Fifteen things you can do today about the cost of fuel

Fifteen things you can do today about the cost of fuel
Or
Are you running your business like fuel still costs $0.60 cents a gallon?

1. Track the consumption of fuel per machine or truck. Every gallon used should be should be accounted for, by machine, job or project. You would not normally say to an employee; “Here is $90.00 in cash. Spend it and by way, you do not have to report back to me what you spent it on. So why is fuel any different?

2. All fuel storage tanks must be metered and the meter is calibrated. The data you will be getting is critical business information. You do not want to be running you business on bad information

3. Record the hour meter or Odometer information with every fueling. Without this information you will not be able to created critical calculations that will affect your company’s profitability.

4. Balance the “Cash Drawer”, with every storage tank fill. Every day, every bank teller balances his/her cash drawer all over the world. Your fuel tank has money in fuel coming in and going out. This needs to be accounted for and balanced. If you are out of balance, you will not keep your job very long at the bank.

5. Require fueling records to be turned in to the office. They should be turned in at least as often as time cards are turned in.

6. Calculate fuel burn in gallons or liters per hour for machinery with every fill. For trucks you will want to add in additions to hours, mileage or kilometers. Generally, for light trucks we don’t track hours)

7. Track and document work package level fuel consumption. You will be surprised and how this number changes from work item to work item or project to project. (If you are not breaking out work packages in your estimating detail, you are not estimating, your guessing.)

8. Replace broken hour meters and odometers, immediately. How can you track oil changes and services if you are “flying blind”?

9. Account for all hours on all machines. If you don’t have a problem with off-hours or off-job use of you machines, I don’t’ either. But, I do have a problem if you don’t know for sure how many hours and what those hours actually cost you.

10. Calculate your cost per hour for fuel per work item. Fuel is your largest machine operating cost item. If you don’t know how much consumption a work item take and what fuel cost, you cannot do this calculation. How do you know if your estimating is correct?

11. Don’t use average fuel consumption data. Averages are for people who don’t have a clue what their fuel really cost them. You need to know; the highest consumption level, the lowest and at what consumption rate this work package was estimated. Only real world measurements give you the first two of these.

12. Consider buying a hedge position in the Heating Oil market. Many fuel and heating oil supplier can help you with this.

13. Investigate and consider Idle Reduction Technology. This small device shuts down diesel engines when in an idle mode for a certain time. It does not allow the engine to cool to below a set point so that restarting is always easy. (You can contact us for more information.)

14. Investigate state-of-the-art fuel tracking and dispensing systems. These systems will help solve accuracy and recording issues. Make sure they will meet all of your recording requirements before investing! (You can contact us for more information.)

15. Use a customized database program (like DecisiveCost) to track and calculate all this information. Paper forms just get filed away. You need actionable business information! Spreadsheets are a nightmare to update, proof and do not begin to produce meaningful reports that a custom solution produces.

Do Something Today! “Lead, follow or get out of the way” as someone said.

Dedicated to your success,

Dan Rooks
President
Decisive Systems, Inc. "The Owning and Operating Cost People"In the U.S.
Call 800-232-5767 International 941-926-9260
drooks@decisivecost.com http://www.decisivecost.com/

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Does $100.00 a Barrel for Oil Mean $4.00 a Gallon for Diesel (in the U.S.)

Does $100.00 a Barrel for Oil Mean $4.00 a Gallon
for Diesel (in the U.S.) is Right Around the Corner?

Are You Letting “Business Conditions” Run Your Business?

When fuel went to $1.87 for off-road fuel in the U.S. market, I thought the machine owners would come un-glued. When it went to $2.50 I was sure they would change their business practices. I was wrong on both occasions.

Many are doing the same thing at three dollars a gallon that they did at $1.20. This is a big mistake that is costing machine owners billions of dollars world-wide.

A smart few have gotten mad as heck and done something about this!

You have to be sick of being the tail not the head. Sick of sucking up anything and everything dished out to you. You have to get mad and say “I am not taking it anymore!” As long as you think you don’t have any choice or say in the matter, I assure you…you will not have any choice! I love what Henry Ford once said to his engineers. “If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t,” you can’t. Do you desire a change? How badly do you want it?

When you get mad enough to start to ask questions like “How should I, or can I modify my business system to protect myself and profits from changing fuel costs? What changes do I need to make today? Who could best help me to look at my business differently? I know how I have done it all these years …but who could give me a different prospective?"

Now you are really starting to bring in fresh ideas.

You have to believe that someone out there in the world might know something that you don’t know. One of the smartest businessmen I know said to me, “Dan, when I go into a board room, if every person around the table is not smarter than me, I have got the wrong guys at that table”. You have to believe that it might be possible to do things differently and make more money in this business, and have less risk, than you currently have today.

Last, you have to be willing to take action. Just saying “I am not going to take it any more” with no action, will avail little. It is like the little boy saying about the bully, who has been bothering him a school…“I am not going to take it anymore”. So what are you willing to do or going to do to change situation?

According the heating oil futures market experts whom I have been listing to on CNN CNBC, MSNBC and Fox Business, the prognosis is YES, fuel prices are going up. One said $4.00 by Christmas! I don’t know the future any better than you. But I do know that you have to stop being passive about the cost of diesel fuel and machine cost in general.

It is going to take:

• Desire
• Belief
• Action

It takes more than just these three things for success. However, without these three, we don’t have chance. We are doomed to be the tail and just let the “river of life” carry us where it wants to go.

If you have even a shred of any of these three things and you are willing to change your business systems, processes and procedures, call me. We may be able to work together to come up with a plan that will protect the fine business that you have been blessed with and bring new Best Practices to your company.

Oh, by the way, even if you don’t believe you can do anything about the high cost of diesel fuel and gasoline, Click on this link www.DecisiveCost.blogspot.com and click on the link Fifteen things you can do today about the cost of fuel. If you have even a shred of any of these three things and you are willing to change your business systems, processes and procedures, call me. We may be able to work together to come up with a plan that will protect the fine business that you have been blessed with and bring new Best Practices to your company.

Oh, by the way, even if you don’t believe you can do anything about the high cost of diesel fuel and gasoline, click on the link on the right, Fifteen things you can do today about the cost of fuel.

Dedicated to your success,

Dan Rooks

President

Decisive Systems, Inc. "The Owning and Operating Cost People"In the U.S.

Call 800-232-5767International 941-926-9260

drooks@decisivecost.com http://www.decisivecost.com/

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Is Your "Inner" Asset Manager In Hibernation

Is Your "Inner" Asset Manager In Hibernation or

Your “Opportunity Antenna” Switched Off?

A friend of mine recently told me a terrific story about a meeting he had with another equipment owner. Not terrific in that this guy's business is worse off than he knows. However, this is a sensational example of why most equipment owners and managers are not bothering to pick up on huge opportunities lying at their feet. Opportunities that with the tiniest bit of initiative, would result in monumental leaps in net income.

First, the story…

“My good friend is a young entrepreneur who had opened his own contracting business. This young man had started the business several years ago with the dream of owning a profitable business where he could ‘call the shots’ and operate it the way a contractor is supposed to be operated. But, fast forward several years and this contractor is still struggling to pay the rent.”

He was frustrated and shared his misery with my friend. “I don’t get it. I offer a much better, more personalized service for my clients. Just try to get the kind of personalized attention I give, at one of those other contractors! I’m really starting to hate this business.”

My friend said, “You know, I know I should raise my rates. But there is always someone out there who is willing to take the work for less. I cannot change my prices.”

Yes, this is a true story and I’m sure you can already see what’s happening here. Yet it begs the question, are YOU overlooking niche markets and opportunities that, right now, are lying at your feet just begging to be realized?

I would ask this equipment owner several questions if I could.

When are you going to stop allowing your competitors to tell you what you have to charge? They don’t know your business or expenses. I doubt they know their own costs. So...., how long are you going to let them tell you what you have to charge?

When are you going to stop allowing your clients to tell you what you have to charge? They don’t know your business or expenses. They think you are making a 50% profit margin! So clearly show a client WHY you charge, what you charge. You need to take a detailed computer print-out of your exact machine or truck cost and demonstrate why you charge what you charge. Your competitor is not going to do this. Many clients want reliable service with machines that don’t break down. They want to know that you are not going to come back and ask for more money due to poor estimation of costs or un-substantiated change order requests.

When are going to realize that you will never win every bid or tender? If you are going to loose business – loose on all the bids or tenders on which you cannot make money. Many contractors loose 3 out of 4 bids. Let me show you how you can actually raise that number and make MORE money.

When are you going to start to accurately cost your machines and trucks? You know labor and material costs for the bid or tender you submit. If diesel fuel just went up $0 .12 cents a gallon, how did you immediately change what you have to charge on each machine starting TODAY? We can show you how to do this.

One of the most important lessons I learned was about the importance of mindset and belief systems. Ask anyone why they are not achieving a goal or result that they want – can be anything. Money. Weight loss. Time off. Pick one.

Instantly, they’ll tell you their story…

“Well, I can’t do costing right now because I want to have a life -- and if we do costing, I’ll end up getting more clients and have to work 70-80 hours a week…and I just don’t want to do that.”
Here’s another popular one: “I’m just too busy to do cost my equipment and track its fuel and utilization.” The truth? They have themselves convinced that they HATE paperwork, they’re not good at it, and therefore they make sure they are “too busy” to spend any time on it.

It’s an excuse.

Machine and truck costing does not get done by people with nothing else to do. It’s forced into the schedule. You have to know your cost. Unless you are making a 50% mark-up on work, you better know your machine cost, exactly. Besides, machine costing is not just about data and software, it’s about strategy work. It’s about finding the answer to the question, “How can I double my revenue while reducing the number of hours I work in the business?”

Our goal is to implement a system that once in place, you can know the cost, utilization and fuel consumption for any machine, or truck, under any operating condition or project work task. This system, will tell you exactly what your cost is in 2 minutes or less!

But no one ever seeks answers to THAT riddle because they have themselves completely convinced that it’s not possible. Second reason: they stay “too busy” in their daily habits of doing the work instead of taking time to look up from the hole they’re digging to make sure they’re digging in the right spot.

Challenge someone on this and they will get down right nasty defending their belief. “What do YOU know? You don’t have to deal with the same clients/situation/family/employee issues that I have to deal with! Easy for you to say because you have the advantage of being in a different city/business/client base/family…”

Are you getting the picture? Could YOUR inner Asset Manager be hibernating? Could you be overlooking HUGE opportunities to gain more freedom, money, and easy success?

What’s YOUR story?

Now, a more important question…

Are you courageous enough to quiet your ego and start findings ways to make more money, attract a better quality of client, command outrageous fees, all while taking more time off?

If yes – and you can handle the heat – call me at 941-926-9260 ext.104. If I am on the phone or tied up, I will return your call. Be sure to leave me your cell phone number in case its more than five minutes until I can return the call.

Dedicated to your success,

Dan Rooks
President
Decisive Systems, Inc. "The Owning and Operating Cost People"

In the U.S. Call 800-232-5767
International 941-926-9260
drooks@decisivecost.com
http://www.decisivecost.com/

Did someone forward this to you? Why not subscribe to the newsletter yourself? Just click on Info@DecisiveCost.com and include the word Subscribe in the Subject Line.

Want to comment on the issues raised here? Go to Comments (below) and add your comments no matter if you agree or disagree.