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In industries that rely on fuel storage and distribution, accurate tank gauging is essential for operational efficiency, safety, and compliance. Traditionally, businesses have used manual tank gauging. However, with advancements in technology, Automatic tank gauging (ATG) systems are becoming the preferred choice. If your company still depends on manual methods, here’s why it’s time to consider an upgrade.  

Understanding Manual and Automatic Tank Gauging

Manual tank gauging involves physically measuring fuel levels using a dipstick or sounding tape. While it may seem simple, it’s prone to human error, time-consuming, and requires manual record-keeping.  

On the other hand, automatic tank gauging systems utilize sensors and digital monitoring to provide real-time data on fuel levels, temperature, and potential leaks. They work with software to automate reporting and instantly alert operators to any discrepancies. 

Manual vs. Automatic Tank Gauging

Accuracy and Reliability

Manual readings are often affected by human error, such as misreading measurements or inconsistent recording practices. Meanwhile, ATG systems eliminate these inaccuracies by providing precise, automated readings that ensure fuel levels are monitored with high reliability.  

Time and Labor Efficiency

Manual gauging requires employees to physically check each tank, which can be labor-intensive and time-consuming. ATG systems, alternatively,  automate the process, freeing up manpower for more critical tasks and reducing the risk of operational delays.  

Safety and Compliance

Handling fuel manually increases exposure to hazardous materials, which poses health and safety risks. On the contrary,  automatic tank gauging minimizes the need for direct contact, enhancing workplace safety. Additionally, regulatory bodies require accurate fuel monitoring, and automatic systems help businesses stay compliant by providing real-time data logs and automated reports.  

Leak Detection and Environmental Protection

Undetected fuel leaks can lead to environmental hazards and financial losses. Manual gauging makes it difficult to identify small leaks promptly. Automatic tank gauging systems, in contrast, include leak detection features, ensuring early warnings that help prevent contamination and costly cleanups.  

Cost Savings in the Long Run

While manual gauging may appear cost-effective initially, the expenses associated with human errors, labor costs, and potential fuel losses add up over time. Automatic tank gauging systems offer long-term savings by reducing discrepancies, preventing fuel theft, and optimizing inventory management.  

Why Now Is the Right Time to Upgrade

As businesses strive for greater efficiency and accuracy, switching to an automatic tank gauging system is a smart investment. With automated tracking, real-time alerts, and enhanced security, companies can improve operational efficiency, reduce risks, and stay ahead of regulatory requirements.

Why Choose TOIC Solutions?

Trans-Overseas Industrial Corporation (TOIC) Solutions, established in 1976, has been the trusted partner for fuel dispensers, fuel pumps, and service station equipment, and the gas station business in the Philippines. As a leading distributor of advanced fueling technology, we provide reliable, efficient, and durable solutions that enhance the performance of your fueling operations.

With years of expertise and strong partnerships with multinational corporations, TOIC delivers top-quality products, including automatic tank gauging, tank calibration, wetstock management, and POS service station systems, and tank testing. If you’re looking to upgrade your fueling system, reduce operational costs, and ensure precision in every transaction, TOIC Solutions is the name to trust. Talk to us!

Selecting the right fuel dispenser is crucial for maximizing efficiency, profitability, and customer satisfaction at your fueling station. To ensure that your business operates smoothly and effectively, it’s essential to approach this decision with careful consideration. When evaluating fuel dispensers, it’s essential to consider models that offer a balance of efficiency, security, and customer experience.

Key Considerations for Choosing a Fuel Dispenser

1. Flow Rate: High flow rates suit high-volume stations, while lower rates suit smaller ones. Ensure the dispenser can handle the required throughput efficiently.
2. Fuel Compatibility: Ensure compatibility with various fuel types, including gasoline, diesel, and biofuels. This is crucial for stations offering multiple fuel options.
3. Safety Features: Essential features include automatic shut-off and grounding. Robust security measures are also important to prevent fraud and tampering.
4. Brand Reputation and Customer Support: Choose a reputable manufacturer with reliable products and excellent support. This ensures you receive quality equipment and timely assistance when needed.
5. Maintenance Requirements: Regular maintenance is necessary. Opt for dispensers with designs that minimize maintenance needs, such as easy-to-clean surfaces.
6. Environmental and Operational Durability: Consider dispensers that withstand extreme weather conditions and high traffic volumes, ensuring minimal downtime and maintenance.
7. Technological Advancements: Opt for dispensers with advanced features like real-time monitoring and streamlined calibration to reduce operational disruptions.
8. Security and Reliability: Ensure robust security measures, such as tamper-proof designs and encrypted communication protocols, to protect against fraud.

By considering these factors, businesses can select a dispenser that meets current needs and prepares them for future challenges. One such dispenser that stands out for its future-ready design and innovative features is the Latitude Fuel Dispenser.

The Latitude Fuel Dispenser: A Future-Ready Solution

The Latitude Fuel Dispenser by Gilbarco Veeder-Root offers a comprehensive suite of features that enhance efficiency, security, and customer experience.

• Enhanced Security: Features include eLock asset protection and secure pulser design.
• PowerSafe Electronics: Engineered to tolerate harsh voltage fluctuations.
• Practical Design: Reduces dust accumulation and maintenance needs.
• EasyView Display: Increases customer trust with visible digital numbering.
• Ergonomics and Usability: User interface components are positioned at ergonomic heights.
• Streamlined Calibration: Simplified procedures with secure pulser switches.

Conclusion

Choosing the right fuel dispenser is important for efficiency and profitability. The Latitude Fuel Dispenser is an excellent choice for businesses seeking to enhance customer experience and operational efficiency. For businesses in the Philippines, TOIC Solutions provides access to high-quality fuel dispensers and integrated solutions. By integrating the Latitude dispenser, businesses can ensure they are well-equipped to meet the demands of the fuel retail industry.

Why Choose TOIC Solutions?

Trans-Overseas Industrial Corporation (TOIC) Solutions, established in 1976, has been the trusted partner for fuel dispensers, fuel pumps, and service station equipment, and the gas station business in the Philippines. As a leading distributor of advanced fueling technology, we provide reliable, efficient, and durable solutions that enhance the performance of your fueling operations.

With years of expertise and strong partnerships with multinational corporations, TOIC delivers top-quality products, including automatic tank gauging, tank calibration, wetstock management, and POS service station systems, and tank testing. If you’re looking to upgrade your fueling system, reduce operational costs, and ensure precision in every transaction, TOIC Solutions is the name to trust. Talk to us!

Relying on manual gauge stick or dipstick measurements for wet stock inventory data introduces inaccuracy into your record-keeping and are potentially hazardous to employees.

Faulty Measurement Processes

With daily deliveries and frequent dispensing activity, the fuel level within the tank is constantly changing. Ripples in the tank from deliveries and tank tilt significantly limit the reliability of stick measurements. With so much going on it can be easy to rush measurements, misread the dipstick, or transpose data incorrectly, introducing errors because of the manual process for measurement.

Tank Chart Errors

A stick reading is only useful if it is being compared to an accurate tank chart. With no way to calibrate the measurements and systematically compare them to previous data, there are few options for ensuring accuracy. While tank charts do not cause a loss of fuel, an inaccurate tank chart will affect inventory and delivery data collected and could contribute to masking actual fuel losses. In fact, many discrepancies in fuel recording and variance reporting are the result of poor data capture because tank charts do not accurately represent how fuel is situated in the tank.

Manual Data Handling

Manual dipstick measurements also lead to manual data handling which introduces transposing errors and makes it difficult to compare or compile data across multiple fuel sites. In many cases, owners with multiple sites end up working in large spreadsheets and calling around to all their sites for point in time measurements that are then subject to faulty manual measurements. The process compounds the opportunity for errors and masks more serious fuel variance issues.

Employee Safety Concerns

When employees open the sump to take measurements, they are repeatedly exposed to harmful fuel vapors that can impact their health over time. The quiet, less busy, times on the site that are best for measuring tank volumes are frequently at night or early in the morning when visibility is low. This adds to the likelihood of a mis-read measurement, but also presents a safety concern that employees may not be visible to drivers on the forecourt. Depending on the size and depth of the sump there is also a safety concern with leaning directly over the open sump to take the measurement from an open port, increasing the likelihood that an employee could fall into the sump space.

Kick-off your gasoline station operations this 2021. Visit our website at www.toicsolutions.com to learn more!

The TLS Express Inventory Solution retrofits into existing sites and automates your wet stock inventory management process, eliminating paperwork, emails, and text messages. It gives you real-time visibility to fuel inventory from anywhere.

When thinking about adding an automatic tank gauge or ATG to your fuel site, you should take into account the following considerations.

Are you looking to avoid fuel stock-outs?

Fuel stock-outs stop operations at the site and cost you customers and in-store traffic, causing a loss of revenue that cannot be recovered. Adding an ATG to your fueling site can maximize your productivity by allowing you to better predict your fuel usage and stay ahead of costly fuel stock-outs.

Do you want details about your wet stock inventory variance?

A fuel variance is the difference between the amount of fuel available in a tank at any given time, according to recorded deliveries and sales, and the actual amount of fuel available in the tank. Fuel variances can be positive or negative. Whether through delivery discrepancy, inaccurate manual dipstick measurements, theft, or storage tank leaks, fuel variances could be costing your business and inaccurate inventory tracking could be masking a more serious issue.

Do you want peace of mind about your tank integrity?

Veeder-Root ATG systems include compliance and testing features that monitor for, and detect, leaks within your fueling system. For most fuel sites, the gas in the tank is the most expensive asset on site. Storage tank leaks are not just bad for the environment and community, they are costly for owners.

Are you looking to prevent overfills?

Tank overfills are detrimental to site safety, but the potential for an overfill event can be easily mitigated with an ATG. The TLS4B will display the ullage space (aka unfilled space) inside the tank so you can be sure the delivery will fit.

Would you like to accurately check site inventory levels remotely?

For many busy site owners, it can be hard to check in on the status of their business while they are off-site. Veeder-Root TLS4 Series automatic tank gauges are equipped to help owners access critical data while they are off-site using our free mobile phone and web-enabled applications. Easily access console data from anywhere at any time.

Add one of three of our Veeder-Root TLS Express Bundles to your fuel site and quickly and affordably automate your fuel management process.

We’ve entered a new year with new opportunities. This is a year for reinvention! And speaking of reinventing, gasoline stations are one of the fastest-growing businesses in terms of sales and fast pace opportunities for customers. And at the end of the day, refining the customer experience has become critical attention across all businesses especially in service-related industries.

For the longest time, the fuel and convenience store industry has become essential in how it wants to engage, interact, and transact with its customers or else fall to the wayside with the competition. A gasoline station provides a valuable opportunity that offers solutions to improve the overall customer experience and integrate innovative customer journeys. In this blog, we offer you four ways to reinvent your gasoline station through an elevated consumer experience.

Provide Overall Gasoline Pump Satisfaction

When entering a gasoline station, are your gasoline pump areas clean, free of litter and trash? Keeping your gasoline station trash-free gives your consumers the first impression that this is a gasoline station that is well maintained and well operated. 

Just as well, providing gasoline pump satisfaction is one of the first steps in the business-meets-customer relationship at your gasoline station. Top gasoline stations find themselves at the forefront of the list because they train their service station attendants in maintaining gasoline pump satisfaction. While there are days that it needs to be fixed by changing the filters, the nozzle, or other equipment, this also means that you have to upgrade your gasoline pumps and fuel dispensers every now and then. 

To know where to upgrade your fuel pumps and dispensers, TOIC Solutions offers the best equipment for gasoline pumps and fuel dispensers that will satisfy your operations and at the same time that applies a faster approach that appeals to your customer.

Convenience Store is your Destination

Having a gasoline station brings revenues but setting a convenience store next to your service station is an investment. When it comes to customer satisfaction, having a c-store would give your customers an excellent service experience. In the long run, aside from your gasoline station, your c-store should also be a destination and not a “pit stop”. It is a big game-changer when you streamline your in-store process and focus on your stock because it encourages your customers to come back for more and at the same time attract new customers who may just be passing by. 

Unified and Personalized Shopping Experience

Adapting technology across the customer journey will empower you to offer a more convincing and frictionless experience.  This can work better in your point of sale (POS) system, kiosks, self-checkout stations, and mobile commerce.

At your gasoline pumps and dispensers, you provide better ease and security of payments by offering cashless transactions and this will create a better shopping experience for your customers. This innovation has allowed more and more industries to create faster yet secured transactions. Expect digital technologies to improve retail experiences in the years to come. Make sure your operations don’t get left behind with the latest technology that helps consumers spend conveniently. 

Choices and Additional Services

To increase foot traffic to your gasoline station, provide needs that go beyond fueling. Offering services such as car wash, air, water, food courts, and more will get people to stop and spend more besides just filling up. Always be on the lookout for anything customers might need which may result in bigger revenue for your gasoline station. 

Reinventing your gasoline station would take a big risk but with proper research and customer satisfaction information, all can be done in the most possible way to increase revenue and attract more customers. Aside from knowing your customer’s needs, your needs should be taken into consideration also. And by needs, we meant your service station equipment such as gasoline pumps, fuel dispensers, underground tank maintenance, and many more.

Look no further than TOIC Solutions. As a reliable partner and supplier in the Petroleum industry, TOIC provides turn-key solutions for our clients from logistics, warehousing, delivery, installation, commissioning, and service of its equipment. We have products for gasoline pumps and fuel dispensers, Automatic Tank Gauge, convenience retailing, and more. And with services such as tank calibration and tank testing, your gasoline station needs are in one website. Contact us to learn more!

A lot of motor vehicle owners make use of gas, especially with logistics and transportation means. Because demand for fuel does not go away, gasoline stations are always a good business franchise or investment. 

Due to the high market barrier to entry as well as the high costs of capital, a franchise for gas stations is more appealing compared to starting one yourself. The best advantage that comes with franchised stations is because there is already name recognition, trademarks, franchise agreements,s and more. All future business ventures and investments always require due research and diligence before jumping right into it, making it important to check for the advantages and disadvantages. 

Being a franchisee entails different sets of rules and responsibilities. Similar to any franchise, there are some set factors to consider: 

• Terms of the franchise agreement 
• Any quotas or requirements for fuel sales 
• Ownership and maintenance of fuel tanks and pumps 

We have rounded up factors for you to consider before you become a franchisee of a gas station. 

How is the environmental history of the gasoline station? 

Environmental concerns are critical as any concerns such as environmental contamination discovered after the station is bought will require an expensive remedy that can shut down and potentially hurt future operations. Contamination is an issue that businesses must protect themselves from. 

Factors to be evaluated should include: 

• Laws about gas stations 
• The mandatory requirements for the tanks and other gas station equipment 
• Results of an environmental site assessment evaluating the history of the property 

Will you have a convenience store? 

The main product of course is the fuel but not so known to a vast majority of people, the margins on selling gas are low which means gas stations make money via other means. One of these is via the convenience store. This is the reason why convenience stores and gas stations often come in pairs together. Products from convenience stores such as soda, chips, candy, and cigarettes can bring in big revenue. 

Does the seller own gasoline pumps and tanks? 

These serve as the most important assets used in gasoline stations and are directly related to your operation. These are important investments for any gas station but it is not always the case that sellers of the gas station own the pumps and tanks. In some cases, it is owned by the national franchisor for the stations that are franchised or the owner of the property. The things you can consider could be: who owns the “pumps and tanks”, whether the sale includes the transfer of the ownership, and the repair history of pumps and tanks. Another similar thing you can look into is the terms of the property where the station is located when it is leased and what are the agreements to come out about this. 

Risks of a gasoline station investment 

All business ventures have their own share of risk. It is crucial to know this to know what you are getting yourself into as a way to properly mitigate the risks. For gas stations, they have their own distinct risks. Part of this is that the success of the business depends on the traffic. Knowing the long-term plans for the area where you want to open your station is one thing. Are their plans for commercial development? Is there going to be construction nearby? Long construction projects can hamper the traffic going to your station while commercial development of the area can prove to make your location more viable given its proximity to upcoming key areas. 

Quite possibly the most important part is having a business plan to come with your gas station purchase. This not only gives you a focus but also the right direction and makes the transition much easier. 

As a reliable partner and supplier in the Petroleum industry, TOIC provides turn-key solutions for our clients from logistics, warehousing, delivery, installation, commissioning, and service of its equipment. We have products for gasoline pumps and fuel dispensers, Automatic Tank Gauge, convenience retailing, and more. And with services such as tank calibration and tank testing, your gasoline station needs are in one website. Learn more about how gas stations work by checking out more of our blogs. TOIC Solutions is an expert when it comes to gas station solutions. Contact us now to learn more.

The new year has finally come! Many gas station owners are now indulging in retrospection and reevaluating what transpired the whole of 2020. New Year’s resolutions are the perfect opportunity for all of us to start making changes and progress.

Now is the perfect chance to sit down and prepare a list of resolutions that you want to change, make, and begin with. Having a resolution can help increase your profit line to lead your gas station business throughout the year. These are some resolutions to help grow your gas station business towards a successful 2021.

1.     EMV Compliance

For every gasoline station that is not compliant yet or started the process, this should be the top priority on your list this year! Many gas stations require equipment upgrades and there is a huge demand for technicians. Planning for EMV compliance is necessary as you don’t want to miss the deadline and face financial risk with the liability shift.

2.     Evaluate Your Services and Convenience Store

January will always be the best time to kick off the year with new exciting promotions and options for customers. Gather all the requests and rooms for improvement collated last year and assess your gas station business. Will they make any good changes? Do they make any financial sense? If yes, then proceed with the improvement as early as today.

Launching a new service or product can bring renewed customer’s interest and purchase. Think big and explore all-new ways for your station’s improvement. You may also market current products or services with a spin, adding new life to it. Give incentives to the car wash you already have or try putting “buy one, get one” punch cards for food or drinks if you are also operating the convenience store. 

3.     Fast Forecourt

One of the biggest complaints that customers have about gas stations is the gas flow.  Warm weather and cold weather certainly will spark this complaint, especially with the Philippines’ humidity. Also, any customer that’s in a hurry will immediately notice slow-flowing gas pumps or dispensers. 

Are your gas pumps running slow? If you are finding that your gas pumps and dispensers are running slow, then you will need to either find the problem or upgrade. Start with checking your filters as they are the most critical element when it comes to fuel flow. Changing them regularly and following strict routine maintenance goes a long way with keeping your gas pump flow at optimal speed. If this is not workable, and you have checked your nozzles, then it is time for you to look into getting new gasoline pumps and dispensers.

4.     Equipment Upgrades

Upgrading your equipment can make every task in the gas station easier and more efficient. It may also bring in new business and more loyal customers. 

Improving your point of sale (POS) system that will make your convenience store run faster and smoother is something that you may consider as well, in order to lessen the time in manually checking revenue and inventory. Upgrading your gas pumps and dispensers for modernization and branding may help give customers the impression that operations are running smoothly. 

TOIC has been successfully providing turn-key services and solutions for its clients and passing on savings from importation, logistics, warehousing, storage, and service. With the convenience and quality of providing products such as gasoline pumps and fuel dispensers and services of tank cleaning and tank calibration, TOIC Solutions has become a preferred supplier and partner of Petroleum companies in the Philippines.

Kick-off your gasoline station operations this 2021. Visit our website at www.toicsolutions.com to learn more!