In his recent article, featured in the January issue of Fuel Oil News, Rashaan Baskerville discusses how a current interest phenomenon may provide you with a rare opportunity to significantly reduce your interest expenses.
Keeping customers warm through the winter is the most important part of your business. So, it’s no surprise that deliveries are the largest component of your expenses. When you dig into ways to cut down on those expenses in many cases it comes down to making larger and (therefore) fewer deliveries. However, simply targeting larger deliveries may or may not be optimal and as such may not decrease but actually increase delivery costs! How do you define an Optimal Delivery?
Tank monitors are meant to take away the uncertainty of asking yourself, “How much will I deliver to this tank today?” Better put, tank monitors put an end to the challenge of relying on questionable K-factor consumption calculations. If you know how much you will deliver to a particular tank, you can achieve the two most important improvements imaginable: increased delivery size and optimal fleet management.
Most fuel marketers still rely heavily on K-Factors to predict, prioritize and route their deliveries. This method of calculating next delivery based upon a mathematical formula has allowed fuel marketers to operate as efficiently as possible. But are K-factors really the most efficient option?
They say history repeats itself and nothing is more true than when it comes to your customers. To maximize profitability, it is imperative that you look at your customer data history, leveraging it to find the ways you can increase your future profits. Weather history, degree-day history, delivery history, price history, equipment installation, and service history -- this data is your most prized possession. Not only is it your customer list and your “official record” of customer behavior – but if utilized correctly, it provides insights into their future behavior...
