Advantage of Fuel Cards for Owner Operators?

I don’t have a fuel card. Not worth it for me like I stated. I have a Chevron card which most use B20 which I’m trying to stay away from, and 2 Citibank cards. 4% back at the end of cycle which is usually around $900 between the 2. I’m local so I shop for prices as well, but only patronize Quality fuel facilities.

 

Buying fuel off the beaten path may be cheaper than down the street at a big TS.
Some of those places have had the same fuel in the tank for months.
Water and algae will eat up any savings if you get a bad batch.
I know of a few that only fuel at Murphy stations at some Walmart's. one tank at a time built for cars not trucks.

 

Still ok in some places,
Went from 4/gallon to 3.39 earlier with MF

 

Do you have your own authority? Because most fuel cards won't entertain you unless you do.
Fuel card discounts vary daily. Usually it will follow patterns where some stops are always better than the rest in an area. Some cards will have better deals with different chains. For example my card I do way better at Sapp, (used to be) Speedway, Kwik Trip, basicly all the AMBest places, 7-11, Sunoco and all the stops along the PA/OH/IN toll road gave wicked discounts, sometimes over 1.00/gallon off. For comparison my card only offers 0.12 from pfj, 0.14 from ta/p, and a measly 0.04 from L. So, I almost never fuel more than as little as necessary at these stops. What a fuel card is doing is basicly taking a whole bunch of small carriers buying fuel, group them all together, go negotiate with whichever chains will entertain them. The big boys don't care about your 100 gallons a day. If you are the size of Swift and you are buying idk 1,000,000 gallons a day now they are interested. When I looked into the NASTC card a few years ago, the salesman made the claim they were the largest single buyer of on road diesel in the country, all made up of small carriers, collectively buying 7 million gallons a day. That card offered cost +0.04 per gallon. Plenty of folks on here used it, probably still are. Didn't work for me due to cross border banking issues not easily resolved and I found something just as suitable.

Also, if you really wanted to get down to brass tacks, as far as IFTA goes if you follow it to the letter of the law the receipt must show the company name, date, location of purchase, unit number, etc. They accept fuel cards since it puts it all into one big pdf, if you just go around paying with visa and have a stack of receipts that don't have the company it is sold to and a unit #, they could deny the credits in an audit. If you never leave your home state it won't be an issue as you won't be subject to IFTA anyway. I've never known propane to be long distance but it could be across state lines...?

Just for S&G can you state the areas you are going to be running in? I can look up what my discounted price will be today in any area and let you know what it would be for me.

 

MD i95 exit 82 Sunoco
Pump 4.699 me 3.986
DE i95 711, 4.299 me 3.663
VA Wytheville, i81x77 speedway pump 4.259 me 3.827

My card has gone to an app to show these prices and it doesn't work the greatest, they used to send an excel spreadsheet daily with all the prices and discount. For example I know that sunoco at white haven, PA always has a great discount except it isn't showing up on my app so I can't show for sure. Apparently the security policy won't let me screenshot in the app. Perhaps tomorrow I'll poke around the fuel card website see if there's a better, more detailed list. It is efs, they've recently been taken over by wex.