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GAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE

At One-Tank, we give propane marketers a cheat code to the propane industry. While your competitors are busy trying to optimize delivery routes and feverishly converting will-call customers to automatic delivery, One-Tank equipped marketers are putting every residential customer on a metering system which allows them to deliver gas at their leisure and make up to twice as much profit while doing so. Our customers work smarter, not harder, delivering fewer gallons in heating season and more in off-season, getting more out of their drivers and trucks, and circumventing supply price problems as much as possible.

Propane marketers have had to survive in an ever-changing seesaw of prices, supply availability, demand fluctuations, competition, and government regulation. The delicate balance of price per gallon for the end customer is influenced by external factors for which the marketer has no control, and in some markets the competition forces a race to the bottom to capture and retain business. Today, things are changing.  There is a weapon in the propane marketer’s arsenal that can eliminate the price & supply problem.

Let us paint you a picture. You are a propane marketer with about 3,000 residential customers, and your typical residential ASME tank size is 500 gallons (WC). Most are seasonal loads, but you have a few very consistent commercial accounts which help pad the books year-round, and you move around 2 million gallons of propane per year, 70% of which is purchased during heating season. You are surrounded by competitors, yet you have survived, even thrived, on being middle-of-the-road on pricing but excellent on customer service. You may even use tank monitors and other delivery technologies, and you pride yourself on keeping customers from running out. You have built a successful business; one you should be proud of.

There is one problem you are still facing: customers leave for cheaper gas regularly. You are still growing, but you know you could be growing three times as fast if you could just capture and retain price-driven customers long term. The enhanced customer service just isn’t enough, and you have said to yourself that “you really don’t need customers like that anyway,” and that it doesn’t bother you if they leave. But what if you could keep them, increase your margins, offer competitive prices, and annex market share from your competitors all while offering unbeatable customer service?

THE SECRET WEAPON

Photo: One-TankRemote Metered Billing. These three words are the biggest notable change in propane since the float gauge. Price-focused customers tend to be minimum-fill customers who pay for as little as they can get away with. They may be on a fixed income, use LIHEAP, low income, or just plain cheap. What if you could fill their tanks when it makes the most sense for you, then charge the customer per gallon as they use it? No longer would a customer need to purchase hundreds of gallons all at once; instead, a smaller monthly bill that is aligned with their income, like other utility bills.

Competitors won’t know what hit them. They will watch you purchase more supply in the offseason than you ever have before, building pipeline ratios for the winter months that you can use to grow your business. Your competitors will wonder where you’re putting it all. You will snap up their wishy-washy customers and lock them into contracts. You will lower what you pay per gallon at the terminal because you’ll shift your purchasing to offseason as much as possible, aiming to purchase 50% of your supply in offseason and 50% during heating season, and your customers will pay prices that are fair in return. What is more compelling for customer service than a keep-full program which requires no input from customers, who simply pay monthly for used propane at market rate, consumed from your inventory you are holding in your tanks at end-user locations?

PROPANE TECH OF 2022

A remote metering program is nothing without the necessary technology. Over the years we have worked to develop a reliable remote metering system which can produce temperature compensated readings for accurate billing. Of course, all the traditional benefits of tank monitoring are also seen, such as route optimization, preventing runouts, eliminating short fills, increasing average drop size, lowering miles driven per gallon delivered, and so on.

ATTRACT AND RETAIN LOYAL CUSTOMERS

 

Because remote metered billing isn’t widely available, the ability to offer this money-saving option to customers gives you a big competitive advantage over other propane marketers. Metered billing is attractive to customers because it delivers:

Photo: One-Tank

ADD ONE-TANK TO YOUR ARSENAL TODAY!

Want to learn more? We would love to speak with you! Schedule a demo with us today!

One-Tank’s monitoring and metering systems are affordable, reliable, and profitable. Reserve yours today at www.one-tank.com.

 


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This page was produced by North Coast Media’s content marketing staff in collaboration with One-Tank. NCM Content Marketing connects marketers to audiences and delivers industry trends, business tips and product information. The LP Gas editorial staff did not create this content.