Last week on Monday, Oct. 14, and on into the following day, as the screenshot above illustrates, the Trucker Path application showed diesel prices at the Colman, South Dakota, Crossroads Truck Stop at a mighty-tempting $1/gal. The picture was sent my way by owner-operators Lee and Lisa Schmitt, who were disheartened to find that, in fact, after they actually traveled to the Crossroads location to fuel, the price there was in fact $3.29.
The stop wasn’t going to honor the price as it showed in the Trucker Path app, in direct contradiction of their advertised price, nor as it showed in the Schmitts’ leasing fleet’s EFS application, where the owner-operators first saw what in this day and age might seem like a veritable “holy grail” for diesel prices. Here’s what they were looking at in Wex’s EFS program:
When I spoke to a Crossroads rep last week, she said she’d heard about the $1/gal. listing in the applications, but “obviously that’s not true.” Several attempts to connect with a manager there subsequently have gone unanswered. The price was clearly delineated at the stop on that day, according to the Schmitts, as $3.29/gal. Right across the street, as the EFS app showed, the Schmitts stood to get diesel for less than that, with contract savings with their fleet’s fuel program (the $3.099 in the image above).
Yet, still, $1/gal. was too good to pass up, if true.
The Wex company’s system is relied on by the Schmitts as a source for discount pricing in their fleet’s fuel program. “Sometimes the pump price is different than we pay on our EFS card anyways,” Lisa Schmitt said. Could it in fact be true? Lee went ahead and pumped the fuel, and, sure enough … the owner-operator paid the full price, $3.29/gal.
Fleet representatives the Schmitts spoke to were variously apologetic and sympathetic. A rep from Wex uncovered for the fleet a potential source of the error — a single transaction processed at Crossroads at $1/gal. early in the afternoon that day “mistakenly (I assume),” the rep noted. “That’s what caused the app to show” that price.
Other apps, too, apparently.
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Trucker Path noted Crossroads wasn’t part of its own discount network, but threw up their hands on just how the erroneous price made its way into their app: “The data comes from a variety of sources,” a Trucker Path rep said.
The Schmitts’ fleet’s Wex contact noted Crossroads had corrected the mistaken $1/gal. transaction by the time the Schmitts got to the stop. At once, clearly the data flows that hit the apps hadn’t made the update.
The myth of the holy grail has seen a lot of permutations throughout history — generally, it’s a cauldron, a dish, vessel, cup that never runs empty, in Christian and pre-Christian traditions alike.
The Wex rep told the fleet that, “unfortunately, we can never guarantee these prices. …. $1 per gallon would be nice, but we’ll likely never see that again in our lifetime.”
Except in data feeds to apps from the Crossroads Truck Stop Monday, Oct. 14, leading operators like the Schmitts down a road they shouldn’t have to haul.
Finally, a question: Have you seen something similar in fuel-price-info services/applications you use? Get in touch directly or drop your story in the comments below.