Frequently Asked Questions

Answers for your important fueling questions.

Why does the price of fuel vary if I call one day to the next?

The price of fuel can change up to six times per day.

Wild fluctuations have been occurring since January 2022 wherein the price has increased or decreased 15 to 30 cents several times a day.

We set our price to the consumer based on the price of the fuel we purchase plus a margin.

In other words, until our truck is empty, the price will stay the same.

This is how the price looks to you:

AAA Fuel Company is selling oil at $5.30/gal, while Sperr’s is selling it at $5.00/gal (or $5.60/gal).

This usually means that AAA Fuel Company purchased their oil before or after Sperr’s did—sometimes even a 20-minute difference can mean a vastly different price.

That’s why Sperr’s sells superior service.

From the person answering the phone to the field staff delivering you quality fuel and handling your HVAC needs.

We know you don’t want a surprise oil bill.

We monitor your fuel usage, the markets, and news from the industry.

We keep you in the loop and try to find the best price for you.

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Are you friends with other oil dealers?

We have been in the business for nearly 40 years and know the owners and staff of most of the other area fuel companies, especially the good ones.

Sperr’s does not take customers from other small outfits.

In fact, when we get calls from folks that are out of our service area or looking for a product we don’t supply, we send them along with a great referral to someone in our network.

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Why does Sperr’s schedule their HVAC service in the summer/early Fall?

We have a small staff that serves dual purposes to keep our overhead costs down.

The crew that delivers your heating oil in the winter is the same crew that services your heaters and A/C in the summer.

Temperatures must be at 75° to take accurate readings on your A/C’s refrigerant levels, so we schedule tune-ups in conjunction with heater cleanings from June through early September.

Once the fuel season starts, it’s difficult to juggle cleanouts with moving as much fuel as we do.

Keeping the same staff on full-time, year-round, is not a common thing in our industry.

Still, Sperr’s feels it is important to provide its customers with continuity in services and our employees with good earning potential.

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“Sperr’s Fuel and Heating is very dependable…very clean and very professional.”

-Jose G

Why is it so important to stay within the Net 10-day payment terms?

Like all other fuel companies, the suppliers of our products require Net 10-days on fuel purchases.

These purchases come out of our accounts after ten days, no exceptions.

With fuel costs being as expensive as ever, it is important for customers to stick to getting their payments in so we can pay our fuel bills.

Plain and simple, when small businesses can’t pay their bills or have too much money “on the street,” they quickly run out of options.

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What’s so great about automatic delivery?

Automatic delivery places the delivery schedule responsibility on your fuel provider and off of you.

Sperr’s calculates your estimated fuel usage based on:

The size of your home.
Your fuel usage history.
The daily temperatures that’s tracked year-round.

We schedule your deliveries based on this calculation of when you will need oil.

Automatic delivery is a win-win for us and you during these volatile market conditions.

This takes the onus off of you to remember to order oil along with the myriad of other to-dos on your list.

Here’s how:

Sperr’s saves you money by paying close attention to the markets, dips in oil prices, and other conditions each day to find the best price for its customers.
Automatic delivery customers are queued up each week, and fuel is delivered.
Once that truck is emptied, it’s back to the rack and usually a dramatic shift in price.

When you’re on automatic delivery, our staff monitors your fuel to get your house in line when fuel is the cheapest.

There are so many cases when a Will Call customer has called just a few days after a great price on fuel has been exhausted.

Had they been set up with automatic, their ticket would have been pulled for delivery.

We have saved folks $1+/gallon in the last few months with our methods.

Another way we save you money on automatic delivery is by not requiring a minimum gallon delivery.

This is because your house is routed in with others near you, so we aren’t running all over the County in trucks that only get 4-5mpg to make deliveries.

And when fuel prices dip, we can offer you savings by delivering smaller gallon drops.

When a typical Will Call customer calls and their tank is near empty, we require a 150-gallon minimum.

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“I know when I call, there’s always a person that understands what I need that’s going to pick up the phone. I know that they are always on top of my orders when I need them.”

– Marc B, Remote Operations (Events)

Why do your trucks move so slowly?

We love running into our customers and friends out on the roads around the Delaware County and Philadelphia area.

Some things to note about the big tankers:

We take a long time to get going. Especially when fully loaded. Our biggest truck weighs 54,000 lbs! We take our jobs of transporting hazardous materials very seriously, so we’re careful not to rush.
We don’t move very fast. Topping out at about 60-65 mph on the highways means we don’t keep up with the fast pace of highway traffic. Stay back from these trucks, as their visibility directly behind them is limited.
We take a long time to stop. Please don’t move in and out of traffic or stop suddenly in front of a big truck, tractor-trailer, or especially a HazMat truck (like Sperr’s Fuel’s trucks).
We stop and back in. At many of our customer locations, we have no way to turn around once we’re in the driveway, and there’s no safe way to back out into traffic. We also do this to get our staff off the street and out of harm’s way.