Category: Fuel Cards

Fuel fraud is one of the biggest risks that fleet managers face during their operations. It is important for crimes of this nature to be prevented; fleets are already suffering due to increased fuel costs, so losing money to fraud could be catastrophic.

How to stop fuel card fraud

A number of simple steps can be taken when setting up your fuel card accounts to prevent yourself from being victimised by fraudsters.

1. Separate PINs for each card

Perhaps the most obvious security measure is setting up a separate PIN for each fuel card that only the holder knows. That way, you can be certain that the holder has been misusing their card if fraud is detected.

2. One fuel card per driver

On a similar note, assign a fuel card to a single driver and vehicle. Sharing fuel cards is not good practice as it becomes much harder to keep track of who purchased fuel for which vehicle at a specific time – fuel fraud can easily slip through unnoticed that way.

3. Set limits on each card

Setting a limit on your fuel cards are a great way to prevent fraud. These limits can dictate how much can be spent per day, or precisely which fuel type is allowed to be bought with the card.

Preventing external fuel fraud when on the road

Many fuel providers have steps in place to monitor transactions and detect unusual behaviour. This includes sophisticated CCTV coverage on at fuel stations, a dedicated and on hand expert fraud team, multiple anti-fraud checks on every transaction and alerts to quickly find out when a card is misused, based on parameters set by fleet managers.

Despite these efforts, it’s imperative that drivers are educated on how to avoid fuel card fraud. Below are some helpful tips to help you protect your company and your drivers.

1. When leaving the vehicle, always lock it and take documents including the fuel cards with you as criminals know the perfect hiding places in which to look for valuable things.
2. Never leave the keys to your vehicle in deposit or with service personnel of a facility you visit.
3. Plan your stopovers before you leave and make sure you stop at reliable parking lots, considered by drivers as safe.
4. When resting in your vehicle, keep the documents and the cards with you, and lock your vehicle from the inside.
5. Do not underestimate any signs of burglary or third party visits to the vehicle. Even if nothing has been stolen, report this incident immediately to your company! In this situation, the data from the magnetic strip of your card could have been copied.
6. Check that you have YOUR cards before setting off; when a vehicle is broken into, cards are not stolen, they are simply replaced. This is intended to delay the detection and reporting of the theft.
7. Stay alert! Pay attention to whether someone is watching you or the vehicle during a stopover, trying to make contact in an intrusive way or asking about the route.
8. If someone tries to persuade you to sell the card or make it available for the purpose of scanning data from the magnetic strip, please report it to your company. Such information will also be extremely valuable for BP, especially if it took place in car parks or in the vicinity of service stations.
9. Protect the PIN code for your card and don’t write it down!

If you want to start saving your diesel & petrol bills, then look no further than Fuel Card Services. We help over 50,000 customers make smart decisions around paying for fuel by offering a number of various branded fuel cards.

Get in touch today and one of our dedicated account managers will find the best deals for your business.

Most contractors will have heard of fuel cards and perhaps assume that they’re a good way of getting discounts on petrol and diesel for their fleet’s drivers.

However, they can actually be so much more than that – and could see contractors able to make some serious efficiency savings as well as financial gains. How? Let’s take a look at some of the main benefits.

Big advantages for fleet owners

Fuel cards work by allowing employees to fill up at petrol stations within a network and, instead of paying with a credit or debit card, they present their fuel card.

The company is then billed directly, with the charges able to be assigned to an individual or a vehicle. This makes them quick and convenient – and the fuel costs for a week are collected into a single invoice that is collected via direct debit seven days later.

For contractors, that’s less time tracking and collating expenses and makes for a straightforward way of being HMRC-compliant.

Fuel cards might be a safer alternative to carrying cash or credit cards in certain areas, as they are only going to work at fuelling stations, plus they prevent any transactions being carried out that aren’t strictly business-related.

Another excellent advantage is that connecting a fleet up to fuel cards will give you an insight into how much fuel each driver or vehicle is using, as well as their route and number of stops.

This means contractors can turn them into a way of ensuring drivers stay productive, but also a method of working out where cutbacks can be made for greater efficiency, perhaps through better route planning, for example.

Finally, with fuel cards offering a choice of networks from leading brands, your fleet won’t be short of places to use them nationally and even internationally.

Ellie Baker, brand manager at Fuel Card Services, comments: “There can still be a lack of awareness concerning the benefits fuel cards can offer for contractors. However, given the advantages listed above, the question might be whether you can afford not to have them.”

New research has highlighted a significant increase in fuel costs at motorway service stations, with up to 37p more paid per litre than at garages less than three miles away.

Data compiled by PetrolPrices.com revealed the significant premium many motorists could be paying for the convenience of filling up on the motorway network.

Paying a premium for convenience

According to the company’s findings, additional charges are being seen as standard at all motorway service stations, with drivers paying up to £20 more per tank of fuel in some areas.

Examples include Leicester Forest East services, which charges 37p more per litre than the nearby Sainsburys Fosse Park garage, which is located just 2.1 miles away.

Bridgewater services on the M5 in Somerset is also charging 29p more per litre than Sainsburys Bridgewater, which is just 2.5 miles away.

Kitty Bates, consumer spokesperson at PetrolPrices.com, commented: “Our research shows that many motorway service stations are pricing their fuel well over the odds.

“Their argument is the costs are higher. However… we would encourage drivers to find the best fuel deal local to them.”

Ellie Baker, brand manager at Fuel Card Services, comments: “Fuel is a significant cost for fleet operators and therefore small price differences matter. However, these aren’t small differences that we’re talking about, so always seeking the cheapest option to fill up is something you should encourage your drivers to do.”

Find your nearest pump with the FREE DriversClub fuel finder app, available on Android and iOS.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has reported an excellent set of results in its latest full-year sales report, highlighting UK sales growth of 8.4 per cent.

The manufacturer announced a total volume of 118,108 cars sold in the UK between April 2018 to March this year.

Improved sales support growth in market share

The company’s new car segment considerably outperformed the industry average in the last year, rising at a time when the UK’s total new car market declined by 3.67 per cent.

As a result, this impressive rise in sales supported growth in JLR’s competitive market share – up 3.86 percentage points from 29.47 per cent to 33.32 per cent.

JLR UK managing director Rawdon Glover commented: “Investment into the right products at the right time has seen us steadily grow our market share and our sales in what has been a declining market.

“We’re excited for what’s to come, too, with the return of our iconic Land Rover Defender, sales of the updated Jaguar XE and a number of other major product actions, especially the all-new Range Rover Evoque.”

Continued success of the F-PACE and the 2018 European Car of the Year, the I-PACE, have supported the brand’s growth in recent months. At the same time, the growing popularity of the P400e plug-in hybrid also helped to foster the company’s impressive performance.

Ellie Baker, brand manager at Fuel Card Services, comments: “JLR are one of the UK’s biggest names in automotive production, so it’s absolutely fantastic to hear the marque continues to go from strength to strength.”

As connected and autonomous technology becomes more commonplace in cars, vans and heavy goods vehicles, the benefits for road users will gradually become more evident. Safer roads, more efficient vehicles and fewer traffic jams are all desirable objectives – and can be achieved with the aid of platooning, a new method of enabling vehicles to travel safely and efficiently together, in line, in constant communication.

What is platooning? 

Vehicles equipped with connected technology follow each other in a convoy on major roads and motorways.

A radar system in the lead vehicle constantly measures the distance, speed and closure rates in the secondary vehicle(s).

A control module is responsible for computing all the relevant data, which is used to send decision signals that either keeps the vehicles in the platoon moving together, or engages the brakes to avoid a collision.

How does it work?

A forward-facing camera displays what the leading vehicle sees to the secondary vehicle(s). These cameras can also be used in conjunction with lane departure warning and lane keeping assist systems.

The ideal stopping distance  

A €6.4m EU-funded project called SARTRE was able to run platoons with gaps of just 5m to 6m between them.

And it will bring safety benefits

The technology that links the vehicles will also bring safety benefits. For example, when the lead vehicle brakes, the information is communicated to the following vehicles in 0.1 seconds.

This means that a platooning vehicle moving at 50mph will travel a distance of just 2.2m before braking automatically.

Platooning could ease traffic jams

Vehicles travelling closer together will also take up less road space, leading to fewer traffic jams.

The legislation 

Questions of liability in the event of a collision still need to be addressed – not only to fleet drivers’ need to adapt to ceding control of a vehicle in a platoon but to other road users who need to adapt their driving to accommodate these new types of convoy.
Source: Fluid Thinking – Shell