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During this “Inside Mobile Refueling” column, you’ll learn how sales force positioning coupled with an effective fuel decision-making process can grow your mobile refueling operation through technological advancements.
Manager of National Accounts Chad Dombroski of Jacobus Energy (doing business as Quick Fuel) out of Milwaukee, WI, shared with SIGMA members the secrets to marketing a mobile refueling operation nationally during the 2006 Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Jacobus Energy, founded in 1919, is one of the largest and most respected petroleum marketers in the country with two different divisions, including: (1) Quick Fuel – fueling solutions for commercial fleets; (2) Quickflash Heating & Cooling Services – heating oil and related services.
Over the last 20 years, Quick Fuel expanded its fueling services to include automated fueling stations, mobile refueling, above ground and underground storage tank fueling, bulk fuel deliveries, card reader equipment programs, marine fueling and risk management services. Quick Fuel’s primary presence is throughout the Midwest and Southern states, from Minnesota to Florida. “The key to marketing a mobile fleet fueling operation is engaging a sales force that can position your company where you want it to be in any given market,” Dombroski said. “An important component to that sales force must include a plan as to who makes your fuel buying decisions.”
From the “top-down” decision making model, where decisions come from corporate to a local level, to a “bottomup” or “combination” decision making process, communication is key. Quick Fuel’s experience has found top-down decision making to be used about 60-70% of the time, bottom-up 25 – 35% of the time and a combination thereof 5 – 15%. Moving to the next level will require a sales force that can attack all fronts. Quick Fuel grew at a fast pace by teaming up with national fuel card processing vendors like Wright Express, Voyager, Fleet One and others.
“There are pros and cons to accepting a national fuel card,” Dombroski advised. “The pros are pretty obvious—no accounts receivable, lead opportunities and a greater chance to capture national account business.”
He mentioned that cons can include: (1) high development and programming costs, which can take a great deal of time to formulate; (2) prohibiting fees per transaction to a third party company; and (3) data errors, which again can be time consuming, resulting in delayed payments for fuel card companies.
The mobile refueling business, however, is currently experiencing an upswing in advancements through technology and Dombroski highly recommended venturing into this investment.
“When mobile refueling first started, we manually recorded the number of gallons we delivered,” he said. “We could only provide a hardcopy of the fuel pricing and data when we invoiced our customer. The customer reports could only be created by someone in the office.”
Via today’s technology, a mobile refueling unit can use bar coding or radio frequency to capture data. “Bar coding or radio frequency identification reduces the risk of inaccurate fuel recordings due to unreadable or incorrectly written data,” Dombroski stated. “It provides us a peace of mind that we can assure the customer that our driver is pumping what he/she said was pumped, reducing our risk and our customer’s risk of theft.”
Real time communications allows for data and pricing availability online whenever you need it, and a customer can go online to create their own fuel reports without waiting for an invoice. “Systems with checks and restrictions can limit what units can be pumped to and what product can be received as well,” Dombroski said. “This virtuously eliminates human errors of fueling the wrong truck with the wrong product and vice versa.”
You can set up your system to “know” the capacity of that unit’s tank, the product type delivered to the tank, and which pump the unit will and will not accept product from. This can protect your company against overfills and can ensure that only the units which are supposed to be fueled get fueled.
In today’s marketplace, consolidation of data, billing and vendors is a way many trucking companies are reducing their costs associated with fuel. “The ability to accept a national fuel card for mobile refueling transactions allows fuel companies the opportunity to secure fleets,” Dombroski added, “that are searching for a one card solution for their on-road fuel and mobile refueling needs.” Quick Fuel also forges fuel company partnerships to provide advantages on both sides, including coverage without asset investment, advantages of technology without the programming or time investment and the capturing or growth of an account previously not attainable.
“We seek to partner with like fuel companies who operate in areas that we’re not in yet,” Dombroski said. “Through technology you can give you and your clients access to all the advances and the advantages currently available.”
This concludes just one example of SIGMA’s mine field of mobile refueling know-how for a national marketing strategy. To learn more about this exciting and profitable revenue center, please attend the Mobile Refueling Task Force meeting at the 49th SIGMA Annual Meeting in Boston, Mass., coming up October 12-14, 2007. Visit www.sigma.org for registration information today!
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