U.S. on-highway diesel held at $6.382 per gallon for the week ending Sept. 28 — about 70% above the $3.754 averaged the same week a year earlier, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported. Geotab launched a telematics-gated fleet payment card on Thursday into that pricing environment, betting that pump-level authorization can recover dollars carriers currently leak at the island.

The Geotab Fleet Card, built with transportation payment company AtoB, links vehicle GPS and fuel-tank level to AtoB's payment platform and discount network. AtoB issues the card with its bank partners, supplies the discount network and backstops the card's fraud guarantee. Geotab integrates the product into its existing telematics platform.

What does the card actually gate at the pump?

The system locks the card until the driver unlocks it inside the Geotab Drive app while the truck is parked at the merchant. At the point of sale, the platform cross-checks three signals: vehicle GPS, merchant coordinates and the fuel level reported by the telematics unit. If they don't align, the transaction declines.

Drivers browse nearby stations and prices from the same app. Fleets layer spending controls by dollar amount, time frame, location and merchant category, and can use the card for maintenance, tolls, parking, towing and roadside assistance. Telematics-verified transactions on eligible accounts carry a fraud guarantee of up to $250,000, provided by AtoB.

How much money sits inside a single fill-up?

Geotab analyzed 419,000 diesel fill-ups across 660 U.S. fleets. Two numbers stand out:

• Two trucks fueling in the same town can see diesel price spreads of up to 77 cents per gallon — about $58 across a 75-gallon fill-up.
• For fleets with fewer than 100 vehicles, drivers chose the lowest-priced pump only about 17% of the time.

Geotab estimates the cheaper-station pick saves about $24 per fill-up, rounded from $23.55, or roughly 32 cents per gallon. Across an assumed 200 fill-ups a year, that is about $4,710 per truck.

"With fuel costs rising across the U.S., fleets need practical ways to reduce what they spend at the pump," Steven Berube, Geotab's vice president of sales, said in a statement.

How does the fraud math pencil out?

Geotab modeled a hypothetical 500-vehicle Class 8 fleet spending $31.3 million on fuel annually. Inputs: AAA's $6.41 per gallon (slightly above EIA's $6.382), 9,752 gallons per truck and a 7% assumed fraud rate — a Geotab estimate, not a measured industry number. Under those assumptions, unauthorized fuel purchases could run about $2.19 million a year for the single carrier.

Who's already in this lane?

The product lands between two rival releases. In July, WEX introduced SecureFuel, which combines fleet-card data with real-time vehicle information to block suspect purchases before they clear. Geotab counts WEX as a Premier Partner, and existing Geotab customers can pipe vehicle data into SecureFuel. In August, Samsara added its Fuel Command Center, integrating card controls with Coast and using vehicle location to deny charges when the assigned truck is not on site.

The Geotab Fleet Card is open to eligible U.S. fleets now.

For carriers, the near-term test is operational — does the locked-card workflow survive a long-haul driver's day and does the discount network cover the lanes they actually run.

For shippers paying fuel-indexed linehaul rates, every cent recovered at the pump trims the surcharge, and as long as on-highway diesel holds above $6 a gallon, telematics-tied payment products will keep multiplying.