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The Hidden Risk and Inefficiency in Informal Secondary Market Transactions
Across the downstream petroleum sector, surplus inventory and used equipment change hands every day through informal channels: a phone call to a familiar contact, a word-of-mouth referral, a handshake agreement finalized over email. These transactions...
Wholesale Fuel/Lubricants Back Office and ERP Sunsets: What Operators Need to Know Now
If you’re running legacy wholesale fuel/lubricants software or your current platform has been acquired, you may already be within an active end-of-life planning window. Here’s what that means for your invoicing, dispatch, and financial controls...
“Fragile resilience”: The Conflict in Today’s Economic Signals and What it Means for Fuel
Depending on where you look, you can find proof of economic strength or stress. We explore this two-faced nature and why it matters. Pringles are the most interesting snack at the convenience store. And it’s...
What’s Happened to EV Sales in the United States Over the Past Four Years (2022–2026)?
By Dr. David Nelson Four years ago, electric vehicles seemed an unstoppable force in the American car market. California and the U.S. government announced a timetable to ban the sale of gas-powered cars. EV sales...
Before You Add Headcount: Five Questions for Your 2027 Operating Plan
By Joel Davis, VP of Marketing, Gravitate Consider a delivery that goes exactly as planned. The driver loads the right product, arrives on time, and completes the drop. The customer gets the fuel. Around that...
M&A Case Study: Corporate Carve out: Atkinson Oil Company
Situation Atkinson Oil Company was a leading distributor of commercial fuels and lubricants in Georgia and also operated an emergency fueling business across the Eastern and Southern United States. Atkinson Oil traces its roots to 1987 with the...
Lessons from the Summer’s ATG Attacks: A Practical Response for Petroleum Marketers
In April, the Energy Marketers of America warned members that attackers were targeting internet-exposed automatic tank gauge (ATG) systems, citing incidents in Tennessee including one convenience-store chain with at least fifteen tanks affecte CNN...
The Appreciation Multiplier: What the Latest Frontline Data Says About Keeping Your Best People
Fewer than half of frontline workers feel regularly appreciated. Those who do are five times more likely to say their wellbeing is improving, a key factor in whether employees stay with an organization. For fuel...
Outgrowing Spreadsheets and Scaling Operations: A Story of Reimagining Daily Pricing
By Johnny Bertucci, President The quick take: ABC Fuel Distributors, an anonymized mid-size petroleum marketer with 15 suppliers and roughly 300 retail and commercial accounts, spent close to two hours every day manually pulling supplier...
Measuring & Managing a Sales Team
By Doug Stovall, Study Groups Chief Growth Officer Most leaders manage their sales team by watching one number: how much closed last month. It feels like the right number to watch. It’s also the worst...
Change Management, Rewritten for an AI World
By Shyam Rao, Founder and CEO Every operator knows the people-process-tech framework. It has ordered change management for decades, and the order is the whole point: start with your people, redesign your process, and only...
The Customer Service Clock Starts Before the First Word
One client recently demonstrated the value of connecting executive direction with frontline behavior. The strategy was deliberately simple: get back to the basics, greet every customer, and thank every customer. During the following two months,...