Doing Business At A Big Pumper

Integrating components in the forecourt

By Bob Danford

Big Pumper” is a term often heard throughout the petroleum industry to describe truck stops and travel centers as bastions of fuel volume. Ask any owner or manager of a truck stop or travel center what it is about their business that keeps them up at night, and they will undoubtedly mention the possibility of their station “going down.”

The fact is that Big Pumpers with all of their fueling points and high traffic will experience fuel flow obstacles at some point or another. Phone calls to the first-tier help desks often result in dispatching a fuel contractor. As time is of the essence when the contractor arrives, what is paramount is his or her knowledge of the forecourt and, in particular, the forecourt controller.

The high traffic, high fuel volume of a truck stop stresses the forecourt.

An often overlooked component of a site's architecture, the forecourt controller is used to integrate multiple devices manufactured for gas stations and convenience stores.

There are many components that fall under the forecourt umbrella, including the fueling dispensers and in-dispenser payment terminals, leak detection systems, car wash controller systems, electronic price signs and, in some cases, card processing networks. These devices connect individually to the controller, which is usually mounted on a wall or somewhere within the back office environment.

The decision to use a forecourt controller to tie these components together is critical to the overall operation of a station. Questions involving reliability, performance, technical support and the ability to further integrate other components in the future must be answered.

Third-Party Controller
Many truck stops and travel centers choose to use a third-party controller. This is a device that provides an interface able to support a variety of forecourt components due to the “open source” nature of the controller's software.

Forecourt devices present proprietary software and electrical interfaces, such as a current loop, all of which must be managed in a given transaction. For example, the ability to sell items at a dispenser payment terminal (DPT) such as a car wash also requires coordination between the other DPTs and other devices, including the car wash controller. The DPTs need to know what to display and when to display it. The fueling points need to know when to reset and fuel and whether or not the customer is using cash or credit. The point of sale (POS) needs to know when a transaction has been completed as well as the details of that transaction.

Truck stops and travel centers are high traffic, high fuel volume locations that place tremendous stress on the forecourt. Many of these sites are getting fuel deliveries almost hourly. With some gas stations using upward of 48 fueling points, one can only imagine the technical demands placed on the forecourt controller. Dispensers, dispenser payment terminals and island payment terminals require constant polling, which utilizes a lot of CPU resources and causes constant processor interruption.

Such management can be quite cumbersome on desktop-integrated controllers running Windows or similar operating systems because they simply cannot keep up with the functional demands of the hardware and software within the forecourt.

The task of managing the communication among these devices is handled more efficiently by the third-party controller because each device is connected to a separate port and polled accordingly via the controller's real time operating system (RTOS). Many POS integrated controllers utilize desktop operating systems that are easily taxed and often sluggish. With a third-party controller, the POS only interfaces to the controller itself as opposed to all of the components on the forecourt. This substantially eases the stress of those components on the POS, allowing it to focus more on the ever-increasing demands of today's hypermarket and c-store environment. This reduction in the number of functions integrated by the POS also simplifies, streamlines and speeds POS development efforts.

Unfortunately, though, problems will occur within the forecourt at some point. The fact that the devices generally connect to separate ports on the third-party controller makes troubleshooting much easier. A pump contractor or facilities manager may only need to swap out the communications card on a single port connected to a single device to bring the site back to normal operating conditions. Part of the simplicity here is due in part to service personnel only needing to be trained on one hardware platform.

Integration
The “big three” dispenser manufacturers all at one point or another offered integrated (non-third-party) controllers. This also meant, of course, that one was limited to using a specific dispenser model type and perhaps other forecourt devices provided by the dispenser manufacturer.

With many third-party controllers, customization is the key, particularly with regard to dispenser model types. With a third-party controller, one is not limited to any one dispenser make or model, which is advantageous to truck stops and travel centers that utilize products by more than one dispenser manufacturer.

Third-party controllers are solutions that are constantly being enhanced to meet the needs of today's petroleum industry. One could even conclude that today's third-party controllers are redefining the capabilities of the forecourt. With features such as Ethernet, USB connectivity and high-speed embedded processors already in production, the possibilities are endless.

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The PEI Journal • Fourth Quarter 2007 • Volume 1, No. 4 • Contents are Copyright © Data Key Communications, Inc.
All rights reserved. • Nothing may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission of the publisher.