The Non-Financial Ledger

This be a story about betrayal. Imagine you’re running a small trucking company, maybe a local plumbing service. Every dollar counts. A company called FleetCor comes to you with a promise: use our fuel cards and you’ll save money. You’ll have control. You can stop employees from buying anything but gas. It sounds like a lifeline.

So you sign up. The first few bills seem normal. Then the strange charges begin. An “Account Administration Fee” appears out of nowhere. A “Program Fee” for benefits you never asked for. You call, you complain, they might even waive one fee. The next month, a new, different fee appears in its place. You pay your bill on time, but they charge you a late fee anyway, claiming it takes them days to “process” the payment they received. You’re now paying fees on top of other fees.

“They told me to pay a day early, etc all types of things… Every month I got my statement I spent time on the phone due to interest and late fees charged although I had always paid the card off in full monthly.”

The promise of security shatters. An employee uses a “fuel-only” card to buy snacks, beer, whatever. You find out FleetCor knew this was possible. An internal document admitted the “fuel only” label was a “misnomer.” But you are on the hook for the charges. You are liable. The control they sold you was an illusion. The trust you placed in them was a tool for extraction.

Societal Impact Mapping

Economic Inequality

The FTC documents paint a clear picture of wealth transfer. FleetCor’s business model, as alleged, was designed to siphon capital directly from small and medium-sized businesses into the pockets of its executives and shareholders. These are the very companies that form the backbone of the American supply chain and local economies. While they were struggling with razor-thin margins, FleetCor was engineering new fees to “replace revenue shortfalls,” a directive that came straight from CEO Ronald Clarke.

The company specifically targeted industries like trucking. It even assessed “High Credit Risk Account Fees” to customers simply for operating in the transportation industry, the exact market FleetCor claims to serve. This is a predatory feedback loop: charge your primary customer base extra for being your primary customer base. This systemically disadvantages independent operators and funnels their hard-earned revenue upwards.

The Cost of Deception

Mapping The Deception: A Breakdown of FleetCor’s Hidden Fees

Legal Receipts

The Federal Trade Commission’s complaint is built on FleetCor’s own internal communications and the experiences of its customers. The company’s practices were not accidents; they were a deliberate strategy known at the highest levels.

The “Arbitrary Fees” Strategy

Unlike [our] Fuelman [card] we can’t just add arbitrary fees and run off all the accounts.

CEO Ronald Clarke on Customer Complaints

thx for the feedback. Not unexpected. Hang tough.

The “Fix The Rating” Directive

Here we go again! … fix the BBB rating ASAP…..just like we did last time. Pls advise what we can do to get at this.

On Re-Enrolling Customers Into Fees They Already Rejected

We are very concerned about attrition since they already asked us to remove the fees.

The Reality of “Fuel Only” Cards

[For some cards,] ‘fuel only’ is a misnomer. … [For other cards,] fuel only restrictions only work for getting the authorization and there is no restriction on what can be purchased or added to the transaction.