Fuel & Convenience Retail

Sheetz Scales Fuel Operations with Gravitate

90 seconds

90 seconds

90 seconds

AI load building vs. 44min for best dispatcher

100%

100%

100%

Dispatch and supply management

What took one of my best dispatchers 44 minutes, Gravitate's software did in about a minute and a half.

Eamonn Clarke

Director of Petroleum Distribution, Sheetz

About

Sheetz operates more than 800+ stores, supported by a private fleet and logistics organization responsible for 100% of petroleum and renewable fuel deliveries. That scale demands precision, resilience, and speed.

Sheetz operates more than 800+ stores, supported by a private fleet and logistics organization responsible for 100% of petroleum and renewable fuel deliveries. That scale demands precision, resilience, and speed.

Sheetz operates more than 800+ stores, supported by a private fleet and logistics organization responsible for 100% of petroleum and renewable fuel deliveries. That scale demands precision, resilience, and speed.

Industry

Fuel & Convenience Retail

Company size

800+ stores

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The Company

Sheetz operates more than 800+ stores, supported by a private fleet and logistics organization responsible for 100% of petroleum and renewable fuel deliveries. That scale demands precision, resilience, and speed — and as Sheetz accelerated toward 1,000 locations, its dedicated carrier CLI Transport faced a critical inflection point: continue scaling with manual processes and rising headcount, or modernize with technology built for the complexity of the fuel supply chain.

The Challenge

"Good enough" was no longer good enough

For more than a decade, CLI Transport relied on a legacy Transportation Management System that:

  • Had seen little innovation in 15+ years

  • Was not purpose-built for fuel

  • Required heavy manual effort for sourcing, allocation, and dispatch

  • Scaled only by adding people

As growth accelerated toward 1,000 stores, the math became unsustainable.

Sheetz and CLI set out with clear objectives: increase dispatcher efficiency without sacrificing service, integrate supply, sourcing, and dispatch into one system, move from manual planning to AI-assisted decisioning, adopt a modern SaaS architecture to reduce tech debt, and partner with a provider that deeply understands fuel logistics. This was not a point-solution search — it was a strategic platform decision.

The Solution

AI-assisted Supply & Dispatch, built for fuel

After extensive discovery, Sheetz selected Gravitate's AI-assisted Supply & Dispatch platform, designed specifically for fuel retailers and carriers. Key capabilities included:

  • AI-assisted dispatch optimization (auto-dispatch / route optimizer)

  • Systematic execution of supply directives and allocations

  • Integrated forecasting that dynamically reacts to demand swings

  • SaaS architecture enabling rapid iteration and scalability

  • Human-in-the-loop design that augments, rather than replaces, dispatch expertise

Before committing, CLI ran a live pilot across two large markets side-by-side with its legacy TMS. The results were immediate and measurable — even after human refinement, dispatch planning time dropped by roughly 75% during the pilot.

A full cutover, without missing a beat

Sheetz and CLI made a decisive choice: a full, same-day cutover. On March 4, the legacy TMS was shut off. Drivers signing into their ELDs simply began receiving Gravitate-generated loads. Despite the scale and risk: no store runouts occurred, operations remained invisible to stores, and 200,000+ loads have since been executed successfully.

The Results

Proven impact at enterprise scale

Operational efficiency

  • 40–50% dispatcher efficiency gains

  • Shift from hiring every 9 months to no new dispatch hires projected for 2+ years

Stability & control

  • Near-zero retains and .99999 on-time delivery performance

  • 100% compliance with supply strategy, enabled by fully integrated supply directives and dispatch execution

Resilience in volatile conditions

During a holiday weekend with nearly 2 million gallons of unexpected demand variance — swinging from over-delivery one day to under-delivery the next — dispatchers barely noticed. The system dynamically adjusted forecasts, replanned loads, and absorbed volatility without disruption.

Better work, better jobs

AI absorbed the stress and variability of manual planning, creating more consistent dispatcher workloads across shifts and higher job satisfaction. Sheetz didn't just replace a TMS — they redefined how fuel logistics scales. With AI-assisted dispatch as its foundation, CLI and Sheetz are now positioned to adopt additional game-changing technologies without re-platforming again.

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