What a fleet fuel audit checks in the first two weeks.

The audit does not start with new hardware. It starts with read-only access to the fuel card, the GPS, and the systems that already know which truck did which work.

Zack Shields, October 7, 2026

The records

Card swipes: unit entered at the pump, driver if the card carries one, gallons, dollars, merchant, and time. Telematics: where that unit actually was. Tank level, only where the sensor holds still long enough to mean something. TMS or dispatch: the load and the truck that was assigned. Idle hours, off-hours swipes, and the difference between gallons bought and gallons the engine burned.

Common stacks are Samsara or Motive for the truck, and Relay, WEX, or Comdata for the card. The audit is not limited to those names. It starts from whatever the fleet already runs.

The match

Each swipe is set next to the truck, the driver, and the clock. If the pump and the GPS are miles apart, that swipe is a review item. If the gallons landed in a different unit than the one that was keyed, that is a mixup for dispatch. If the tank trace is nonsense, the fill is parked under sensor health.

Unverifiable stays unverifiable. Forcing a yes or no out of a bad sensor is how audits lose the room.

What you have to grant

Read-only keys, made in your accounts. One system at a time. Setup on your side is usually under an hour. I cannot change a load, a card limit, or a driver file, and the work does not write back. You can pull any key without asking me.

What you receive

Inside two weeks of access: a Monday report with the week at a glance, fuel verified in tank, fills to review, truck number mixups, fuel economy, and sensor health. Managers get a shorter list on the days in between. We walk through which lines are theft, which are a process change, and which are still open.

You keep that pack if the monthly work stops. The first engagement on a Southeast fleet of more than 200 trucks found more than $2,000 in the first week. That is a result from one operator, not a promise that every fleet will match the figure.

What the audit will not do

It will not install a product your dispatchers have to learn. It will not replace Samsara, Motive, the card, or the TMS. It will not hand you a list of accused drivers with no time, place, and distance behind the line.

The audit, in short. Book the 15-minute call if you want it run on your fleet.