Despite a decline in the U.S. petroleum market, full fleet data capture continues to draw fleet fueling business.

"The total number of fueling stations continues to drop by approximately 4 percent per year," said fuel card analyst Stuart McGhee. "This is mostly due to underground storage tank regulation compliance issues. Station owners were forced to comply with the regulations or face heavy fines," McGhee added.

Though this has been disastrous for independent petroleum dealers, many of whom have been forced out of business, it has been beneficial for universal fuel card providers. "One of the things that spurred growth in the universal fleet card market was the EPA regulation on underground storage tanks," said Mark Abby, principal, First Annapolis Consulting Inc. "A lot of the smaller independent fuel providers had trouble with that, and many of the fleets migrated to other petroleum retail outlets," Abby added.

Abbey sees several new trends emerging in the fleet fuel card market. "One key trend is the emergence of Visa- and MasterCard-branded products in the fleet business," Abby said. "They are becoming an alternative to some of the more traditional universal fleet products like Wright Express, ComCheck, etc.

The real appeal of the Visa and MasterCard products is that the brand name is so universally accepted at petroleum retailers; you can use the card at other petroleum retail locations that don’t have full fleet data capability," Abby said. "One of the trends that’s happening is that there’s a migration from private label fleet cards to universal fleet cards, fleet cards that can be used at many petroleum retailers. That’s spurring growth in the universal fleet card arena, at the expense of the proprietary fleet card," Abby said.

Fuel Card Reporting Levels

There are several levels of reporting available today to fleet managers, with Level I being the most basic and full fleet data capture being the most comprehensive.

At Level I, the report of the purchase includes:

• Total purchase amount.

• Name of merchant.

• City and state of merchant.

• Debit or credit purchase.

Full fleet data capture includes in addition:

• Unit cost.

• Driver ID.

• Discount.

• Product description.

• VIN number.

• Odometer.

• Cost per mile.

• Miles per gallon.

FULL FLEET DATA CAPTURE

The total number of sites with full fleet data capture has dropped 3 percent since February, most likely due to the overall reduction in the number of fueling sites nationwide. Totals for fuel card providers dropped a similar percentage, except ComCheck, which dropped 6 percent, roughly twice the rate of the others.