Fuel card fraud can happen to any fleet, and more often than not, employees themselves are not at fault. We know that 5-10% of a fleet’s annual costs are lost to theft or misallocation of budget that should be purchasing gas and diesel for their fleet. And, according to Fleetcor research, an average fleet experiences approximately 5 gallons of attempted fuel fraud per vehicle monthly. When a fleet pays the average price for diesel ($3.59/gallon), a fleet of 20 could be losing $4,308 per year. And in higher cost areas like California, they’re losing even more.
You may be thinking this applies to employee issues—they’re using company vehicles on personal time; they’re using fuel cards on their personal vehicles or to make purchases that aren’t fuel. But it doesn’t. In fact, only 3% of losses in fleet fuel card misuse comes from employee misuse. Aside from this 3%, most loss comes from mileage creepage or fuel card skimming.
The U.S. Secret Service has reported finding 30 skimming devices every week at gas pumps, with each device able to hold the information of up to 80 cards. Every time your drivers use a card at a gas station, they can be putting your company at risk. These aren’t one time occurrences. Card skimming operations are organized and the technology is nearly invisible to the naked eye.
Card skimming can cost you thousands, quickly.
Uncovering More than $30k in Fraudulent Fuel Charges
An Oakland-based global last mile delivery fleet discovered more than $30,000 in fraudulent fueling charges during a routine assessment of their metrics. How did they do it? During their audits, they found a discrepancy. While their fleet vehicles were all parked and used in California, someone was charging fuel–$30,000 over 2 months–in Florida, all the way across the country.
The fleet managers traced these fraudulent charges to cards that had been used recently at the nearest local gas stations. Thieves had installed nearly undetectable skimming devices on the pumps, allowing the theft ring to acquire the necessary card and account information to use the cards remotely and charge someone else’s fuel purchases to the fleet’s account.
The fleet manager knew they had to take action. So they called Booster.
Mobile Fuel Delivery & Fuel Card Integration Solves Theft Risk
Mobile fuel delivery with Booster prevents loss in multiple ways:
- If you have someone delivering fuel to you, you are utilizing a different payment strategy, and removing the risk posed by gas stations, namely crime and credit card skimmers. Every time a delivery is made, your team cuts down on those risks and saves money in the long run.
- Fuel cards come with great benefits, and you don’t lose those with Booster. We partner with billing systems and fuel card programs like WEX, Voyager, USBank, AtoB, and Comdata so that you can still benefit from the program without worrying about theft.
- Alongside these benefits, you also get all the efficiencies and cost savings that Booster provides. Read more about our benefits here.
To solve the problem of theft for this last mile delivery provider, Booster worked closely with the fleet manager to choose the most convenient time for fueling, coordinated all the needed security permissions to integrate their existing fuel card accounts into the Booster dashboard, and took the worry of fueling securely off their list.
Seeing Fraud Prevention In Real Time
Once our client was fully on-boarded and diesel delivery had been, they could see fraud prevention real time. Our Fleet Portal allowed them to track fuel delivery volume, pricing, and fuel usage over time, creating a picture in data of the cost savings that fuel delivery brought to the team without requiring any behavior changes from existing employees. And our integrations with their fuel card system allowed the client to continue using their fuel cards and their associated benefits to pay for the fuel we delivered without risking skimming at gas stations.
You too can benefit from these programs and see budget loss to fraud drop significantly. Reach out to a Booster representative today.