Barkbus Keeps Groomers Grooming with Booster Diesel Delivery
For a lot of dogs, grooming day is stressful: a car ride, a crate and a waiting room full of barking strangers. Barkbus was founded in 2017 by dog-loving Los Angeles entrepreneurs who wanted to take the stress out of grooming for everyone involved. Their salon rolls right up to the curb, where one stylist handles every dog from start to finish inside a climate-controlled van. Today Barkbus serves pet owners across six states, with more than 60,000 five-star reviews to show for it. We’d say they’re making grooming awoooo-some again.
Booster is proud to make fueling just as stress-free for the groomers behind the wheel. A grooming salon on wheels may be one of a kind, but the work of keeping vehicles fueled is something every fleet shares. Whether a business runs three work trucks or three hundred vans, Booster brings fuel on site so teams can spend their time on the work that keeps their customers happy.
When the van is the salon, fuel is part of every appointment. Barkbus runs extended Mercedes Sprinter vans on diesel, and most of the vans have to stay running while parked at a customer’s curb to power the generator and battery systems that keep the grooming equipment working. While the trips to stop for fuel weren’t a daily need, they cut into the time groomers could be spending with more pups or just living their lives outside of work. Barkbus came to Booster last year looking to take fueling off its groomers’ plates. Today, Booster delivers a mix of renewable diesel and conventional diesel to about 86 Barkbus vans across Texas and California twice each week.
The Challenge
In a mobile grooming business, a groomer’s time is the most valuable resource. Barkbus earns its revenue while groomers are hands-on with dogs, so every minute spent driving to a fuel station, waiting at the pump, or looking for a station that sells diesel is a minute that isn’t spent grooming. Plus, their groomers weren’t being paid to fuel their vans—they were being paid to groom their four-legged customers.
Fueling a grooming fleet also brings challenges that many traditional fleets don’t face:
Groomers aren’t professional drivers: Barkbus groomers are skilled stylists, not commercial drivers. Pulling an extended Sprinter van in and out of crowded gas stations raises the risk of clipping a pump, curb, or another vehicle, and the wrong kind of damage can take a van off the road for days or weeks.
Diesel is harder to find: Not every gas station carries diesel, so a quick fill-up can turn into a search for the nearest diesel pump and a detour to reach it.
Fueling isn’t why groomers took the job: Groomers would rather spend their time grooming dogs and being with their own families and pets than planning their next stop at the pump.
Barkbus wanted to cut the time groomers spent fueling, reduce the risk of gas station fender benders, and make groomers’ days easier. That combination brought them to Booster.
In our business, the most valuable thing is a groomer’s time.
Our Solution
At the end of each day, Barkbus vans return to centralized hubs, which makes the fleet a natural fit for mobile fuel delivery. Booster’s state-of-the-art tankers visit Barkbus hubs twice a week and fill every van to the top. Because the vans don’t usually burn through a full tank in a single day, twice-weekly delivery keeps the fleet ready without paying for nightly service.
Booster began fueling Barkbus in the third quarter of 2025 and now serves a little more than half of Barkbus’s hubs across Texas and California. For Barkbus, fuel delivery makes the most financial sense once a hub reaches six to eight vans, so Booster coverage grows as each market’s fleet grows.
Barkbus’s program includes:
Fuel: a mix of renewable diesel and conventional diesel
Delivery schedule: twice each week at each Booster-served hub
Service: every van filled to the top on site, with no driving to a station
Coverage: about 86 vans across Texas and California
Groomers now start their day with a van that’s already fueled and ready to go. They don’t have to think about where to fill up, which keeps them on the road longer and focused on the appointments that drive the business.
Groomers prefer not to have to think about filling up. That’s just better for their lives.
The Results
Just over a year into the partnership, fueling no longer competes with appointments for groomers’ time at the hubs Booster serves. Groomers no longer have to hunt for a diesel pump or squeeze an extended Sprinter van into a crowded gas station, and Barkbus keeps its vans on the road and its groomers focused on the dogs.
Fuel Delivery for Mobile Service Fleets Like Barkbus
Barkbus’s experience applies to any business where the vehicle is the workplace. Mobile service teams such as groomers, detailers, and HVAC and plumbing technicians earn revenue when they’re with customers, not at the pump. Fleets that park at a shared hub or lot overnight are especially well suited to scheduled delivery, because a single visit can fill every vehicle at once. Booster also fuels Bill Howe’s plumbing and HVAC fleet in San Diego, another service team that runs on time saved at the pump.
Learn more about how Booster can help your mobile service fleet spend less time at the pump and more time with customers by talking to a member of our team today.
Booster has helped us stay on the road longer and really focus on the grooming, instead of filling up our tanks or searching for the nearest diesel station. Letting us focus on grooming dogs and bringing joy to pets and their families is a big part of why we’ve loved working with Booster.