The challenge
This leading national fuel distributor with a network of card lock fuel sites across the United States sought to better understand the performance of its commercial fueling network, and specifically where card lock locations might lift site performance. With many of its sites operating under different brands and with diverse regional characteristics, the company aimed to gain a clearer view of what drives performance, identify underperforming units, and uncover opportunities for future expansion.
The business was particularly focused on a subset of commercial card lock locations with a need to evaluate historical performance, understand competitive dynamics, and model new growth scenarios. The challenge lay in blending performance data, business customer profiles, and regional differences into a unified strategy to support sustainable growth.
The solution
The fuel distributor engaged Kalibrate to deliver a comprehensive evaluation of its card lock business and to develop a forecasting model tailored to its network. The project combined the Kalibrate Location Intelligence platform (KLI) with professional services to create a robust framework for both performance analysis and opportunity identification.
The scope included:
- Unit performance analysis, including maturity, customer profile, urbanicity, and competitive context.
- Forecasting model development, analyzing key drivers such as road network characteristics, regional density, firmographics, and proximity to traffic generators like ports and distribution centers.
- Supportable unit analysis, identifying additional markets and locations that could sustain new card lock sites while minimizing cannibalization.
The analysis covered commercial fuel volumes for diesel and gasoline, and focused on diverse geographies including the Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and parts of the Western US.
Data inputs included historical sales volumes, customer transaction records, and location attributes. Kalibrate integrated this data into KLI, enabling in-platform scenario modeling and reporting.
With this data the client is empowered to optimize their cardlock operation, making smarter decisions about where to implement based on demand, and managing cannibalization to drive overall profitability.
The bottomline
Faced with the company’s need to effectively roll out a card lock system that maximizes profits while protecting capital deployment expenses, Kalibrate crafted and delivered a solution including a site forecasting model and supportable unit analysis, incorporating dynamic data encompassing competition, demand, traffic patterns, customer profiles, and other key variables.
Integrated into the Kalibrate Location Intelligence (KLI) platform, the solution enables real-time scenario modeling and performance evaluation. With this data, the client is empowered to optimize their card lock operation, and make smarter decisions about where to implement based on demand, and managing cannibalization to drive overall profitability.
The result is a data-driven growth strategy tailored to high-potential markets across their key US regions.
