How to Prevent Employee Fuel Theft: 4 Proven Tactics

Fuel prices continue to rise, as are fleet owners' concerns about fuel theft. Fuel theft in various forms is growing increasingly widespread across the country. This trend is expected to continue leading to more fleet companies looking for ways to cut costs and implement new strategies to identify and prevent fuel theft.

This blog will introduce the most common source of theft fleet operators face — employee fuel theft.  In addition to increasing on-site security measures, businesses can use several proven strategies to combat fuel theft.

We'll go through some potential losses organizations might face due to this ongoing problem before recommending practical tips for preventing theft. Furthermore, we'll explain how the Tourmo AI platform, especially our Fuel & CO2 solution, can significantly improve how you detect and prevent this issue.

Financial Loss Due to Fuel Theft 

It is critical to safeguard fuel assets. Early detection of issues through cutting-edge technology can be essential to preventing fuel theft. Fuel loss, or fuel that goes unaccounted for, is an expense that cannot be overlooked.

Fleet companies can incur significant financial losses on misplaced fuel making it hard to chalk it up to "the cost of the job." Fuel theft, including stolen, adulterated, and defrauded products, is an approximately $133 billion problem in the USA. 

The good news is that fuel theft can be prevented.

4 Proven Tactics to Prevent Employee Fuel Theft

For any fleet enterprise, fuel is a substantial expense. Supportive measures should be put in place to guarantee that your organization does not overspend on fuel. Let's look at some tried-and-true tactics that your company can use to combat employee fuel theft.

1. Establish a Company Fuel Policy

A company's fuel policy is the foundation for the best employee fuel theft prevention strategies. Having a clear and well-distributed fuel policy guarantees that all drivers know company expectations for fuel card usage and conservation.

A company's fuel efficiency improvement program should be supported by regular fuel and CO2 monitoring across all fleet assets, emphasizing improving visibility around fuel spending and transactions at the driver level.

2. Monitor Driving Behavior

If you keep a closer eye on how employees drive, you can directly lower fuel costs and reduce employee fuel theft. AI-powered driving behavior solutions that provide new visibility and with automated driver feedback, like Tourmo, can significantly improve your company's ability for fuel management. 

Tourmo’s AI-powered platform can provide your stakeholders, managers, and drivers with real time data about inefficient driving behavior, fuel spending, and opportunities for savings. 

3. Automated Fuel Management Systems

When a business relies on manual fuel reconciliation and theft analysis, getting results can be challenging. Human error and overall analysis time are real risks when tracking fuel costs manually.

A fuel management system with automated audit, review, and reporting processes will provide the most significant levels of protection against employee fuel theft. This allows you to track fuel purchased, fuel loaded into vehicles, use of fuel, and unaccounted for fuel on an on-going basis to highlight suspicious events automatically.

You can gain access to valuable data, prevent frequent recordkeeping errors, and eliminate employee fuel theft or improper fuel card usage by using a fleet management system that closely monitors all aspects of fuel within your business. 

4. Enforce Fuel Card Controls

Companies can use various fuel card controls to enforce proper fuel-card usage. These controls can place extensive restrictions on purchases, preventing fuel card misuse and creating a data trail that can be used to track down fuel fraud.

To prevent excessive or unauthorized spending, companies should implement fuel card restrictions and create strict guidelines on transaction types, permitted purchase times, and spending limitations.

Tourmo’s AI-Powered Platform for Fuel Theft

As the price of fuel continues to rise, many companies are looking for better ways to use fuel more efficiently and eliminate fuel theft. It’s frequently the case that these companies don’t have the time to administer a comprehensive fuel efficiency improvement program. 

Tourmo's automated Fuel & CO2 solution can help you keep a close eye on your fleet's performance and fuel efficiency. Tourmo can automatically reconcile fuel transactions, identify signs of fuel theft, and train drivers to use less fuel.

Further, its gamification and reward system motivates and encourages driver participation.

Tourmo's AI-powered platform can uncover the following fuel irregularities and more:

• Unexpected fuel efficiency changes for specific vehicles based on history and driver
• More fuel purchased than could fit based on the tank capacity
• Discrepancy between the purchased fuel vs. the tank level vs. fuel used
• Fuel card movement between vehicles
• Sudden drops in fuel level
• Patterns in any of the above by driver
• Patterns in any of the above by location
• Vehicle not present

Tourmo AI — Prevent Fuel Theft With Total Visibility

Companies that express concern about employee fuel theft may already have access to fuel data and an existing telematics system. With Tourmo, there is no need to displace an existing system. Its open-architecture platform can seamlessly integrate with your current systems and hardware.

While fuel cards can provide basic transactional capabilities to reduce fuel costs and fraud, and telematics systems will add more, Tourmo’s fuel & CO2 solution can provide you with the most advanced fuel reduction and fraud detection capabilities available.