What Can You Do to Reduce Fleet Fuel Theft?

Fuel is a huge cost factor for any delivery or transport business. When your business has a fleet of vehicles, that means several cars or trucks are burning fuel and eating up profits every day. Of course, expensive fuel costs for a delivery business are unavoidable, but besides rising oil prices, fuel theft could seriously be putting a dent in your profit margins.

Whether it’s professional criminals or dishonest or oblivious employees, fuel theft can do serious damage to any delivery business. Below, we will discuss some ways to help prevent and reduce fleet fuel theft.

Create and Enforce Employee Fuel Policies

One effective way to reduce your fuel theft is to make clear to all of your employees that taking any fuel home from work, using a company card to fill up a personal vehicle, and even using a company car for personal reasons are against company policy. It may turn out that some employees have been taking gallons of fuel home or just running a few personal errands because they figured it wasn’t explicitly prohibited, or just because they’re willfully ignorant.

Perhaps some employees just did it now and again and figured it wasn’t enough to make any kind of impact on your business. Writing up and sending out a detailed fuel policy to all of your employees can help make sure that employees know it is prohibited and considered theft.

Utilize GPS FleetTracking

By using GPS fleet tracking you can monitor all of the vehicles in your fleet and see which vehicles and employees are using the most fuel. You can also see how far they are driving and where they are going, for example, if they are using the vehicle for personal reasons. GPS tracking is great for monitoring and identifying any employees knowingly or unknowingly stealing fuel, and once you’ve addressed who it is (if anyone), you can better resolve the issue.

Increase Security

If you’ve made your employee fuel policies clear and used GPS tracking effectively and found that you’re still using fuel, it may be that actual thieves are stealing from your fleet yard under the cover of night. The best way to protect your fuel, and therefore your business, is by investing in extra security.

• Anti-siphoning sensors – Anti-siphoning sensors set off an alarm the second someone tries stealing fuel from the tank of a vehicle.
• Surveillance and Lighting – Installing surveillance cameras and adding more lighting to your fleet yard is a great way to deter and even catch criminals coming to steal fuel from your fleet.
• Hire Security – The surest way to protect your fleet yard and fuel is by hiring security personnel. Security personnel are there to guard your fleet yard and assets after your regular employees have left for the day. Security personnel can monitor the entire facility, by standing guard and monitoring surveillance cameras. Plus, if any alarms go off, they are right there ready to respond.

Help your company operate more efficiently and profitably by halting fuel steps using one or more of the above methods.

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