"We've saved 15 percent net in gas costs," Little, the president of KPost Co., says. "And when you have a $20 million company,
every 10th of a percent matters in big dollars."
Contractor VIPs, such as Little, spent much of 2007 fretting over the impact of rising fuel prices. Among the 400 contractors
who responded to RSI Magazine's 2008 State of the Industry survey, 64 percent cited gas prices as being detrimental to the bottom line. The slumping housing
market and economy didn't even provoke such a critical response. Equally telling, a survey-high 70 percent said they were
"very concerned" about fuel prices.
Little, perhaps sooner than many of his peers, decided to act on the problem two years ago while watching diesel prices jump
for a variety of reasons.
"Right now gas in Dallas is $2.95 a gallon and diesel is $3.45 a gallon. Two years ago they were around the same price," Little
says. "While all this stuff was going on, I'm seeing our fixed costs change." KPost, at the same time, was constructing a new campus that would include warehouses and a vehicle repair shop. After a friend
in the concrete business mentioned that an onsite gas unit was saving him 15 percent in fuel costs, Little decided a similar
move would be cost-effective.
"I said we have to control our destiny on this," he says.
KPost signed a three-year contract to purchase exclusively from Ranparr Inc., a Dallas-based wholesale distributor of gasoline.
In turn, Ranparr provided a 2,000-gallon, double-hull, fire-rated, above-ground pump system at no charge; KPost paid for the
steel posts that surround the pump and the accompanying electrical system.
"Anybody can do this," Little says. "All we had to do was pour the concrete for the pillars."
The installation has paid dividends in five ways, Little says.
- Foremen can better manage their own businesses — a company-wide philosophy —from within their vehicles.
- Man-hours aren't wasted stopping for gas in transit.
- Accounting is simplified thanks to the electronic keypad attached to the pump.
- Bulk purchasing of gas is more than 20 percent less expensive than individual transactions.
- The only product purchased at every fill-up is fuel, whereas previous stops at service stations sometimes resulted in food
and beverage purchases.
Senior sales representative Denise Hamlin uses KPost's onsite gas pump to fill the tank on a company vehicle.(Photograph courtesy
of KPost Co.)
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"We used to be on a national card service program," Little says. "So let's say the guys stop at Texaco, and even though the
card says you aren't allowed to charge anything to it, if you got to know the cashier pretty well, they would throw stuff
on there. So now it's a rat race to try to go back through and do a payroll deduction for buying something extra."
The time issue has been especially cost-effective, Little says.
"We have six or eight guys in a vehicle stopping at the gas station," Little says. "Because those guys are on the clock, $2-a-gallon
gas was turning into $6-a-gallon gas."
