactions. It’s an easy decision to make.
(Syndicated press content is neither written, edited or endorsed by ED Times)
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