Employees stealing gas is a common occurrence in companies that own fleets. They do this by siphoning fuel from fleet vehicles, using the company gas card to fuel their personal cars or running personal errands using company vehicles.
Employee fuel theft is a threat to your business whether you have a fleet of 2 trucks or thousands of vehicles.
But trying to manually monitor fuel usage and stop theft is tedious and time consuming. You have to regularly check the odometer and compare mileage against fuel expenses. Not only is it a waste of precious business time and manpower, ill-intentioned employees can also find ways around it.
The best solution is using trackers, software and fuel cards to automatically monitor fuel usage and flag any abnormalities.
In this post, I explain how to prevent employee fuel theft, the smart way.
Install a Fuel Level Sensor
A fuel level sensor monitors the fuel level in a vehicle and transmits that data to a mobile app, telematics app, GPS tracker or fleet management software.
Most fleets already have GPS trackers that give you mileage information. By comparing data from the GPS tracker against that from a fuel level sensor, you can differentiate between normal and abnormal fuel usage.
If you don’t have a GPS tracker, checking the odometer before and after each trip also works but it adds more work and is prone to manipulation.
If you already know a particular vehicle uses a certain number of gallons of gas to cover, say 100 miles, any fuel usage above normal could signal fuel theft.
Most fuel level sensors can be connected to GPS trackers, making it even easier to monitor fuel usage via an app or software.
If you are not already using a GPS tracker, you can get a fuel level sensor that comes with built-in GPS, eliminating the need to install two separate sensors.
Get Fuel Cards for Employees
Cash is the least safe way for your drivers to pay for gas. The risk of fraud and theft is too high. There’s also the burden of filling out manual expense reports and tracking physical receipts.
Credit cards are a level better since it’s easier to track expenses and they offer more protection. But they can still be misused and they don’t offer deep insights into fuel-specific expenses.
Company fuel cards are the best option. These are given by third party companies like AtoB and Wex. Unlike credit cards, fuel cards can only be used to purchase gas and related expenses like roadside repair, towing or tolls.
With fuel cards, you can:
Set spending limits per transaction, per day or per trip. This ensures drivers don’t buy more fuel than is necessary.
Set limits on where the cards can be used. This stops drivers from fueling personal cars away from designated stations.
Automatically block transactions on fuel purchases that exceed the vehicle’s tank capacity. Drivers cannot fuel non-company vehicles.
Track fuel usage and expenses in real time. You get an accurate picture of how much you are spending on fuel daily, weekly or monthly. You can easily spot an anomaly. When linked to telematics, most fuel cards can automatically flag changes in fuel use. This could be a sign of poor driving behavior, mechanical problems with the vehicle or potential fuel theft.
Use Fleet Management Software for Automatic Monitoring
The best solution to prevent employee fuel theft is a fleet management software that combines all the above data — mileage from GPS tracker, fuel expenses, fuel level sensor — into one easily accessible dashboard.
At a glance, you can see how fuel usage measures up against fuel spend and mileage.
To make it even easier, some fleet management software like Fleetio will do this automatically for you. Fleetio pulls data from GPS, telematics and integrated fuel cards to monitor fuel consumption.
It can quickly detect and alert you to any fuel theft and other kinds of fraud.
Final Thoughts
Running a fleet is not cheap. The last thing you want is employee fuel theft adding to your expenses.
Fuel-level sensors, fuel cards and fleet management software make it easy to prevent and detect gas theft.
Fleet management software is particularly ideal for most fleets since it provides a convenient all-in-one solution.
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