So what are some of the more unique vehicles serviced today?
As the nation’s largest on-site fleet refueler, there are very few fleets or assets Diesel Direct has not come to know. Certainly the hybrid electric light duty trucks Diesel Direct fuels often meet with interesting comments, especially when the company fuels them with their hybrid electric diesel on-site mobile refueling truck.
“Airport fleet fueling also is certainly not without its exotic requirements given today’s security standards,” Johnson said. “The same can be said about fleets at nuclear power plants. Fueling emergency vehicles during storms or post storms supporting the electric, gas, cable and other public services personnel always presents an interesting challenge as they are deployed into the heart of an emergency zone to restore public services. We chase after them to assure their ability to do so. In the end, perhaps all of the fleets we fuel are exotic because we believe our customers view each asset we touch as important.”
Customer Service is Key
When it comes to mobile fueling and the accompanying customer service expectations, fleet operators today are very savvy and require customer service that is prompt, accurate and readily available.
“Many fleets require daily billing and want this information relayed in a digital format,” Leavitt said. “Gone are the days of weekly created paper invoices sent via the USPS.”
While some of Atlas Oil’s fleet fueling customers are very large wholesale fuel consumers, other large fleet operators buy fixed fuel contracts from Atlas Oil directly to hedge the market and others have their own access to fuel supply.
“So other than managing inventory, the process we deploy in the field is the same whether we are selling our competitively priced products or using their owned fuel supply,” Leavitt said. “Additionally, we integrate our fleet fueling data and invoicing with many of the largest fuel card providers in the U.S. By doing this, our customers can still have their nationwide fuel programs invoiced monthly from a single provider rather than multiple vendors’ separate invoicing. It’s another added value to this type of service.”
Johnson stresses that customers should have an extremely high expectation for a dependable and reliable service supported by the most modern business warehouse and knowledgeable fuel experts.
“In the end, our happiest customers spend most of their time interacting with us through our cloud based customer experience portal and our direct relationship managers,” Johnson said. “The service is meant to ‘set it and forget it.’ We strive to be more reliable than the power company. Customers know we will be there during each expected service interval and that their assets have been topped off with the fuel needed to complete their day. Our customers can also expect automated and validated transaction data supported by an electronic invoice down to each asset.”
Of course to make the mobile fueling process as streamlined as possible, proper upfront set-up of the needs of the client is crucial. This involves learning the client’s travel habits related to miles per route, miles per gallon, types of assets, tanks sizes and times of dispatching routes.
“With these data-driven fueling solutions, we can set a recommended service interval that is not only driven towards getting the client the best rate, but maximizing our efficiencies as well so that both parties have a comfortable long term fueling arrangement,” Johnson said.
What the Future Holds
In a slow economy or fast-paced economy, mobile fueling helps to enable different value propositions including better controls, total cost of ownership savings and maximizing capacity of the existing customers’ investments in people and assets.
“We believe today’s buyer is smarter,” Johnson said. “They are expected to enable the needs of their business organization, to do more with less and cope with restrictions plaguing them from Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance to Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations. We are working hard to make the decision to have the supply, delivery and management of fueling each asset be cost effective, labor saving and scalable.”
For Atlas Oil, the slowing economy has not hindered the company’s pace of this still expanding service line.
“Even with fuel prices lower this year, the cost of labor has not gone down nor are the DOT ‘hours of service’ regulations any easier to comply with,” Leavitt said. “Fleets still need fuel in a down economy. Services like this help drive down the overall cost of operating a fleet—a very important factor today.”
