By Keith Reid
A new company has entered the fuel management space, with an initial focus on commercial cardlock fueling. As the company states: FuelCloud allows users to track and control every gallon in their on-site tanks for a fraction of the cost of traditional systems. Track inventory, run unlimited custom reports, and even request tax refunds for off road use with the click of a button.
Kevin Bretthauer and his sister Alex Bretthauer, FuelCloud co-founders, have roots in the 4th generation family owned and operated Bretthauer Oil Company. This Oregon-based fuel distributor has been in business since 1929. Based on their experience with cardlock fueling, they decided to use today’s cloud-based technology to overcome some of the hurdles found with that service offering.
“The problem is that it’s $10 thousand or more to put in a full commercial system,” said Kevin Bretthauer. “Then you have this software on the back end to run. Customers used to just be fine with an invoice. Now they have a service-based software program and accounting and this is not just your big guys. On the reporting side it got so bad we had to hire a full time person just to handle the reports for our customers.”
Two years ago Kevin and Alex went to the drawing board to develop a system that met customer needs while reducing the overhead associated with those requirements. Fuel Cloud essentially has three components: a hardware controller box that connects to essentially any inline meter; a mobile app that communicates back up to the cloud and gives its authorization; and a web-based portal for managing the back end functions. Site connectivity is facilitated through wireless and Bluetooth technology.
FuelCloud App
“If you’re a new customer you enter the driver of your vehicle and all of your technical information,” said Bretthauer. “When a driver pulls up to a location he uses the app, and there’s a tablet already on site permanently like a card reader, essentially. The driver will enter a pin code and the app calls back up to the website. It says okay, you’re John Smith, I know who you are, and tells the hardware to turn the pump on. As the fueling begins it the meter will communicate back to the device, then through the app back to the cloud. The transaction is [recorded] immediately after you’re done, so it’s all completely in real time.”
The management software is cloud based so there is no cost to the marketer for upgrades or support. Bretthauer claims that from a cost standpoint his solution is 20% of the cost of conventional competitors. The fleet customer handles most of the routine maintenance (adding drivers, etc.) for its operation as well as running the required reports.
Where the reports and controls are concerned the system facilitates such staples as controls on drivers, vehicles, locations and tanks on full restrictions, dollar amount, time of day and gallon amount per vehicle (and more). It also allows full customer reporting including the creation of numerous custom fields. “You could ask a driver what his favorite color is every time he fuels,” Bretthauer said.
FuelCloud also provides automatic tax refunding tools. For example, when a customer sets up a vehicle that can be a tax-exempt lawnmower or excavator. “Let’s imagine you’re a landscaper,” Bretthauer said. “You have one on-road vehicle tank, so you have one gas tank. But you’re also fueling all these lawn mowers. You’ll set them all up as exempt vehicles in our system. Our tax module handles both state and federal taxes, and it will print out the tax and terms and fill in all the correct columns for the customer.”
The system also integrates with tank gauges in a variety of ways, depending upon the type of gage, to help facilitate fuel monitoring. “If we show a 100 gallon drop on a physical read from a tank monitor, we should show 100 gallons worth of transactions through the meter,” Bretthauer said. “If there’s ever a difference in that amount outside of whatever variance you set, it will automatically send an email and text inventory alert. You know the exact moment that something goes wrong.”
FuelCloud Web Portal
The company’s cloud-hosted database approach can also be used by customers for a higher degree of customization. “Because we have this application programming interface– an API is like a docking port on a space station. We put it up there, people know what it looks like and anyone who wants to build their own corresponding side can come and dock with us,” noted Bretthauer. “We give you the documentation or we can write it for you, and you can push anything you want into our system or pull anything out. For example, if you’re a big company and you already have a database internally where you track fuel transactions, every 5 minutes your little piece of code comes and pulls the transactions out of our website and puts it into your data base.”
FuelCloud is designed to work with both the traditional marketers and fleets that manage their own in-house fueling operation. The company went through soft launch in July of this year, and it is actively selling units right now with 24 distributors across the United States and one in Canada.
Contact FuelCloud via web at www.fuelcloud.com, or by phone: 503-538-2513.
