Trucking Software Blog

One of the biggest headaches in the transportation business is properly and accurately calculating and reporting road and fuel tax dollars. There are three methods for doing this in the transportation industry right now:

1. Collect all of the fuel receipts from the drivers; insist that the drivers write down the mileage or odometer reading every time they cross a state line, then collect and monitor state mileages; sit down with a calculator and all this paperwork and manually add up gallons purchased for each truck during the quarter – taking care to make sure the gallons purchased in each state are recorded separately; add up all the miles run for the quarter – again, taking care to keep a subtotal of miles by state; calculate the average miles per gallon (mpg), per truck, and the average mpg for the fleet; and finally, fill out the IFTA report forms to determine whether you still owe money or get a credit.
2. Collect all of the fuel receipts from the drivers; insist that the drivers write down the mileage or odometer reading every time they cross a state line; and then deliver all this paperwork to an expensive, outside road and fuel tax preparation service to calculate the above mentioned figures and file the IFTA forms for you (again determining whether you owe tax money or get a credit).
3. Have a good, working transportation management software system that constantly monitors and calculates total miles travelled, gallons purchased, and gives spot and average mpg per truck and fleet – including state by state mileage and gallon subtotals for each truck; and helps file the IFTA forms for you.

What is the cost for each of these methods?

1. What is your time worth? Do you employ someone to take care of all of these receipts, miles, etc? When you consider the amount of time spent and the cost of the time spent hounding drivers for receipts and route mileages, cataloging, reviewing, evaluating and storing the receipts and route mileages, and calculating report figures, this method is the most expensive and the least accurate of the three.
2. The cost of personal time or the time an employee spends managing the receipts, etc. (best guess estimate is at least half of the time required for the method #1), in addition to the cost for the service to perform the calculations, etc. These services can range for $50 to $500 per truck, per quarter.
3. Since the cost of a good software system is spread over all of its pieces (modules), and is usually a onetime purchase (like the TruckMaster Software System), the cost is minimal over time and does not have a recurring monthly or quarterly expense.

Another advantage of the TruckMaster Software System is the interface available with various fuel service providers (Comdata, EFS, TCH, T-Chek, T-Fleet, etc.). It allows fuel purchases to be imported seamlessly into the software. This eliminates fuel purchase omissions, data entry errors and dual data entry.

If you, as a truck owner, want to know the fuel consumption for a given truck or for the fleet at any given time; or if you want the headaches of road and fuel tax reporting to disappear, contact TruckMaster today and we will show you how we can make life easier for you and your staff.

Dale Clark
TruckMaster Solution Provider
TruckMaster Your Trucking Company™