The distribution of petrol products to service stations is generally based on the receipt of orders by the service stations and on the daily optimisation of the deliveries by tank trucks. Recently, the technologic possibility to monitor remotely the level of the underground storage tanks in the service stations allows a new formulation of the problem, planning deliveries on the current level of the inventory rather than on orders. An original formulation of the problem is proposed joining in the objective function of the related mathematical programming formulation both the inventory and the routing costs. In the case study the proposed formulation is applied to evaluate the improvements of the performance of the distribution of petrol products by tank trucks when the central depot can receive in real-time the levels of the underground storage tanks. The results shows that the proposed approach would have allowed a reduction in the number of deliveries and in the overall amount of kilometres necessary for the deliveries themselves. The consequences are the decreasing both of the delivery costs and of the risk - for the people, their properties and the environment in the territory affected by this transportation.