Past Graduates:
Hess Corporation
High Plains Bioenergy
HRI, Inc.
Husky Marketing and Supply Company
Ilderton Oil Co.
Independence Biofuels
International Lease Consultants
InterState Oil Co.
Jebro
Key Energy
Knight Transportation
Kroger Company
Kwik Pik Food Stores
Liberty Petroleum Distributors
Little Field Oil Company
Lubrizol Corporation
Lyondell Chemical
Michigan Petroleum Technologies
Mid Atlantic Petroleum Properties, LLC
Motiva/Shell
Morgan Corp.
NACS
National Energy Systems Company
Nevada State Purchasing
North Star Gas LLC
Oftedal Construction
Omya Industries Inc.
O’Rourke Petroleum
Pacific Coast Marine Fuels
Performance Advisors, LLC
PFC Energy
Pride Convenience
Quality Fuels, Inc.
Quick Chek
Redwood Coast Petroleum
Reisner Distributor, Inc.
Reyes Holdings LLC
Ritter Oil Company
Shell Oil
Somerset Refinery
Southern Loggers Cooperative
Sunoco
Tabasco Group
TMGroup
Transport America
Trident Seafoods Corp.
Unified Grocers
Union Pacific Railroad
United Energy Distributors, Inc.
United States Postal Service
Valero
Valley Wide Coop
Victron Energy
Vipergas LLC
WinCo Foods
Wright Petroleum
Young Oil Company, Inc.
YRC Worldwide
Z-1 Express
Day Two, Tuesday, June 8, 2010
8:00 – 9:00 a.m.
Bonus Breakfast Session: Using Technology
to Buy Faster and Cheaper
(sponsored by Axxis Software)
As you develop your fuel buying program, one of the biggest challenges can be in the way you internally gather prices. Pulling prices from the web, email, or fax leaves you vulnerable to making errors and missing price moves – especially when markets are moving fast. You’ll learn how marketers and end-users use the latest technology to help them gather prices more efficiently, buy better and ultimately reduce their net buying cost.
Basic Buying Concepts Workshop:
Creating and Implementing a Successful Fuel Buying Plan
For the next four sessions, we will conduct two case studies that will focus intensely on creating a fuel buying plan for two very different fuel buyers – Scott Howard, Inc., a manufacturing company that purchases approximately 20 million gallons of fuel annually, and Skyline, Inc., a jobber that sells more than 300 million gallons per year.
Both companies face a multitude of challenges. For Scott Howard, Inc., the biggest challenge is to create a basic buying program that will keep trucks moving and not bust its fuel budget in this era of extreme volatility. For Skyline, the challenge is to leverage the large amounts of fuel that it purchases through various buying methods – branded, unbranded, spot, and some basic hedging – in order to control its huge fuel costs.
9:00 – 9:45 a.m.
Part One: Choosing a Supplier
Here we take step one – choosing a supplier. You’ll learn:
- How to choose which rack market(s) you need to designate for supply.
- Alternate rack supply points and how to determine if they are available to you.
- How to contact a supplier – where you get contact names and how you know that you’re talking to the right person.
- Is cheaper better?
- How to take advantage of ‘arbs’ between the markets.
- What your negotiating strengths and weaknesses are.
9:45 – 10:30 a.m.
Part Two: Understanding and Choosing A Rack Benchmark
Now that Scott Howard, Inc. has chosen a supplier(s), it’s time to decide on a buying strategy based on using a rack benchmark. The choices of which benchmark to use are numerous, and a bad decision can have very serious ramifications for the company’s fuel budget. Here you’ll learn:
- How to use historical data strips to compare benchmark options.
- What benchmark options are available and if they apply to all fuels.
- The major differences between morning vs. closing and daily vs. weekly benchmarks.
- How floaters and data strips work.
- Branded vs. unbranded benchmarks.
- How to handle pricing disputes.
10:30 – 11:00 a.m.
Refreshment Break
11:00 – 11:45 a.m.
Part Three: Understanding Spot Benchmarks
Both of our companies need to consider adding spot/bulk purchases to their fuel buying portfolios. However, spot buying is very complicated. Here you’ll learn:
- Who buys actual spot/bulk quantities.
- What the advantages and pitfalls are of buying ‘rack’ on a ‘spot’ benchmark.
- How to determine which spot market supplies your area and whether you should use alternate spot markets as a reference.
- Brokers vs. traders – the major differences.
- What you need to know about pipelines and storage to use spot benchmarks more effectively.
- Date of lifting vs. three- and five-day ‘data strips.’
11:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Part Four: A Fuel Buying Scorecard
We’ll focus on how jobbers buy, and the unique challenges and risks that affect the way they do business and how they price fuel to resellers.
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Networking Luncheon
1:30 – 2:15 p.m.
Rack Supply Contracts – What You Need to Know
One of the most critical parts of any fuel buying plan is having a contract that works for you and your supplier. There are many key things that you need to be aware of in negotiating a supply contract. You’ll learn the key do’s and don’ts involved in creating and executing supply contracts and what you need to know both as a buyer AND a seller/reseller.
2:15 – 3:15 p.m.
Introduction to Hedging/Risk Management
As you complete your fuel buying program, you have to understand where your business is most vulnerable to spikes in the market. Is it your fuel budget or is it your retail margins? More and more fuel buyers are moving toward risk management, or hedging strategies, to help them control costs. In this session, we’ll give simple, easy to understand explanations of:
- Hedging vs. speculating – what you need to understand.
- Hedging: what it is, and how it works.
- What the NYMEX has to do with hedging.
- Hedges for end-users, retailers and jobbers, based on some simple examples.
- Caps, collars, over-the-counter swaps and forward deals – what you need to know.
- Whether you should hedge.
3:15 p.m.
Final Q&A / Adjourn