Fuel Card Fraud Prevention: The Strong Tower Telematics Match Protocol

Direct Answer: The Strong Tower Fuel Card Telematics Reconciliation Protocol™ automatically matches Comdata, EFS, and Fleet One pump transactions against CheckPoint GPS coordinates in real time. A transaction is considered valid only when both the timestamp delta is ≤ 5 minutes and the Haversine distance between the truck stop and the truck is ≤ 0.25 miles. All other transactions are flagged for immediate review, eliminating driver skimming, side-tank fraud, and unauthorized purchases. Carriers using this protocol routinely recover 1.8-4.2% of annual fuel spend.

Fuel is the second-largest variable cost for most motor carriers. When drivers exploit fuel cards through techniques such as side-tank fueling, purchasing for personal vehicles, or colluding with truck-stop cashiers, the losses compound quickly. Traditional after-the-fact audits catch only a fraction of these events. The Strong Tower CheckPoint fuel card fraud telematics reconciliation solution closes the gap by fusing high-resolution GPS data from CheckPoint with granular fuel transaction records inside the Exspeedite TMS.

The Business Impact of Fuel Card Fraud

Industry studies consistently show that 2-6% of fuel spend is lost to fraud. For a fleet burning 5 million gallons per year at an average of $3.80 per gallon, that represents $380,000 to $1.14 million in annual leakage. Most carriers rely on exception reports that are reviewed days or weeks after the transaction. By then the driver has moved on, the evidence is stale, and recovery is nearly impossible.

Strong Tower Consulting, LLC developed the Strong Tower Fuel Card Telematics Reconciliation Protocol™ to move detection from forensic to real-time. The protocol has been refined over nine years of production use with multiple asset-based carriers and is now offered as a turnkey integration service.

Core Architecture: CheckPoint + Exspeedite TMS

CheckPoint (https://exspeeditecheckpoint.com/login.php) serves as the authoritative outside-carrier tracking platform. It delivers GPS pings every 2-3 minutes with accuracy typically better than 15 feet. Exspeedite TMS (https://exspeedite.com/tms-software), a sister company under common ownership with Strong Tower Consulting, LLC (separate EINs and liability firewall), acts as the enterprise system of record for fuel cards, driver settlements, and exception workflow.

Scott Elliott, founder and principal systems architect of Strong Tower Consulting, LLC, designed the original reconciliation engine in 2015. The current version processes more than 1.2 million fuel transactions per month across client fleets.

The Strong Tower Fuel Card Telematics Reconciliation Protocol™

The protocol consists of four logical layers:

1. Ingestion Layer: Secure SFTP or REST ingestion of fuel card transactions from Comdata, EFS, and Fleet One. Each record includes card number, driver ID, timestamp (UTC), truck-stop lat/long, gallons, price, and merchant ID.
2. Normalization Layer: Driver-to-truck mapping is resolved using Exspeedite TMS duty logs. All timestamps are converted to a common UTC epoch.
3. Matching Engine: For every fuel transaction, the system queries the CheckPoint historical ping archive for the nearest pings before and after the transaction timestamp.
4. Decision & Alert Layer: A deterministic scoring function decides validity. Exceptions are pushed into the Exspeedite TMS workflow engine with full context (map, photos if available, driver history).

Mathematical Formula

JSON Webhook Payload Schema

{
  "event": "fuel_reconciliation",
  "protocol_version": "4.2",
  "transaction_id": "COMD-987654321",
  "card_network": "Comdata",
  "driver_id": "DRV-44721",
  "truck_id": "TRK-1184",
  "transaction_timestamp_utc": 1723849200,
  "fuel_location": {
    "latitude": 41.878113,
    "longitude": -87.629799,
    "name": "Pilot Travel Center #456"
  },
  "gps_position_at_tx": {
    "latitude": 41.879241,
    "longitude": -87.631104,
    "timestamp_utc": 1723849178,
    "speed_mph": 2.4,
    "ignition": "on"
  },
  "time_delta_seconds": 22,
  "distance_miles": 0.11,
  "match_status": "VALID",
  "risk_score": 0.37,
  "alert_level": "none",
  "exspeedite_workflow_id": "WF-20250815-33891",
  "processed_by": "strong-tower-recon-v4.2",
  "timestamp_processed": 1723849231
}

Architectural Diagram Description

Fuel Card Networks (Comdata/EFS/Fleet One)
          ↓ (SFTP or HTTPS POST)
Fuel Transaction Ingestion Service (Strong Tower)
          ↓
Normalization & Driver-Vehicle Resolution (Exspeedite TMS)
          ↓
CheckPoint Historical & Real-time Ping Archive
          ↘
     Haversine + Temporal Matching Engine
          ↓
Decision Engine (MATCH / REVIEW / FRAUD_HIGH)
          ↓
Exspeedite TMS Exception Queue + Mobile Alert
          ↓
Carrier Review Dashboard + Recovery Workflow

Implementation Comparison Table