In this guide 6 sections
Trips go wrong in three places: the loading slip at the mine, the diesel entry at the pump and the weighment at the destination. Each is written by a different person on a different sheet. Reconcile them trip by trip, then compare diesel issued with diesel earned by trips actually run.
Three papers, three authors, one trip
A coal truck leaves a colliery siding near Korba with a loading slip from the mine weighbridge. Somewhere on the road the driver takes diesel on a credit slip. At the power plant or washery gate, a third weighbridge prints a different figure.
The fleet office then receives three bundles of paper, often days apart. Someone ties them together by vehicle number and date, and that is where the guessing starts.
None of the three people involved is careless. They simply never see each other’s sheet.
Where the loading slip goes wrong
The loading figure is the base for freight billing, so errors here travel furthest. Common faults are a slip photographed instead of filed, a vehicle number that differs by one character, and a second loading of the same truck on the same day.
Check each slip for the colliery, the grade, the gross, the tare and the time. A turnaround that looks too short for the distance usually means a slip was reused or a trip was split on paper.
Treat the trip as one record that opens at loading. The slip is attached on day one and not chased at month-end.
- Slip number missing from the trip sheet
- Same vehicle loaded twice in a shift
- Tare differing from the last five trips
- Grade or colliery name written loosely
Where the diesel entry goes wrong
Diesel is the largest leak because a pump slip rarely names a trip. A driver fills at a roadside pump, at the depot tank or on a credit account, and the litres land in the vehicle ledger by date.
Look for fills that happen where the truck could not have been. A fill at Raigarh on a day the loading slip says Korba deserves a question. Also watch tank capacity: a fill larger than the tank, or a fill when the gauge was nearly full, is suspect.
Give every fill a trip number, a vehicle, an odometer reading and a payer. Pump slips without a trip number go into a held list, not into the books.
Where the weighment goes wrong
The destination weighbridge belongs to the buyer, so its number can be lower than yours. Part of the difference is real: spillage, moisture and pilferage on the road. Part is a different scale with a different calibration.
Record the loading weight, the receipt weight and the gap in tonnes for every trip. Then rank vehicles and drivers by average gap. One truck that always loses more than its peers is a better lead than a monthly total.
A sudden jump on one route points to a calibration change at either end.
The monthly check that exposes the gap
For each vehicle, take trips actually run, multiply by the route distance and the vehicle’s usual litres for that load, and call the result diesel earned. Put diesel issued beside it. The difference is the number to chase.
Sort vehicles by that difference. The top few explain most of the leak, and they are usually the ones with missing trip numbers on pump slips.
Run it before you pay the pump account. Doing so once will show you which sheet to fix first.
- Trips run per vehicle with route distance
- Litres issued by pump, depot and credit account
- Diesel earned from the vehicle’s own benchmark
- Loading to receipt gap in tonnes
Monthly trip, diesel and weighment check
Single sheet, a row per vehicle. Columns cover trips run, loading tonnes, receipt tonnes, tonnes lost, litres issued, litres earned and the difference. Two blank columns record the cause found and who followed it up. A footer lists pump slips without a trip number.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
How do we set a diesel benchmark for each truck?
Use the vehicle’s own history on a clean route with a full load. Take the median of several trips, then adjust for hills, queues and idling at the siding.
Why does the receipt weight differ from the loading weight?
Some loss is real, such as moisture and spillage. The rest comes from different scales. Tracking the gap per vehicle separates genuine loss from calibration differences.
Can pump slips be tied to trips automatically?
Yes, if the fill is entered against an open trip with an odometer reading. Fuel cards or pump software that exports a file by vehicle make this faster.
What should we do with unmatched diesel slips?
Hold them in a list until the driver or supervisor names the trip. Pay the pump account only for matched slips and review the held list weekly.