During this week’s episode of the Oakley Podcast, host Jeremy Kellett is joined by Corey Huey to discuss everything from fuel prices and discounts to fuel card fraud. If you’re paying for gas (which most of you are), this episode will help you not only save money but tell you how some are actually making more.
Key topics in today’s conversation include:
- Oakley Update: Mid America Truck Show, Red Roof Inn parking (3:39)
- Fuel prices and how your fuel surcharge works (7:15)
- Fuel discounts and how you can get them (17:22)
- Fuel card fraud and how to avoid it (23:49)
Oakley Trucking is a family-owned and operated trucking company headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. For more information, check out our show website: podcast.bruceoakley.com.
Transcription
Corey Huey 0:13
The main thing that these guys are doing, or girls, or whoever is called ‘card skimming.’ Somehow they tamper with the pump, the actual card reader there, and it skims the card whenever you slide it in and pull it out, so it’s getting all your information off there. Once they get that information, they can transfer it to any other card and then use it.
Jeremy Kellett 0:39
Welcome to the Oakley podcast, trucking, business, and family. This show is brought to you by Oakley Trucking, headquartered in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The purpose of this podcast is to communicate with Oakley owner-operators and their families by giving them up-to-date information concerning Oakley Trucking and the trucking industry. From business advice to safety updates to success stories. Also to give an inside to outside truck drivers that might be interested in joining the Oakley family.
There’s Jeremy Kellett, Director of Recruiting here at Oakley Trucking and I’m your host for this podcast, the Oakley podcast. This is episode 107. On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about something that we’ve been hearing about for quite a bit for the last few months, actually since the first of the year, and that is a fuel. We’re going to talk the price of fuel, how it works here at Oakley Trucking, compare it to days in the past. We’re also going to talk about the fuel surcharge and the fuel discounts and how that works here. Also, a little something different that’s been happening that all of our owner-operators need to be aware of, we’ve had some fraud going on with some of this fuel in the fuel card. So stay tuned, stay with me. Corey Huey is going to help me out and we’re going to talk a little bit detail about fuel here in just a minute.
But first, as always, I let you guys know I appreciate you listen to the podcast. You don’t know that people do listen to it. And until you hear somebody I was in a parking lot the other day and I and a guy came up to me and he said, man, you’re the reason I’m here because I listen that podcast. And I thought, you know what? Maybe it does work for somebody. So it was good to hear that but I appreciate everybody listening to it and do I do need your feedback: what you want to listen to, what you want to hear, what helps you be a successful owner-operator, what your families want to hear, if they got any questions about anything. You can always just call me up at the office. You can email me, text me, whatever you like and you touch with me. Before we get started, let’s hear from our sponsor Arrow Truck Sales.
Keith Wilson at Arrow Truck Sales in Springfield, Missouri is currently offering $1,000 off your first month’s payment when you finance with transport funding, or $1,000 off the truck price if you bring your own financing. They’re also discounting the cost of an extended warranty by $500. Arrow Truck Sales has been a longtime partner with Oakley Trucking and that’s because they specialize in first-time truck buyers, they don’t do any leases, they have the best-used trucks money can buy (because used trucks is all they do, they don’t sell any new trucks), and the biggest reason that Arrow and Oakley are partners is service after the sale. It is very important to us at Oakley that when we refer you to a company, that they are a good company with good people, they do what they say, and they understand our requirements. So give Keith a call at 573-216-6047 for a good used truck and tell him you heard about it on the Oakley podcast.
Before we get started on this fuel and talking about it, fuel surcharge, fuel discounts, a couple of things. This is actually the first episode. We’ve been running the ones from the Mid America Truck Show. Those are really good. I really appreciate the people sitting down with us and doing that, from Catscales to CAG Truck Capital. We’ve got some other ones that we’ve done that we haven’t put out yet, but I know we’ve been running over the last few weeks. And they were really good. You probably could tell I wasn’t up to par with my voice. I was sick during the truck show some waters kind of running around there. But we might get through it and had some good people to talk to and learn about some things there. So, but now we’re back on it. We’re giving you the stuff that is a little closer to home with Oakley trucking, and that’s what I want to do. We’ll throw in some of those Mid-America Truck Show. We still got a few left that we’re gonna throw together and we’ll put them out there once in a while.
One update is totally off the subject here real quick because I had a call yesterday, and owner-operators probably understand this. There’s no parking over at Atlas roofing in Ardmore. And now this is from one of our owner-operators and he’s telling me this, I haven’t asked anybody else But I’m assuming he’s telling me the truth and I’m sure he is. But he can’t park at Atlas so they PC to this parking lot which is next to the Red Roof Inn. There’s an empty parking lot right next to the Red Roof Inn. Red Roof Inn wants you to pay to park there, of course, they do they have this lot is just a vacant lot leased out and they want you to pay to park there. I called and talked to them. This guy wanted me to try to work something out with them. And I couldn’t get much worked out with him I’ll be honest with you they were not receptive to my call. They didn’t want they wanted you to rent a room there if you’re going to park there you need to rent a room or pay $40 So yeah, yeah, so it was a little frustrating with that I just and of course the owner-operators you guys do whatever you got to do shrubbery try. Be glad to try to find another place to park around here if that’s the case, but anyway, they were not given it all they said it’s gonna be $40 or you gotta rent a room just to park there. So I told him, I told him we didn’t tell everybody we’re not coming here at all about that. So you do what you got to do, but anyway, I wanted to share that with you. I dealt with that yesterday with a Red Roof Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma.
So Corey, let’s talk a little bit of fuel. How’re you doing today?
Corey Huey 6:24
I’m doing good.
Jeremy Kellett 6:24
You hard at it?
Corey Huey 6:25
Oh, yeah. Always.
Jeremy Kellett 6:26
Oh, yeah. I know. You are. If y’all don’t know, Cory does a little bit of everything around here. You’re a hard worker he does the marketing and advertising for Oakley Trucking, deals with that all the time monitors, the Facebook and all the social media platforms, which we actually got a new guy that’s gonna, that’s helping us do that. Now he’s trained in Miles Mason, and help us in that department. But y’all Cory also does recruiting but he also does fuel cards, issues fuel cards, replaces fuel cards takes care of fuel card problems. And that led us into this topic for today, we’ve been kind of throwing around this, this fuel topic and one of see the best way to go about it to give our owner-operators good information. You know what’s going on, so we thought we would start with just a couple of the basics that you guys probably already know, but we want to start there in how fuel and what’s going on with fuel. As you know, it’s the highest it’s ever been. So I went back, Cory. I know you you know. It was $3.61, you said, back in January.
Corey Huey 7:36
I think January 4 was the first number that I ran back to and it was $3.61. Now it’s over $5.00, so it’s $5.10 this week, which is a week later from when you guys are hearing this, but so it’s come down I guess a little bit because last week or the week before that it was $5.17, $5.18. I don’t know if that’s a trend where it’s starting to come down consistently now.
Jeremy Kellett 8:08
It’s the highest it’s been, ever.
Corey Huey 8:12
Oh yeah, for sure.
Jeremy Kellett 8:13
I went back and looked at— you can just Google it and see the prices and over history of time in 2008. It got up to like $4.70 or $4.80. And then now it’s over $5 a gallon. What does that mean to the owner-operator? In a lot of cases, that means a lot of expense. That is your biggest expense as an owner-operator is your fuel bill, as I’m sure you know. So what does Oakley do? And how does their fuel surcharge work when it comes to fuel? And we’ve explained this before, we might have done this in a podcast I don’t remember but we try to make it simple for the owner-operator to understand. I don’t know. You want to explain that on the actually Corey came up with a exhale little formula that you can put in and I thought it was a real neat deal. I don’t know if we can I don’t know if we can get that to him and he might be much older but it makes it very simple to do it and if you want to explain that. I think that’ll help a lot.
Corey Huey 9:21
The easiest way— And I’m thinking in my terms, too, because it’s hard for me to kind of figure all that stuff up but if you base it off, just one single gallon, obviously you can multiply that by however many gallons you get, but you just figure it on one gallon and the first thing you need to know is what’s your fuel mileage is in your truck, whether you’re five miles a gallon, six miles, five and a half, seven, seven and a half, whatever. Order across the board there with our guys.
Jeremy Kellett 9:52
Let’s use the six.
Corey Huey 9:53
Okay, so you take the six miles per gallon and the national average this particular Wait, the word referring to is $5.10 a gallon. So you go down to the truck stop down there and you buy one gallon of diesel and put in your truck and it costs $5.10 All your receipt. Okay, well, so with the fuel being $5.10 a gallon Oakley is paying you the fuel surcharge to compensate for that difference, which currently that the fuel surcharge is $0.61. So if you take your six miles per gallon that your truck gets and multiply that by $0.61, that’s paying you $3.66 of that, of that $5.10. Then if you subtract that $5.10 that you paid for at the poem, minus that discount, or that fuel surcharge of $3.66. That’s, that’s meaning that you actually paid $1.44 for that one gallon of diesel.
Jeremy Kellett 11:03
And that is on $5.10 pricing, and none of our guys are gonna pay full price.
Corey Huey 11:10
You’re right. Yeah, that is before any kind of fuel discount or reward points or however you want to factor in all those.
Jeremy Kellett 11:22
To me, that’s simple. It’s a simple math simple way to do it one-gallon diesel, your truck goes six miles, we pay you $0.61 for that every mile round time six. So that’s how much we actually are paying you for that. Six miles churchy rancher on that one gallon of diesel and kind of puts it in perspective. We’ve always talked about how fuel surcharge came about. It was I don’t even know what year it was probably 2000, 2002 and fuel that we implemented a fuel surcharge. And we based it, you have to have a starting point. What do you call it?
Corey Huey 12:08
Price Protection Point.
Jeremy Kellett 12:09
Yeah, I know I’m probably getting ahead of you here, but Price Protection Point. To me, it’s a base of where the fuel surcharge starts. And that’s probably where companies are different. They come up with different things. But our starts at $1.75. And in theory, you will never pay more than $1.75 for a gallon of diesel as long as you stay within the national average, and it works. I mean, it, it works in, you can see it in the settlements, you can see it talking to our owner-operators that get it. And I know there are a lot of people having their sticker shock. When I see the price of fuel. Sure. Oh, I’m getting him. I bet you when they get their settlement, they get a shock of going. I’ve been thinking gonna be my fracture because it’s better than what they thought it was. They thought they were spending more on fuel. But yeah, you factor in because the fuel surcharge. I mean, it’s gone just this year from $0.35 a mile loaded in empty, by the way. It’s gone from 35 to 61 cents, and it increases every, what? Five cents?
Corey Huey 13:18
Roughly every five cents. The national average goes up a penny.
Jeremy Kellett 13:23
Yeah, so fuel surcharges is something that, whether you’re with Oakley or not, you need to make sure you’re getting a fuel surcharge.
Corey Huey 13:33
Absolutely. Because if you’re not, I don’t see how you’re making it. You’re probably not.
Jeremy Kellett 13:40
I don’t see how they would make it either. These guys out there get their own authority, their own insurance, their own trailer, and as expensive as that stuff is and then they got some of these brokers, they don’t give them a fuel surcharge. I’m sure someone’s got to some of them do I’m sure there are guys out there thinking a whole load without it. Or it’s included in the rate. That can happen too. But yeah, fuel surcharge is we try to make a sample here at Oakley Trucking so you can understand it and that it benefits. The owner-operator, I was talking to a couple of our owner-operators just to kind of get a feel of how it’s affected them. These two guys that actually got a hold of I just picked him actually one of them called me and I just talked to him about it. But one of them said that he makes sure he looks at his route when he gets his load. He plans ahead his route because there are always a couple of different routes you can go. And he plans ahead where even the fuel pricing where he was gonna get fuel that next day so he knows he pulls it up, because we all know that you can pull it up on your TransFlo app and all the discounts, so he’ll use that to plan ahead and where he can get the best discounts on fuel and then he cuts out his idle time as much as possible. I mean, and he does these little things that make a difference in his world of getting fuel because fuels he said it’s our biggest expense and, and taking advantage of the discounts and the fuel surcharge and flying around appropriately makes a big deal. Sure. The biggest question I asked both of them was eight. So since fuel has skyrocketed, are you checks lower? You know what he said?
Corey Huey 15:36
No.
Jeremy Kellett 15:37
He said it’s more. He said I’m making more than I was, and fuel being as high as it is. I said well, how’s that tickets? He said I know it doesn’t make sense and I tried to tell people that the way we’re set up it actually I can make more money if fuel gets higher. All right, so well that is hard to understand.
Corey Huey 16:01
It is, and I’ve heard that, too, from different guys as well.
Jeremy Kellett 16:08
I’m not saying fuel needs to stay high all the time because the end result is the consumer on the end that’s going to pay me and you. We’re gonna pay more for everything else but we don’t control the fuel prices we can just deal with it eventually. Yeah, those guys I mean they’re good to talk to me about and how they plan and how they plan the route and they’re not just scraping by and cutting back like it’s feels killed on the press not they still do their daily activities and hey there Mike, they know they’re still making money.
Fuel discounts, Corey. Do you want to cover— I think we got fuel surcharge covered pretty good, don’t you?
Corey Huey 16:54
I do, too. Yeah.
Jeremy Kellett 16:55
Anything else you want to add to that?
Corey Huey 16:57
Uh, no.
Jeremy Kellett 16:58
I guess it’s a pretty simple way to put it that you put it.
Corey Huey 17:02
Yeah, and if you got any questions about that, make sure to give me a call and we can try to look to find out what your fuel mileage is here if you don’t know what we can try to calculate that for you and tell you. I don’t mind doing that at all if somebody needs to call. Same thing with what we’re fixing to talk about on these fuel discounts. I know I get a boost and I hear you and Kent and Dustin and all of us over here get called all the time on these fuel discounts on, hey, what’s the price for fuel here? Hi. I’m looking at this and this says the price is x, is that rad? That seems awful alone, so obviously it’s good everybody’s looking at their fur worn trying to get the best price but sure shop around on that like you were saying with that driver that was kind of planning out his route looking for the best fuel price but if you see an issue or you think something is not right, or it’s probably not a pattern too good to be true, right? Pat had a call I don’t remember who it was yesterday that I was talking to him he was and I don’t remember where he was at. But he said man I’m looking at a few in once I was in Alabama, Georgia and it was on the app it was $3.79 I believe is what it said well as soon as they told me that I was taking my cell There’s no way that’s right and so I looked it up myself and sure enough it said $3.79 with everyone else on the in the whole state like the cheapest was $4.79, so some sort of a typo.
Jeremy Kellett 18:45
Just to explain, go back a little bit farther, a little bit more detail for the y’all that are listening about these fuel discounts. We have a website. We get fuel through EFS cards we are on our prayers heavy is EFS fuel guard will an EFS provides as a website that combines all the discounts that we have negotiated with all the truckstops and we’ve negotiated discounts with all as many as I possibly can from Loves, TA, Petro, Flying J, and bass locations Road Ranger, as many as I can get, I try to we try to negotiate discounts with them and all those are sent to EFS. All those Loves, Petro, TA, all those people that we have cotton, they send it straight to EFS the current discounts. Occasionally, as our operators point out to this, there’ll be something wrong and every once in a while not very often the once in a while because this website, then you don’t have to log into this website, this website all the information that comes into this website is our guys here at Oakley and IT department, they transfer that to the Trans Flow app to your Oakley trans Flow app. So when you pull up the Trans Flow app, and it shows few locations that are coming directly from that website. If something doesn’t seem right, you sure need to let us know. Because occasionally, there’s gonna be something in there. That’s not right, once in a while, not very often, though, I check it pretty much every day. Corey does. We try to make sure things are correct. But sometimes there’s some in there that are not right. And we can get it fixed pretty quick, right. But that’s how the discounts work. And, and you get that information. And it’s done daily, if not more than daily, but it’s updated every day, every morning, those discounts are updated. So so in that day, you need to tell them, I mean, you can go to the website.
Corey Huey 20:55
You sure can. If you don’t want to use the app, the way the app is set up, which I’m sure everybody knows this, but you’ve got your location starting on where you’re at. So when you pull it up, it’s like a Google map of the area that you’re in, and it just drops pins all around you. And then you can click on the pin, just see what the price is at that particular location. But the website, the fuel management.com, you can log on to that as well. And it’s a little bit different, it’s laid out different, I mean, you could top in I-40, or I-65 it and the route, or you could top in the state, you could top in Texas, Arkansas, and it’s gonna pull up every fuel location, EFS location in that whole state or on that whole route and it’ll tell you what the cache pump price is and what your price your Oakley price is, and then how much you’re saving per gallon. And so a little bit different, but it gives you a look at it that way.
Jeremy Kellett 22:05
There are more options because you can’t do that on the rat search by state or by rock interstate? Yeah, that’s a good point there. So sometimes you may want to do that and get on there. And I’m sure some of the— I know I’d be playing or trying to figure out the best price of fuel.
Corey Huey 22:26
I would, too, as much as I could. I know a lot of times plans change on the dispatch side, and a guy might have is next to a few locations mapped out and then something to change. But you can sure, like you were saying with that driver and try to map out where am I getting fuel next.
Jeremy Kellett 22:49
One reason we’re not going into depth with what the current discounts are today is because they can change. They don’t change a whole lot, but there are some stops on there that we’ve got a better discount at because we use them a lot, price points that we do a whole lot of gallons with. And I mean, there are things can change because I’m currently trying to always get a better one, dealing with the reps and trying to get a better price, and it may change. So you always got to, I try to let you know if it’s gonna have anything to do with points so you know that we always try to send out a flyer or email it to you, if anything changes drastically, but pay attention to that website. And you’ll get your way up to date on what all the discounts are. If you’re getting questions on that, man, please call me or Corey, we’ll be glad to try to guide you in the right direction, get some good information to you.
Corey Huey 23:47
Absolutely
Jeremy Kellett 23:49
The one thing that is frustrating with this, that we’ve encountered, and really Corey has a lot here lately, is fraud. It goes along with all that stuff. It’s a whole new wave of thieves.
Corey Huey 24:05
It is. High-tech thieves.
Jeremy Kellett 24:06
High-tech thieves that are smarter than we are that cost us money and it’s very frustrating. We’ve got some examples of it. And Corey is going to tell you about and then we’re going to tell you about some of the things that can help you prevent that. You won’t go ahead and start on your end with some of these.
Corey Huey 24:29
Going over the last couple of months, I was pulling some numbers and I want to say somewhere in the 15 to 20 Different fraud claims that we’ve got from individual owner-operators on their fuel cards. I talked to one today the head and he was all apologetic and I was like hey look, it’s nothing you did. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just you’re in the liver. Long Island at the wrong pump at the wrong place at the wrong time, I’m gonna minutes. The main thing that these guys are doing, or girls, or whoever is called ‘card skimming.’ Somehow they tamper with the pump, the actual card reader there, and it skims the card whenever you slide it in and pull it out, so it’s getting all your information off there. Once they get that information, they can transfer it to any other card and then use it. You could be four states away and they’re continuously using your card because they’ve got all your information. Just a couple of examples.
One-stop had 25 transactions over a nine-day period for over $11,000 and how this one was determined was the driver noticed it whenever he was looking at it settlement. He was like, Hey, I wasn’t in Houston, or I wasn’t in this location at this time. So we started digging deeper and deeper and then realized that we had some issues.
Another one, for example, had 11 transactions. This is one that I’m currently working on right now. And it’s right now it’s over $7,500 on these locations, and this one was discovered, because EFMs flagged it because one fuel stop was in Florida. And then the same day fuel was purchased in Texas. And I mean, there was no LSA flew there, there’s no way he could have been there.
Here’s another one. Seven different transactions for over almost $6,000. And this one was, I want to say kim and accounting was working on the fuel tax for the minute and notice the stop in Mississippi, and this guy was doing a dedicated room, and he never fueled in Mississippi. So she’s like, well, how, how is his house, he haven’t fuel tax for the state of Mississippi. So we started investigating, it’s just a trend. I can go on and on about how some of these are coming about.
Jeremy Kellett 27:34
Okay, let’s do that. Let’s dive a little bit deeper into one of these, and then maybe get into how we can prevent some of this stuff, too. So one of these wouldn’t one of these done when the guy was off? Or were these guys working every day?
Corey Huey 27:52
One of them was almost like, that was John Haley. I think, oh, was he was off and had like $6-7,000. And, and that’s how we figured out because he had a negative settlement coming through when he shouldn’t have had a settlement at all because he was all and so we called John and he was like, I’ve been off, and we talked about maybe, hey, it’s something like that maybe we shut a few corner off if we know a guy’s gonna be on vacation or are out to prevent something like that.
Jeremy Kellett 28:34
It’s happening regardless. Somehow they’re getting the numbers, they’re getting the actual card number, and then they’re either selling fuel or whatever as much as I can do it. Because our limit is 400 gallons per day. They can only get 400 gallons per day and then get $300 cash advance a week.
Corey Huey 29:01
$75 per day, 25 gallons per day.
Jeremy Kellett 29:08
So we had one guy realize it when he went to fuel and it rejected his fuel card.
Corey Huey 29:15
He hadn’t bought fuel yet tonight and I said you’ve exceeded your limit. He’s like, what? How come? And so I pulled up and I’m like well man I’m showing you just got fuel this morning like four hours prior and with the fuel prices the way they are now is like $1,300 He’s like, man, I haven’t got fuel so that’s when we started investigating and, of course, there again.
Jeremy Kellett 29:43
There’s an omen you’ve talked about this, but there’s got to be a better way to flag it quicker, which I know so. Everybody out there knows AFS has things in place to recognize something that didn’t sound right, right. No, but it’s not as quick as we would know it. There are so many 1,000s of fuel cards, 1,000s of transactions, I’m sure they got a computer program that something don’t seem right, it flags it because we’ve had them shut off the guard. Right, before we’ve even caught it EFS. The best way to prevent it, that we’re thinking is use the apps. Almost each stop has an app. They got apps that you actually enter your card information into that app and then it’s a paperless system.
Corey Huey 30:46
It’s a cardless system. You’re taking the card completely out of the equation. There’s no slot and there’s no nothing, you’re just your record is uploaded in there. And that’s and that’s it. I mean, you’re I don’t know, I guess what I should have researched that a little bit more.
Jeremy Kellett 31:04
Yeah, me too, but it stores your fuel card number in there, right. So when you go up, and under this, as they’ve explained to me, when you go up to the pump, there’s a certain procedure you go through to you don’t have to swipe your card, there’s no threat really getting stolen, and I don’t, I would think, a whole lot less threat with it in that app of getting stolen then swapping the car because these criminals have got it figured out on this. Oh, yeah. And they’re doing it fast. Once they get that card information, they are selling it for you or they are passing it on to their buddies, and they’re selling few I mean, stuff coming up in different places the same day, and it’s hard. Hard to know, I mean, really, there’s no way the drivers gonna know until he gets a settlement, right? Or his car didn’t work. And for us, it’s gonna be EFS is gonna have to let us know UMaine or we happen to look at their last transactions, which is the reverse and we know you can’t do that. But it’s a deal where these people are smart. And they only know when they get a lot of money. They sell a lot a few quick I don’t know if they’re selling it for half price or what but it’s happening.
Corey Huey 32:22
On the flip side, it’s kind of gauge if they are doing it that way, because that’s really how they get caught. I mean, their cars are buying it so quick. If they just did it—
Jeremy Kellett 32:34
Don’t tell them that.
Corey Huey 32:37
You know what I mean.
Jeremy Kellett 32:39
Yeah. They’re gonna get caught. All the criminals are gonna get caught eventually. Where’s this is happening at? Hey, before for you do that, let’s take a quick break and hear from LubeZone.
So I want to take a minute and talk about LubeZone. LubeZone has been a sponsor the Oakley podcast for a long time. They have good people over there. Jeff and Megan do a great job and they provide good discounts for Oakley owner-operators, but it’s also just a great place to go. They’ve got 11 locations in Texas, California, Oklahoma, and Georgia. They’re primarily along major highway exits, which allows easy access. They can do a lot of stuff there. They got full-service oil changes like tractor and trailer grease, air filters, all analysis tire checks, DOT inspections, these guys can do it all and we love doing business with them.
One of our owner-operators went to LubeZone, he said, “Hey, I’m going in here and I going to find out how their service is, if they’re fast and if I get a discount.” I said, “Alright, you let me know when you get out of there.” So he called me back and he said, “I just want you to know that’s a great place to go. It’s clean. It’s nice. The service was great.” He got the full-fledged filters, oil change, the whole nine yards service and he also got his $40 discount. You got to tell them you heard it on the Oakley podcast, that you are with Oakley Trucking, and they will give you a discount.
Just great service from those guys. We appreciate them being a sponsor of the Oakley podcast. If you’re in one of those areas, you go to LubeZone.com and you see where their locations are, and if you’re close by there, go try them out and let me know how your service was because we’ll give the feedback back to LubeZone. And check out the rewards program. That’s really good, too. Just be sure to check them out and let them know you heard it on the Oakley podcast.
Okay, now tell us. Sorry about that. Can you tell me now were these things happening most of the time?
Corey Huey 34:36
Just going through some of my research on some of the claims that we’ve had and then talking to our fuel rep over at EFS. A lot of it is in Texas, South Texas, Houston Channelview Hempstead Brookshire and then he was telling me that the top states have obviously Texas, Georgia, Florida are some to kind of lookout for.
Jeremy Kellett 35:01
Those are the three top states that EFS is saying they’re having fraud?
Corey Huey 35:05
Yeah, and then some of all those are out on the West Coast, too. I don’t know if that’s useful information because looking at the pump, you wouldn’t it’s hard to tailed that I this pump is is scaled down here little how they do that I’d got this and I don’t either, I’ve looked at pictures and almost took like a little cooler Senator day. And it was showing at different card installers and it was I picked the one that’s doesn’t look right. And I was like, they both look the same to me. And you pick one and air is wrong. And this was the wrong one. And it didn’t show why this was the wrong one. And it was just a Sultan Matar that you really wouldn’t even see by your naked eye really? And then another one was it was you could tell that it was tampered with some of those that a few on there’s like a piece of security tape over those doors. And sometimes with that type cut, that security seals cut? That’s a kind of a telltale sign. So, I don’t know the answer there on how to avoid it.
Jeremy Kellett 36:17
Well, we’re never gonna avoid criminals altogether. But I think what our guys need to know are owner-operators need to know one you’re not responsible for it.
Corey Huey 36:28
That’s correct.
Jeremy Kellett 36:29
It does not cost the owner-operator.
Corey Huey 36:34
Just his time and the inconvenience.
Jeremy Kellett 36:36
Yeah. Getting a new fuel car because we got to try to get a new fuel card in your hand, as soon as possible, we try we have to get you your face checked. name somewhere out of pocket. Yeah, that’s the frustrating posture. So we got to do that which in most cases, we can find out where you’re going the next day, we overnight, fuel card, grab, get you back on track, and get rid of the one that but also loaded on these apps, I would recommend that doing that where you don’t have to swipe the card, try to get all your apps loaded, eat your fuel card loaded on all your apps, do that way then also when you take off, get your your your dispatcher to turn your fuel card on hope just put it on hold, he can do it at a click of a button. He can log into that website really easy, click it on hold, you get ready to come out here and click it active. Alright. And that way it’s not getting news while you’re off. So I would recommend those two things would be what I would do to try and prevent any kind of fraud and then just pay attention to your settlement for sure. Absolutely. Every week thank goodness it hadn’t been a lot what we have to do on our end is we have to dispute to the case and that’s what Corey does all the time he had fill out all this paperwork and try to dispute it so we don’t get charged for it and EFS, let them pay for it hopefully but it doesn’t happen in every case it’s case by case basis and we just got to do our best to do that so good topic man. Good stuff we’ve been meaning to cover this fuel for you guys in the fuel surcharge fuel discount to these for audits going on and I think that’s some good information I hope everybody got something out of it you got anything to add?
Corey Huey 38:23
I guess kind of what we’re talking about fuel coal or just one last thing. If your fuel card is wired in or cracked or not slop and good, it’s not working get in touch with me I mean, I can get you a new one if the next time you’re in here I can mail onto your house, your whatever is convenient we have in cases our field cards aren’t designed guys to be able to hand enter the number and that’s kind of a safety feature on oriented EFS that away somebody can just write your number down then you’re down the road and they just type it in and get fuel so ours have to be swiped. But we can mainly override that like a one-time thing if you’re somewhere you need fuel and it’s not slop and call me I can override it let them have dinner to get you fuel until we can get you a new one but I’ve got plenty of fuel cards so don’t if you need a new one just come see me and or call.
Jeremy Kellett 39:18
If says come inside, then that ain’t gonna work. She can enter that.
Corey Huey 39:23
Unless they call me or their dispatcher and we can manually allow it to be hand entered like a one-time thing why they pay and enter and then it automatically goes back to the swap side but just keep that in mind.
Jeremy Kellett 39:39
Good stuff man. I hope everybody got something out of this. We try to do everything we can to help you guys be more success successful for sure. And this is just part of it operating on the EFS fuel card and buying fuel and saving fuel and plan in your view. I want to try to help you as much as we can And then we’re glad to do that. And if you ever got any questions about fuel, all this stuff, give me a call. We’ll be glad to help you up here to Office. And any questions at all on the podcast too. We sure appreciate y’all listening, hanging out with us this week and we’re back in the groove. We’re truck show’s over. And we are, we are hard at it. So be sure and enjoy it and share this podcast with everybody subscribe, comment, let us know, and tell everybody about it. We appreciate y’all. We’ll talk to you next week.
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