Fuel theft is rife – don’t be fooled!

I refer to the article titled ‘Fuel theft claims severely exaggerated’ (FTW August 14, 2009). Mr Martin’s comments concerning fuel theft appear to have been made without much research into the real truth. With respect to Mr Martin and his partner, they only own semi trailers which run in and around the Port of Durban. They hire in sub-contractors to pull their semi-trailers and are really not affected whether the truck owner loses diesel or not. Those mechanical horses which they hire in do not carry long range fuel tanks and probably carry no more than 250-350 litres at best. In the months preceding the sale of our trucking company, our attention was drawn to our actual fuel consumption figures by the company doing the presale, due diligence study on our company. Our policy for fuel management was always to use an average fuel consumption band between high and low consumption. Considering the diversity of our national and international routes, the varying types and masses of loads, and that the fuel consumption had been fairly constant over the life-span of the mechanical horses, we were satisfied that we had never suffered any significant fuel theft. However, as a precaution, we immediately issued drivers with rationed amounts of fuel and kept strict, detailed records of distances and fuel usage etc. In the very first month of fuel rationing, our figures improved between 15% and 20%! We were so shocked that we interviewed each one of our 27 drivers independently. Out of the 27 drivers, I received 24 sworn, written confessions stating that on every single trip to Johannesburg the drivers would call into one of three different fuel siphoning points where the operators would siphon from 25-50 litres of diesel, and the drivers would be paid in cash. We even had professionally supplied anti-theft devices built into the fuel tanks, but this was no problem for the fuel thieves!….By extrapolating the average litres at an average fuel price for the year, we calculated that we were suffering from R1.5 million to R2m stolen from under our noses every year. It should be noted that the fuel price at that time was 40%-45% less than the current fuel price. It is impossible to know that 25-50 litres are missing from a set of fuel tanks totalling 600-800 litres, which is what most long-distance mechanical horses carry. The story concerning fuel theft being rife is absolutely true. I hope that this emphasises the point that your article raised at the outset. Trucker