The CRT Playbook: Leakage, the Silent Profit Drain in Commercial Transport (3)
- Nick Pannell
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
About the series 'The CRT Playbook'
Commercial road transport isn’t corporate fleet, but most innovation in mobility payments still treats it that way. In a sector defined by long routes, high exposure, thin margins, and real operational risk, “more convenience” isn’t a strategy. Control is.
That’s why The CRT Playbook exists. In this series, we cut through the noise to examine the technologies, behaviours, and market dynamics that actually shape the CRT ecosystem. From fraud and fuel leakage to tokenisation, telematics, data reconciliation, and the road to a truly cardless future.
Every chapter builds on the last. Welcome to Chapter 3 of our CRT Playbook.
If you are just joining us, you can find the previous chapters here.
How fuel behaviour destroys margins, and why cardless control finally gives fleets a fighting chance
If you’ve worked anywhere near CRT fuel operations, you already know leakage is real. You can feel it in the numbers long before you see it in a dashboard. Margins get tighter. Discounts don’t land where finance expects. Transport managers swear compliance is high, yet actual costs suggest something else entirely.
Leakage is the quiet thief in commercial transport — not loud and dramatic like fuel fraud, but constant, subtle, and cumulatively devastating.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Most CRT leakage isn’t malicious. It’s behavioural. But ignoring it is one of the fastest ways to erode profit in an already margin-sensitive industry.
In this chapter, we’re going deeper into what leakage really is, why it happens, and what practical controls can actually reduce it.
In CRT, behaviour has a cost.
What is Leakage, Really?
Hint: It’s not fraud — and not quite operational error either.
Leakage is the cost difference between where you want your drivers to fuel and where they actually fuel.
It’s the margin penalty fleets pay when:
A driver chooses the motorway site instead of the negotiated discount site 3 km away
A truck fuels outside an agreed corridor
A driver uses a higher-priced network because it’s “on the way”
Country-to-country price variances aren’t optimised
A fleet burns time — and money — due to avoidable dwell or routing choices
In other words: Leakage is the difference between the plan and the behaviour.
And in CRT, behaviour has a cost.
Why Leakage Happens (Even With “Good” Drivers)
1. Drivers optimise for convenience, not cost
Drivers live the job differently than finance does. To them, stopping at the nearest, easiest, or safest station often feels rational — even when it’s commercially damaging.
2. Cross-border reality trumps policy
Tariffs, taxes and price gradients shift daily. A refuel in Luxembourg isn’t the same as France. A refuel in the wrong part of Germany can wipe out a week’s margin.
3. Route unpredictability
Traffic, weather, delays, inspections — the real world laughs at neatly planned site lists.
4. Weak control systems
Plastic cards and PINs simply can’t enforce rules in real time.
A card allows, but it does not direct.
5. Discounts aren’t always understood (or visible) to drivers
When a driver isn’t aware of negotiated network benefits, they refuel based on familiarity, habit, or guesswork.
6. Multi-network reality
The average CRT fleet uses 5–6 networks across Europe. Only one or two may be “preferred.” Drivers can’t be expected to memorise pricing logic across all of them.
Leakage isn’t a failure of discipline. It’s a failure of control architecture.
Why Leakage Matters (More Than You Think)
Leakage looks small in the moment — €15 here, €30 there — but CRT exposure multiplies everything:
A tractor-trailer refuels dozens of times per month
International fleets operate across 5–20 countries
Price deltas between stations can be €0.15–€0.40 per litre
A single wrong-site fill can erase an entire week of negotiated discount value
Across hundreds of trucks? Leakage becomes a six- or seven-figure problem.
And unlike fraud — which is event-based, episodic, and dramatic — leakage is structural.
It compounds. It gets worse in inflationary pressure. And it’s nearly impossible to catch with after-the-fact reporting.
Reporting explains leakage. But it does not prevent it.
The Core Failure: Controls Happen Too Late
The fundamental issue is timing. Most fleets measure leakage after the fuel is bought.
By then:
The cost is already booked
The behaviour is already repeated
The driver is already 300 km down the road
Reporting explains leakage. But it does not prevent it. CRT needs control before the nozzle lifts.
That is what makes cardless (done properly) so transformative.
When it comes to control, cardless systems outperform anything plastic-based.
We’ll say it again – just in case we haven’t got the point across yet: CRT is about control – not convenience.
A Simple Leakage-Control Blueprint (That Fleets Can Actually Run)
Leakage can’t be solved by one department — it’s a coordination problem.
Here’s a practical starting template used by top-performing CRT operators.
Step 1 — Define the commercial logic
Preferred sites
Avoid sites
Country-by-country model
Motorway vs roadside strategy
Taxation impact
Corridor maps
Step 2 — Translate logic into rules
Volume caps
Product types
Cross-border windows
Site lists
Validity windows
Step 3 — Enforce at authorisation
No surprises.
No after-the-fact corrections.
Step 4 — Monitor dwell + routing anomalies
Leakage often correlates with avoidable delay.
Step 5 — Adjust rule sets weekly or monthly
Leakage isn’t static.
Your controls shouldn’t be either.
The Bottom Line
Leakage is not a paperwork problem.
It’s not a driver problem.
It’s not a training problem.
Leakage is a control problem.
And only real-time, edge-enforced cardless controls — built for CRT — can reduce it at the scale fleets require.
In the next chapter of The CRT Playbook, we’ll examine how telematics + payments can evolve into a single integrity layer — transforming both fraud control and operational efficiency.
Ready to rethink CRT?
If there’s one thing the CRT market proves, it’s that doing “more of the same” stops working fast. Costs rise. Fraud adapts. Margins tighten. And the old playbook — plastic cards, patchwork controls, and endless admin — simply can’t keep up.
If you’re ready to explore what better looks like, we’re already deep in the details.
Get in touch with PHC Mobility and let’s map out your next move.
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