The Flipside on Fueling
If you are not fueling vehicles before rental, are you considering the soft costs of bad customer service by making your customer fill up?
You’ve invested time and money to get your customer to your counter. You’ve killed him with service and have upsold as much as possible. You then ruin everything you’ve done by telling him that the first stop he has to make is at a service station to fuel up. Your customer might walk away with the impression that you don’t have enough pride in your product to provide a vehicle ready to get on the road.
There is an economic detriment to not providing a full tank at rental. How often do you “fudge” the amount of fuel on the rental agreement? A vehicle might have between a half and 5/8ths of a tank, but you mark the rental agreement “1/2 tank.” At return, the vehicle may have between 3/8ths and 1/2 tank but, once again, you mark it 1/2.
This common occurrence loses 50 cents to $1 or more on every rental. With the gas gauge pegged on “F,” there never is a question regarding how much is in the vehicle at the time of rental. Having a full tank at rental makes it easier to recover fuel costs at check-in.
What if the vehicle goes out on a half tank, and comes back full? If the operator does not credit the difference, the customer walks away with a bad taste and will only remember the bad experience the next time he rents.
But crediting the customer for the difference can be tricky, depending on the rate used. If the operator uses the rate the company charges the customer for refueling, the operator is giving away money. If the operator uses, say, a five-station average cost per gallon, the operator must have a conversion chart for each vehicle in the fleet to take tank size into consideration.
Moreover, these charts have to be adjusted regularly to reflect fluctuations in fuel costs.