Keeping rural contractors moving with Fern Energy

Contractors are not your average rural fuel user, so they’re a specialist customer group for Fern Energy, a leading provider of fuel solutions for New Zealand’s rural sector.

“Rural contractors can have very high seasonal fuel use,” says Fern Chief Sales Officer, Ryan McLaren. “With a decent spell of fine weather at a busy time of the year, their fuel use can go through the roof and their operations are completely dependent on the availability of fuel.

“We use tank monitoring telemetry to closely watch their fuel usage in the peak season, nimble delivery scheduling and we have a fleet of modern, reliable trucks to keep our rural contractors fuelled up.”

Ryan noted that the mobile nature of a rural contractor’s operations mean that fuel might be required in remote corners of a province. “We partner closely with them, understand their requirements and make sure they’re set with trailer tanks to finish the job.”

Fern has more rural fuel specialists out in the field than any of its competitors. “Our team build the rapport with their contracting customers and go out of their way to ensure they always have fuel. Service is number one with our customers, but they’re often looking for advice on fuel storage solutions, tank maintenance, or support with health and safety compliance or even excise tax refunds as an example. Having boots on the ground means we’re able to provide that level of support.”

As well as ensuring a dependable, competitively priced bulk fuel supply, Fern also provides oil and lubricants and fuel cards for discounts at the pump. Ryan says that being ‘a relationship business’ Fern staff enjoy being part of the rural communities where they live and work. “We love to take our BBQ trailers to rural events or fire them up for a work shout to feed a rural contractor’s team.”

Rural contractors are a significant contributor to Fern’s flagship rural sponsorship programme, Fuel for Schools, which provides almost half a million dollars of resources to rural New Zealand schools every year. With Fuel for Schools, for every 100 litres of fuel a customer orders Fern contributes 50 cents to a participating school of their choice. When a school’s tally reaches $1000 they can order technology, sports, musical and environmental packages.

Among the 700 participating schools, is the small Windwhistle Primary School at Rakaia Gorge, with a roll of less than 30 students. “Seventeen local customers of ours support our Fuel for Schools programme at Windwhistle, and we’ve been able to provide the school with close to $20,000 of resources. A couple of local rural contractors of ours, who have significant fuel use, are making a real difference to Windwhistle School’s tally.”

Windwhistle Principal Bronwen Seaward describes Fuel for Schools as essential for small schools like there’s. “We use the funding for digital resources like Chromebooks and iPads but also for sports goods for our outdoor education programme because kids up here are real outdoors kids who love getting out there and playing with the fun things.”