The Fuel Store in focus
The Fuel Store is a Birmingham-based provider of fuel cards and fleet management solutions. Starting out five years ago as a small business, the company says it is becoming one of the fastest growing organisations within the sector. It now has 40 employees and around 3,500 customers that have access to 6,500 fuel sites across the UK including Shell and BP sites.
Directors and founders Jamie and Mehma Bridgen say their ethos has always been to expand and deliver more for customers while remaining faithful to their roots – adding that, from the outset, The Fuel Store has aimed to disrupt and challenge the norms of the industry by delivering exceptional customer experiences.
“The thing companies are looking for before anything else, I believe, and have been for a long time, is convenience,” said Jamie Bridgen. “And convenience comes with what networks you offer: the first question I would ask as a driver of an HGV or LCV is ‘where can I fill up?’”
The Fuel Store has also extended its products beyond solely fuel cards to increase its appeal to potential customers.
It now offers online management of fleets through the new Fuel AI dashboard, which it says is proving popular with customers, enabling them to fully understand the behaviour of their vehicles by reporting key insights such as fuel spend litres and CO2, transaction data highlighting exceptions, as well as information on electrification opportunities.
Fraud Guard also keeps customers protected from fraudulent activity on fuel cards; and last year the company launched a telematics solution. The latter incorporates fuel spend management and data insights on both driver and vehicle performance.
“As with any sector, data is becoming the key to success,” Jamie continued. “And for us, it was about how do we deliver that data in a meaningful way to our customers? How do we allow them to make better decisions?
“Telematics gives you access to so much data and it was about how we could pull together the fuel expense data with the telematics data to give customers the insights to really understand how their vehicles and drivers are performing. It also lets them see whether a vehicle needs a service or maintenance any time soon.”
While fuel cards for petrol, diesel and associated products may be key to The Fuel Store’s immediate success, Jamie says the company is also working to be ready for the widespread shift to electric vehicles and the change this will have on the services it offers.
“It’s key to be agile,” he said. “Our aim is to be prepared so when our customers transition from traditional fuels to new fuels, we are able to facilitate that, making those solutions better with the service that we provide our customers.”/
In relation to the recent fuel disruption that has caused issues for many industries, Jamie notes that panic buying had “transformed a manageable situation into a difficult one” for an already strained supply chain, causing disruption to delivery schedules resulting in lost productivity.
“There needs to be a focus on incentivising more people to become HGV drivers and support should be given to employers to help locate and quickly train such individuals,” he concluded.
