Cardlock fuel cards (4Refuel, Husky, NorthStar, Pioneer, and similar networks) are genuinely cheaper per litre than retail gas cards — but for most Ontario fleets running 10 or more vehicles, the all-in cost is still 30 to 45 percent higher than mobile fuel delivery once you count out-of-route mileage, driver time at the cardlock, and card-program management overhead. A typical 15-vehicle Ontario fleet on cardlock spends roughly $72,000 per year all-in. The same fleet on mobile delivery spends roughly $50,000 to $55,000. This post explains why cardlock pricing looks better than it actually is, breaks down the three hidden cost lines, and gives you a fillable ROI worksheet to run the math against your own numbers.
Cardlock is a closed-network commercial fueling system. Drivers fuel at member-only stations using a fleet-issued card and PIN, and the fleet gets billed monthly at a contracted per-litre rate. Major Ontario networks include 4Refuel, Husky / Cenex, Pioneer Energy, NorthStar (Certas), and the Petro-Pass network.
The economics work because the network strips out two retail layers: there is no convenience store, no point-of-sale staff, and no consumer-facing brand premium. Pricing is wholesale-plus — typically the Ontario rack price for diesel or gasoline plus a cardlock margin in the range of 5 to 15 cents per litre, with volume contracts pulling the margin down for larger fleets.
For a fleet currently using retail gas cards (Esso Business, Shell Fleet, Petro Points), switching to cardlock usually delivers a real and immediate per-litre savings of 15 to 25 cents per litre at the pump. That is genuine money, and it is why cardlock has been the dominant fleet-fueling model in Ontario for decades.
The problem is not that cardlock is expensive at the pump. The problem is what it costs everywhere else.
Cardlock invoices show one number: per-litre pump price × litres dispensed. That number is often the only fuel cost a fleet manager sees on a monthly P&L line.
What the invoice does not show:
These four costs are 100 percent attributable to the cardlock workflow. They just live in different line items on the P&L (payroll, vehicle maintenance, admin overhead) and almost never get aggregated against the fuel report.
When you do aggregate them, the picture changes materially.
There are fewer than 200 cardlock stations in Ontario across all major networks combined. By comparison, there are roughly 3,000 retail gas stations. Cardlock locations cluster on highway corridors and in industrial parks. They almost never sit on a route between a residential service call and the next one.
The result: every cardlock fill adds 5 to 15 km of out-of-route mileage for a typical service-trade or last-mile fleet. Multiplied across 2 to 3 fills per vehicle per week, that is 500 to 2,000 unbilled kilometres per vehicle per year at a combined fuel-and-wear cost of roughly $0.55 to $0.75 per kilometre — call it $300 to $1,500 per vehicle per year in pure detour cost.
A cardlock fill takes less time than a retail gas-station fill (no inside-store loyalty stop) but more than zero. Typical timing: 10 to 20 minutes per fill including the detour each way. At 2 to 3 fills per week per vehicle and a loaded driver labour cost of $30 per hour:
Every fleet card program needs somebody to:
For a fleet running 15 to 50 cards, that is typically half a day to a full day per month of bookkeeper or fleet admin time, or $1,500 to $3,000 per year in dedicated overhead — before you count the cost of an actual fraud event.
| Cost Line | Annual Estimate |
|---|---|
| Fuel cost (36,000 L × $1.45/L) | $52,200 |
| Out-of-route fuel + wear ($600/vehicle × 15) | $9,000 |
| Driver time on cardlock fills (avg 33 hrs/vehicle × $30 × 15) | $14,850 |
| Card management overhead | $2,000 |
| Lost productivity / fraud reserve (industry estimate 0.5%) | $300 |
| Total annual all-in | ~$78,350 |
| All-in cost per litre | ~$2.18/L |
The pump-side per-litre rate is $1.45. The actual per-litre cost to the business is $2.18. That is a 50% delta hiding in plain sight on the P&L.
The swap is mechanically straightforward. The same 15-vehicle fleet, on mobile fuel delivery:
The mechanic, end-to-end:
Step 1: Map your yard. A delivery operator surveys your yard, your fleet composition, and your shift schedule. You agree on a delivery window (overnight, pre-dawn, between shifts, or weekend depending on your operation).
Step 2: Recurring on-site delivery. TSSA and TDG certified delivery technicians fuel every vehicle in place during the agreed window. No detour, no driver time, no PIN.
Step 3: One report. Every fill is logged by VIN, fuel grade, litre count, and timestamp. One monthly invoice. Cost-coding by department, route, or job number is supported.
For most Ontario fleets, the full transition off cardlock takes 30 to 60 days, with the option to keep a small card program for the 5% of fueling that genuinely happens out-of-area.
Use the worksheet below to run the math against your fleet. You will need your last 12 months of cardlock invoices and a rough estimate of your driver loaded labour cost.
| Input | Your Number |
|---|---|
| Fleet size (vehicles) | _____ |
| Annual fuel consumption (litres) | _____ |
| Average fills per vehicle per week | _____ |
| Average minutes per cardlock fill (incl. detour) | _____ |
| Loaded driver labour cost ($/hour) | _____ |
| Current cardlock per-litre cost ($/L) | _____ |
| Mobile delivery per-litre cost (from quote) | _____ |
Annual cardlock cost − Annual mobile cost = Annual savings
For a typical 15-vehicle Ontario fleet, the answer falls in the $20,000 to $28,000 range. For a 30-vehicle fleet, it roughly doubles. For a 50+ vehicle operation, it is usually large enough to justify the conversation by itself.
Mobile fuel delivery is not the right answer for every fleet. Cardlock continues to win on:
For everyone else — service trades, last-mile, municipal, construction support, dealership fleets, and the long tail of regional Ontario operators — the math points in the same direction.
A better way to get fuel.
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