Fuel Delivery Efficiency Analysis Series: Run-out Review

This article is part of our series on fuel delivery efficiency. Tank Utility offers every customer our detailed Delivery Efficiency Analysis Report using their delivery history data. The report helps fuel suppliers to benchmark their performance and find ways to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Fuel Delivery Efficiency Series:

1. Fuel Delivery Efficiency Analysis Overview
2. Average Drop Size – Actual vs. Ideal
3. Avoidable Delivery Costs
4. Accounts Where Heating Degree Days Don’t Work
5. Run-Out Review
6. Red-Flag Accounts
7. New Customer Check-Up

Run-Out Review

A straightforward analysis, but critical nonetheless is the run-out review. Run-outs are often cited by customers as one of the primary reasons that they change fuel suppliers. So getting the balancing act right between run-outs and over-servicing (which has it’s own unnecessary costs) is critical. We look for run-outs and near-run-outs (deliveries greater than 75% of tank capacity) in this review.

The chart above shows customers that had more than 1 run-out in the past year. Blue bars indicate auto-delivery customers; orange bars are will-call customers. While the run-outs for will-call customers are not the fuel supplier’s fault, they are responsible for the auto-delivery run-outs. In fact, one of these auto-delivery customer experienced 5 run-out or near-run-outs along on the past year.

In total, we found 23 account auto-delivery accounts (and an additional 8 will-call) that had run-outs for this review. Tank monitors with tank level alerting and email threshold notifications can help prevent run-out situations like these.