Key Takeaways
- Intangible costs are often difficult to quantify but can significantly impact employee morale and overall fleet productivity.
- When calculating the total costs of a project, it’s essential to consider both direct and indirect costs, including hidden fleet costs and intangible benefits.
- Understanding the definition of fuel cost, including tangible and intangible elements, is crucial for service providers in optimizing their offerings and improving fleet optimization and internal efficiency.
Intangible Costs: What Are Those Missing Hours REALLY Costing?
Happy October! During this month of ghosts, goblins, broomsticks, and flickering jack-o’-lanterns, there are sneaky, spooky villains that threaten your business – especially when it comes to fuel management. Whether you are fueling up reefers, generators, heavy equipment, or a fleet of vehicles, you could be losing money left and right – and that’s a terrifying thought no matter what month it is!
Intangible costs are hard-to-measure expenses that typically relate to non-physical impacts, such as decreased employee morale, damage to brand reputation, or reduced productivity. While fueling up your operations may seem like a straightforward concept, unexpected costs could be making a significant dent in your business’s bottom line.
Getting More Time Out of Your Equipment
Consider this: every time your employees need to fuel up a truck or piece of equipment, you are at risk for intangible expenses. These costs may come from lost time on the job, vehicle wear and tear, additional labor expenses, and more. Here’s an example we’ll use of a ten-truck fleet account, wanting to expand his fleet to get more deliveries/jobs done in a day.
A Fuel Logic agent calls and begins to talk to him, and he’ll say, “Yeah, we were in the process of buying our 11th truck,” and we’ll get to talk to them, and they’re doing their own fueling. The unfortunate reality is that they’re about to spend $300,000 on a new truck when the issue is really their fueling process.
“ Fuel Delivery could give them back an hour a day on each of their ten trucks with mobile fueling. That’s ten more hours in the day that their drivers could be delivering! Now they don’t need the additional four employees or the additional cost of the $300,000 truck. They need to operate those trucks the 10 hours a day they now have instead of putting them in the fuel station. Remember… this doesn’t just affect fleets; many industries have to take hours out of their day to get fuel to their site, so you’re still wasting time and wages!
Don’t Strain Your Back Office and Ensure Accurate Reporting
Another cost that you must take into consideration when it comes to direct to equipment wet hose fueling is the constraints in the stress that it takes on your back office. Somebody in your back office is chasing down receipts and managing fleet cards. Then, if you have ten trucks, you have ten fuel managers, ten people, plus that person in your back office that are all involved in your fuel process, which is highly inefficient and prone to errors.
What we do at Fuel Logic is work with your operations team to determine when all the trucks/equipment are in the yard at the same time. Essentially, when is your last truck in, and when is your first struck out? That gives us your window of time that we can come in and fuel your equipment. Our trucks are highly outfitted with technology to help minimize theft and ensure the most accurate reporting.
“ Our pumps won’t even turn on until the truck reaches your site via GPS tracking. From there, the operator will scan each piece of equipment which will then be itemized on your invoice! We know every cent that goes into all your equipment, and now you will too.
While these expenses can be tough to quantify, they pose a genuine threat to your company’s overall performance.
Be the Fuel Hero and call Fuel Logic! Save your company time, energy, and money!
With our mobile fueling options, detailed reports, and innovative strategies, you can banish menacing fuel gremlins in spooktacular fashion!
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Q1. What are “intangible costs” in fuel management?
Intangible costs are non-physical, hard-to-measure expenses—like decreased employee morale, lower productivity, or damage to brand reputation—that still significantly impact fleet operations and overall efficiency
q2. How does fueling cause hidden productivity losses?
When drivers spend time refueling at stations instead of operating, it reduces the active working hours. For instance, a ten-truck fleet could gain back ten delivery hours per day with mobile fueling—saving the cost of a new truck and additional staff
q3. How does mobile (wet-hose) fueling help reduce intangible costs?
With mobile fueling, Fuel Logic fuels vehicles or equipment directly on-site. This eliminates wasted labor time, reduces wear and tear, and avoids unnecessary fuel station trips—unlocking more productive work hours
q4. How does fueling affect back-office efficiency?
Traditional fueling often results in multiple fuel managers chasing receipts and handling fleet cards—labor-intensive and error-prone. Fuel Logic’s mobile fueling streamlines reporting: trucks are GPS-tracked, equipment is scanned on-site, and invoicing is accurate and automated—reducing administrative waste.
Nationwide Fuel Delivery right on schedule
Fuel Logic keeps your fleet moving with our 24/7 Fuel Delivery —reach us anytime for on-site fueling.
