Stopping fuel overpayments and cutting manual work with Relay Pulse

With automated fuel monitoring and driver syncing, the fleet stops costly mistakes, deters misuse, and gives its people more time to focus on their drivers and customers.

The challenge

Market Express could see how much fuel its drivers purchased. What it couldn’t easily see was whether that fuel actually went into its trucks as intended.

For the Oregon-based carrier, answering that question meant tedious, transaction-by-transaction work across a fleet of over 300 trucks: comparing fuel purchases with telematics tank readings to find discrepancies buried in everyday fueling activity.

Without that scrutiny, fuel could go somewhere else, or a driver could select the wrong fuel category at the pump, without the team knowing. Misuse could go undetected, and mistakes could keep costing money until someone just happened to find them, if they ever did at all.

For Market Express, simply having no known fraud problem wasn’t enough.

Pulse does the digging. The team gets alerts.

Market Express connected Relay Pulse with Samsara, its telematics provider, to automate that oversight. Pulse monitors fuel purchases against tractor tank readings in the background. When something doesn’t add up, an email alert brings the discrepancy directly to the team. They don’t have to hunt for the problem. Pulse tells them when to step in.

That monitoring also deters fuel misuse. During orientation, drivers learn that Market Express tracks fueling activity and receives alerts about discrepancies. James’s message is straightforward: the company will notice if you try to sell or divert company fuel.

From the moment Pulse was turned on, James already had peace of mind. But then, one alert made the financial stakes impossible to ignore.

One alert exposes a costly, recurring mistake

Pulse flagged a purchase that didn’t match the tractor’s tank readings. James recalled a roughly 150-gallon purchase that included about 50 gallons put into the refrigerated trailer. The driver had selected tractor diesel at the pump, then put some of that fuel into the reefer.

When the team called him, they learned he had been doing it for some time. One Pulse alert had exposed an ongoing practice, with the same costly mistake repeated across fueling stops.

Recording reefer fuel as tractor diesel distorted IFTA and MPG reporting and added unnecessary road taxes. James estimated the overpayment in this example at roughly $1 for each gallon of reefer fuel recorded incorrectly.

At that rate, a 50-gallon reefer fill could mean about $50 in unnecessary taxes on that purchase alone. Every similar mistake added to the bill. With reefers routinely filled or topped off, the cost could rapidly balloon into a major burden.

Market Express contacted drivers and issued instructions to correct the fuel selection, putting an immediate end to the recurring overpayment and correcting its fuel reporting. 

“We found drivers selecting diesel and putting that fuel in their reefers,” James explains. “It was throwing off our IFTA and MPG reports and costing us significant money in unnecessary taxes. Pulse helped us catch it and put a stop to it.”

Less data entry and more time for people

Pulse also automates driver setup in Relay. When Market Express creates a driver in Samsara, that driver is automatically created and connected in Relay. Staff then simply assign the driver a fuel policy in the Relay portal, without having to re-enter their information. That’s one less repetitive task with every new driver.

James puts it simply: “We want our people doing ‘people things.’ If we can automate entering drivers into a system, they can spend more time working with drivers and customers.”

For James, stronger fuel oversight and less busywork make Pulse an easy decision.

Your ELD already has the data. Put it to work protecting your fuel budget and giving your team time back. Ask your Relay representative about Pulse.