What does it mean, "support"?

It doesn't seem to take more than about five minutes of discussion to wind up on the subject of support (or lack of). I hear this from a lot of prospective buyers who are using existing fuel management systems. Whether they bought the "name brand" or the "new company with something to prove" or the "Next Generation", technology comes down to one major issue......support. So how do you compare "support"? The answer is, "Speed"! Yes, speed of service is the key to support and happy customers. You want to see a angry fleet manager? Call one that has had to wait two days for a technician to arrive just to reboot the system; or with one that has been on hold for over two hours while someone reads the manual (and charges the customer for it); or after they have received a bill from their service company for two days travel expenses, technical time, and mark-up. These problems and many like them add up to poor service. At SCI, they use wireless 802.11 (Wifi) communication to quickly access your systems controller and perform any function of support just as if the technician were standing next to the box with a laptop plugged in. This means support in minutes not hours or days. Your fuel island is working and your trucks are getting fuel and your business is running at full speed. Now that's real solutions....that's SCI. Visit us at www.sciww.com

From ticket to spreadsheet to database....

Recently a roofing contractor called me to inquire about fuel management systems. He told me that he had 120 vehicles and that all he did was sit for hours every day entering fuel tickets into his spreadsheet program. I asked him what he did with them after that. He said, " I send them to my secretary to enter into our accounting program". It turned out that he was spending on average 1 1/2 hours everyday of his time and the accounting employee was spending another hour to update the accounts. When he couldn't read the writing or make out the odometer information, he would call the driver in at the end of the day and clear up the confusion. In a normal month he would spend 34.5 hours entering tickets and the accountant 23 hours. I asked him how much his time was worth and he said that his pay worked out to around $28 per hour and the accountant was $20. I calculated how much money it cost him and it came to $12,360 per year just to do this one small task. I told him that our SmartMile product would completely remove that task from his day and allow him to focus on more productive activities. The best news was that the SmartMile would pay for itself inside of one year just on the labor savings alone. SmartMile is "Smart Business".
For more information on SmartMile and other SCI products, go to www.sciww.com

How do you know?

If a company currently uses no management system and is operating on paper tickets, they are not controlling their fuel. You receive fuel from your fuel supplier but the only way that you know how much went IN to the tank is by the Bill of Laden. How do you know that the amount that went in to the tank is the exact amount on the bill? When the drivers write down the amount of fuel from the register on a paper ticket, how do you know that they only used that amount of fuel? How do you know that they put the fuel in your truck? How do you know that the driver is not siphoning fuel out of your tank? If fuel was only $1.75 per gallon, it would still be an issue but with fuel costs rising to $3.75, it has become a real problem.
The only way to know is to monitor. The only way to monitor is to install a fuel management system that keeps track of every drop of fuel. Savings of a minimum of 5% are commonly realized by companies moving from a manual paper ticket system to SCI's wireless Fuel Management system. That savings alone pays for the system within a year and usually in about 6 months. After that, you KNOW where your fuel dollar is going and you can control it. That's peace-of-mind! That's SCI, Smart Customer Integration. Check out SCI's website at www.sciww.com

Why "wireless" fuel management?

Most fuel islands are wired for power and data, so what is the big deal about "wireless" technology?
The big deal about wireless technology is that it doesn't require trenching across the concrete slab from the office to the fuel island to run new cables. Most computer networks run on Catagory V (Cat-5) network cable. This means that a customer must spend the money to run new Cat 5 cable (in conduit) to the fuel island to add new equipment or change existing. This is very costly. I was at a site last month where there was a distance of 500 feet between the office and the island. That's a lot of trenching.
SCI's wireless technology gets it's power from the pump. We then connect to a network via 802.11 wireless communication. That is why it only takes about 4 hours to install our system. This also saves time and money for the customer because their fuel island is not down for several days.
SCI brought wireless fuel management technology to the U.S. Check out the website at www.sciww.com to get more information on how SCI can help your business.

Where does all the fuel go?

"Fuel slippage never happens to anyone in the US and only occurs in remote areas like Australia." Look lets face the facts, fuel theft is EVERYWHERE! It is a problem not only facing corporate America but also government as well. If you have an open pump connected to a 10,000 gallon fuel tank, you better believe that with the price of fuel these days, your are going to have theft. It happens in many ways. An employee pulls up to fuel the company truck and fills 5 gallons into a can that he puts into his personal truck every month. That's 5 gallons per month x 12 months totals 60 gallons. If you have 100 employees who have access to your fleet and only 10% of them take advantage of the bulk fuel, your are talking 600 gallons of slippage by the end of the year. Multiply that by $3 per gallon and you have $1,800 in stolen fuel each year! Take that same example on a municipality with 2000 vehicles and a monthly fuel bill of $300,000 and you have a problem! SCI Distribution,LLC's system, RF Fuel puts the manager back in control by using RF technology to identify each vehicle before authorizing a fuel transaction. This ensures that the fuel that was purchased goes where you want and not someplace else. Now that's control! Visit SCI Distribution's website to learn more at www.sciww.com

Cutting costs on maintenance and fuel

What are the major expenses that any fleet manager has to overcome? Maintenance and Fuel! If the manager's position is to minimize these expenses and all he has to work with is a manual system of writing down the odometer and the amount of gallons his fleet uses, he will not be effective. The increased prices on truck tires, engine replacement parts and lubrication compounds has brought about a demand for more integration between preventive maintenance software and fleet management systems. SCI Distribution has been implementing it's wireless technology platform as a base for integrating fleet and fuel managmenet into one unique system that places the control over these costs back into the hands of the fleet manager. Now that is something new! To find out more go to www.sciww.com

Fuel Management system

We have started 2008 and I was very sorry to read that the price for the barrel is now $100.

The thing that I do not understand is how we get the oil price so high, pay the countries that controll the fuel so much money and yet - we at SCI Distribution trying to bring to the US market a technology solution from Israel that can help fuel fraud, reduce fuel consumtion and maybe reduce the demand for fuel in the US - so we do not make the suppliers of the fuel so strong.

You can visit: www.sciww.com to learn more about our system.