Fleet Fuel Theft Red Flags

Fuel theft can account for significant added costs for any business that utilizes vehicles. For fleets especially, fuel theft can seriously add up over time and across vehicles, eating up your business’s profits. Although fuel costs for transportation companies are inevitable, cutting down on fleet fuel theft and greatly benefit your bottom line.

Fuel theft can manifest in one of three ways: criminal fuel theft where thieves break into the vehicle to steal fuel, which is the most uncommon; employees can knowingly or unknowingly abuse their fuel privileges with a company fuel card; or outside entities can set up devices that look like credit card scanners that take the card information to use elsewhere. Read on to learn about some red flags for fleet fuel theft.

Fleet Fuel Theft Red Flags

 To be able to address fuel theft in your company, you first need to understand the warning signs that point toward fuel theft.

Look for unusual activity and trends across your fleet.

• Is one vehicle that sees multiple drivers using up significantly more fuel than others? Then it may be a maintenance issue.
• Is a particular driver or several drivers consistently using more fuel than others when making trips? That may be a sign that drivers are stealing fuel.
• Is fueling happening too frequently? Also, look at when drivers are filling up on gas. If you know that a vehicle was filled up before clocking out the night before and the driver in the morning racks a bill for a full tank, then someone is at fault.
• Are charges common from outside of normal routes? Another problem to be aware of is what is known as skimming. Skimming is when an outside entity sets up a device that reads credit card data to use later. Be on the lookout for charges outside of designated routes and at odd times of the day or night.

How to Stop Fuel Theft with GPS Tracking

 One of the most simple and effective ways to stop fuel theft is by implementing GPS tracking throughout your fleet. GPS tracking will monitor all of the vehicles in your fleet and keep track of which vehicles and employees are using fuel, how much, and when. This is essential when tracking employees’ fuel usage and will allow you to quickly and easily address any employees who are stealing fuel.

In addition, GPS tracking will help you to identify any skimming without needing to inquire from employees when and if they are responsible for certain fuel charges. You can simply look up where a certain vehicle was at the time of the fuel charge and see if they were at a gas station or not.

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