A regional delivery business lives on committed numbers. Standing routes get priced for the quarter, and contract bids go out weeks before the first pallet moves. A new customer negotiates a rate sheet that will govern months of work. Every one of those commitments contains a fuel assumption, and the fuel itself gets bought later, day by day, at whatever the pumps along the route decide to charge.
That gap between quoting and fueling is the quiet risk of the business. When the market rises after the rate sheet is signed, the difference comes out of margin on every stop, and delivery margins were never generous. The operator's choices are all bad, from eating it to reopening a rate negotiation customers will resent, with a surcharge that weakens the next competitive bid as the fallback. Most eat it and hope, which is a strategy with a memory of working and no guarantee of repeating.
Making the fuel assumption real
FuelAnchor is a fuel supply company, and what it offers a delivery operation is the ability to make the fuel line of a rate sheet true by construction. You request a quote for the gallons your vans and trucks burn each month, and it returns a locked maximum price per gallon for your term of 1, 3, 6, or 12 months. You prepay the gallons, then drivers fill with a FuelAnchor card at the stations you choose, on the routes they already run. Below your locked maximum, you pay the pump price. Above it, your rate holds, and the difference is FuelAnchor's cost for the rest of the term.
Now the sequencing works the way it always should have: lock the fuel, then quote the work. A rate sheet priced on a capped fuel cost is a rate sheet the market cannot undermine mid-quarter, and the margin you promised yourself when you won the contract is the margin the contract actually pays.
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Terms that follow the contract calendar
The clean move is matching the agreement to the commitments outstanding. Quarterly rate sheets pair naturally with a 3 month agreement renewed on the same rhythm. An annual contract with a major customer pairs with a 12 month agreement quoted the week the contract is signed, so both documents describe the same year. A short 1 month agreement covers a surge you have already sold, like a holiday season or a project's freight, without committing past it.
Mixed fleets are normal in delivery, and they are handled properly: diesel box trucks and gasoline vans are quoted independently in the same request, each getting its own real figure. The monthly gallons number comes straight from your fuel card statements, which delivery businesses tend to have in better order than anyone.
There is no rate card on our side either. Every quote is computed when you ask, from current prices in your coverage area, your fuel types, your volume, and your term. Request a quote before the next rate sheet goes out, and let the number you commit to your customers sit on a number somebody committed to you.
🔒 Your information is never shared.
This form saves your progress automatically as you go.