The Summer season is the perfect time to audit your customer data, conduct equipment maintenance, set your budgets for the upcoming seasons, and fit in a vacation.
It’s also a great time to assess how technology can help you become more efficient.Tank monitoring technology is one of the more popular investments companies have elected in recent years. According to a recent study conducted by BPN News, 70% of respondents from a 2023 survey reported that they are deploying or spending more on tank monitor vs. only 56% last year. Companies are looking to tank monitors as a way to improve delivery efficiency, reduce runouts, obtain more accurate usage forecasts, enhance customer satisfaction, and more.

Our team at Angus Energy is frequently asked how to develop a targeted strategy for using tank monitors. We look at the use of monitors as a three-legged stool.

• Eliminate as many stops as possible without letting anyone run out (while flattening the delivery curve). This will help you make the deliveries that need to be made in the heat of the winter while making deliveries to smaller customers during the shoulder months of the heating season. In other words, take care of your largest customers when it’s the coldest and when they need fuel and take care of the smaller stops, the customer who only needs one or two deliveries per year, when there is more time and the push isn’t so extreme.

• Maximize gallons at every stop. Just because a tank will hold fuel doesn’t necessarily mean you should fill it. Allow for the monitor to help you make optimal deliveries. If you have a 550 gallon tank and you are only delivering 250 gallons at a time, wait, and fill that tank when you can add another 100 to 150 gallons. You may not only save a stop, you will add some extra margin to the bottom line. If you deliver an extra 100 to 150 gallons per delivery, and you do that a couple thousand times or more per year, what is the affect on YOUR bottom line and how does that affect the ROI of a monitor?

• Protect high value customers. All companies have customers they tend to “over service” because they are large, they pay good money and if they run out it gives them an opportunity to look around for a new supplier; and a competitor an opportunity to cherry pick one of your really good customers. There is nothing worse than losing a customer who pays well over a mistake in making a delivery late. Make a conscience business decision to add monitors to these customers.