For years, the city of Charlotte has continuously looked for efficient ways to manage its 3,600 fleet vehicles and 2.4 million gallons of annual fuel usage.

By 1995, in order to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency regulations, the city was looking at the cost of replacing and monitoring fuel tanks, and the liability of clean-ups, said Greg Spearman, city-county purchasing administrator of the Procurement Services Division for the city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

Spearman said that the city police department also wanted to decentralize, which meant requiring a decentralized fueling system.

At the time, the city maintained its own fuel management and vehicle maintenance system. It included two centralized card-lock fueling sites, a fueling site at each of its 26 fire stations, and a computer system that tracked fuel and vehicle usage for the city's preventive maintenance program and more than 40 individual departments.

"The best solution for us was an off-site program that would give us the centralized reporting and tracking we were currently getting and one that would tie in with our existing computer system to help us schedule preventive maintenance," Spearman said. "We were also concerned about getting good coverage, and we wanted to work with someone with government experience."

After winning a competitive bid process, Fuelman of the Carolinas was awarded a three-year "Off-Site Fueling Services" contract to help develop a new system for the city.

Since 1995, Fuelman has established 60 fueling locations in the greater Charlotte area. It developed a customized reporting and tracking system that provides individual reports to each city department and downloads that information to the city's vehicle management system for preventive maintenance.

According to city documents, the city of Charlotte achieved an overall three-year net cost savings of $148.276 by closing its central fueling stations.

"Our biggest savings was in productivity," said Alex Jernigan, manager of fleet management analysis for the city.

"The police department was spending 30 minutes each day refueling each vehicle at central fueling. Now they fuel up in their area, which saves them time and allows them to provide better service to the community," Jernigan said.