|
About Me
I'm the Pickups host here at Edmunds CarSpace.com - be sure to check out the Pickups forums if you have or are interested in one!
Recent Posts
Categories
CarSpace
The Big Rigs
We're gonna talk about the big ones... trucks and buses that require those 3 marker lights front and rear. Everything from dual rear wheel pickups to class 8 trucks to the bus that takes you to work.
A couple of good articles from the November/December issue of Road King magazine that are worth a look...
 Color Me Safe - High visibility seat belts encourage truckers to buckle up - more truck manufacturers are offering, and more operators are installing, brightly colored seat belts.
Trying Times - During some tough years this driver discovered his resolve to succeed - a 25-year veteran of the highway shares his experiences with health, family, and finances.
And of course, it's nice to report that diesel prices have dropped dramatically from this summer, although they have not matched the far steeper drop in the price of gasoline. In July, I paid a staggering $5.179 at my local station for diesel... just 4 months later, the price at the same station is down about 45% (around $2.95), and without too much effort, I can find it for quite a bit less than that - in the $2.60 range.
Thankfully, Vikki and her red Pete 379 have been on the road, although not nearly as much as a year or two ago. She said she was getting bored very quickly at home with the Pete in the driveway, instead of catching some z's in the sleeper at a truck stop. Even though fuel prices have come back down to more sensible levels and shipping rates have dropped the fuel surcharges, the economy means keeping tighter reins on the budget for people who need to get items from point A to point B. And with financing hard to come by, the buyers aren't there for the bigger ticket items that get shipped by 18-wheeler. So the loads aren't quite back up to snuff yet.
And more in line with my thoughts and wants, NAIAS is about a month away, and Chrysler is still scheduled to reveal the 2010 Dodge Ram heavy duty models, a direct replacement to what I have now. Hopefully, the automakers will be solvent enough to actually get to next month.
 TravelCenters of America (TA) and Pilot, two of the national truck stop chains, are reporting a few of their stations in upstate New York are selling diesel for (drumroll) $5.039 per gallon.
Let's stop and think about this for a moment.
A tractor-trailer pulls in and needs 200 gallon of diesel. That will cost over a thousand dollars at those stations. For ONE fill-up.
I don't care who you are, that's a lot of money.
And that price is being sent downhill to you, the consumer... simply because everything you buy is delivered by truck at some point in its journey - unless you're buying produce right at the farm and picking it yourself.
Fleets have resorted to adding/reprogramming governors on their trucks to reduce their top speed... it saves fuel but makes the trip longer, which doesn't negate the costs very much if at all. Trucks and truckers are now on the road longer, and if that slower speed cuts in just right, a delivery that could have been done in 2 driving shifts, may now require 3 (including that downtime that USDOT requires between driving shifts). Products now arrive a day later than before, and cost more anyway.
There was a poll today at CNN.com asking who is to blame for current pump prices...
- OPEC
- oil companies
- supply and demand
- [price increases] are unavoidable
At 10:49 pm Eastern on 5/22, nearly 95,000 votes had been recorded. Oil companies were first at 40%, supply and demand at 30%, OPEC at 23%, and unavoidable brought up the rear. What annoyed me was the fact that a 5th choice was conveniently left out... unregulated oil trading. Funds everywhere are grabbing oil as a hedge against the falling dollar value (it's traded worldwide in US dollars). With no regulation or oversight as with stocks or other commodities, that isn't contributing to the price rise? Waiter - reality check, please!
Try fueling a tractor-trailer these days. A few months back when diesel was around $3.35 or so, I was chatting with the pump jockey at my local station about the credit card shutoff... depending on the card, it will either stop at $75 or $100. He said "When the semis come in, I have to swipe that card 8 or 9 times."
An article at CNN.com today mentions the plight of the trucking industry and the rapidly escalating price of diesel fuel: CNNMoney.com 5/6/2008 - Think gas hurts? Try diesel. One of the stats in the article should make you take notice... "The American Trucking Association predicted that truckers will have to shell out $140 billion for diesel in 2008, sharply higher than the $112 billion they spent in 2007." I'll save you the trouble of grabbing a calculator - that's a 25% increase. And that gets passed on to the end user... eventually, that is John and Jane Average, who will be forced to absorb that increase in virtually everything they buy.
Vikki )driver of the red Peter on your left) said her company doesn't have as many loads as they did a year ago. In order to meet costs, they have to raise rates, and that means customers are now looking for whichever trucking outlet will do the job for less. But soon enough, even those who can afford to lowball will have to pony up at the pump. A fuel contract that locked in a low rate will eventually expire, and those suppliers will want to make up for their losses.
Unless a long term solution comes about, this isn't going to get any better for quite a while. Is algae-based biodiesel the answer? Food-crop biodiesel certainly isn't, as it will simply reduce the crop supply and cause food prices to spike. And biodiesel has yet to be standardized... if you have the equipment, you can "brew a batch" in the back yard.
Common sense tells me a tax suspension won't do much. What we need is a major increase in production and supply of a fuel that will do the job as well as petroleum-based diesel.. That's the only way prices will come down. Time will tell.
 It's almost universally accepted that as a country, the US needs to reduce its reliance on gasoline. The bulk of personal vehicle are 100% gasoline powered cars and light trucks. In this week's Automotive News poll, they asked "What will be the next big 'green' powertrain in the U.S.?" The 4 choices given were plug-in hybrids, diesels, E85, and 100% electric.
All day today, the clear leader in the poll has been diesel (45%), with plugged hybrids a solid second (28%). With no surprise, E85 has been dead last at 6% - despite its lower pump price, I think all the industry experts understand that the fuel efficiency penalty of E85 far offsets the cost savings. And with CAFE numbers about to make a substantial rise, you need the mileage numbers.
So why diesels?
Diesels are established technology. And with the 2007 and 2010 emissions regs and ultra low sulfur fuel (ULSD), diesel vehicles will actually be cleaner than gasoline equivalents in a couple of years. The infrastructure is already there - diesel is far easier to find than E85. And with the inherent gain in efficiency, diesels have the potential to be cheaper to operate.
Then we add in the biodiesel bonus. If a production standard can be established and B20 enters the mainstream, we can reduce the amount of crude oil that is used in diesel fuel - and unlike E85, there's not the significant drop in efficiency compared to the 100% crude-based fuel.
The problem with diesel is the variable pricing through the course of a year. Because diesel is the same distillate base as home heating oil,diesel prices increase in the colder months as refiners look to produce HHO, thus taking away production of diesel. In addition, diesel requires additional additives in colder areas to prevent gelling. Once heating season is over, the distillate refineries back off on HHO, increasing the availability of diesel and lowering its price.
Am I a diesel fan? Of course. I've owned diesels exclusively the last 12 years, and have been around them my whole life. The price disparity right now is the mosty it's been in ages and is really hurting truckers (see my blog post about that from a few days back). I certainly hope it goes down in April as it usually does. But for diesels benefits to become mainstream, the negatives need to be reduced. We will need more diesel refineries, more use of standardized biodiesel,and more education to consumers that "this is not your grandfather's tin-can-clattering, smoke-belching diesel."
We will see.
Is a truck stop parking lot full of independently owned rigs soon to be a thing of the past?
This article was noted in the forums yesterday... Independent truckers see end of the road
Owner/Operators are definitely getting beat up by fuel prices, and they have no relief in sight. On Feb 12 (as I noted a few blog posts down), I paid $3.239 for diesel at the Sunoco station I've been using since 1996. This past Friday, the same station was at $3.599 - a 36 cent increase in 2 weeks.
The O/Os quoted in the article have a point. Trucks are still the primary mode of direct cargo delivery in the United States - a CSX locomotive doesn't pull up to your home with an overnight package or to the supermarket with that week's shelf stock. Boeing 747s can't bring things like steel girders to a highway bridge construction site. And if the economy and fuel prices force the independent truckers completely out of the picture, we will indeed be left with higher prices for everything if only a handful of large fleets remain... and that won't exactly be their fault, either.
Is the answer a tax break, a nationally-backed discount fuel card, periodic rebate checks, or some form of subsidy (as the article mentions were given to the independent farmers)? I don't know, and I don't want to guess what would help O/Os the most right now, besides the obvious. The quote from the repossession company was probably the most telling, and it almost seems to mimic what's happening with the mortgage mess... And it's taking less time to pick up a truck, which he sees as a sign that there's less work to keep them on the road — and out of his reposessors' reach. "It used to take weeks, now it takes days or hours,"
Wasn't all that long ago that O/Os could make a fairly good living. If you were willing to work hard and often, there was a financial gain. Your tractor could be upgraded into a showplace on the outside and a studio apartment on the inside, complete with toilet. There was a Harley-like attitude of being out on the open road with no one to answer to but yourself. Today, O/Os have to answer to the bank that financed that rig, and if they can't make enough money to cover the operational costs, they park the truck - then the repo man starts his rounds.
My friend Vikki is a fleet driver. That red Pete is her assigned rig and it's essentially her home away from home, but she is absolved of the headaches and heartaches of ownership. The home office worries about truck costs and insurance. A company credit card fills the tanks... she only has to handle personal costs like food, laundry, etc., and keeping her logbook up to snuff. A company dispatcher tells her where to go for the next load. In that regard, she's lucky.
The owner/operators she shares the interstates with aren't as lucky.
Now that I think about it, B. J. McKay is likely in another line of work today.
 I can thank the folks at my favorite Sun Oil Company outlet for this one. For the first time since November, I tanked up the Ram for under $100 - $96.66 to be exact, at a pump price of $3.239. My MasterCard thanks you.
 The actual receipt from this morning....
I think I first noted diesel prices in an online forum about 10 years ago. It was $0.899... at the very same Sunoco, ironically.
The same amount of fuel would have ost me just $27.63 back then. This is a 269% increase you're gawking at on your left.
I had never hit triple-digits before. Last week was a personal best at $92.55 (diesel was a full dime cheaper), although it wasn't my first venture into the 90s. For those of you who watch/remember the movie Smokey and the Bandit, when Snowman (Jerry Reed) stops at a roadside diner/station to fill up the Kenworth, the price was just $73.84(++) for what was likely somewhere close to 200 gallons of diesel. That was in 1977 (year of film's release).
So basically, I pay in the vicinity of the barrel price of US light crude for a full tank of diesel (my Ram holds 35 gallons). A friend asked me this afternoon how long that will last... basically 6 business days, plus whatever weekends fall in that time frame - if I fill up on a Friday, I can usually squeeze two weekends in and not have to refill until the second Monday.
++ yes, I checked my copy of the movie for that amount!
 At my exit on I-80, there is only one gas/diesel station. It's listed on the highway "Services at This Exit" sign with the extra notation of having diesel fuel. The station has been closed for about a month, undergoing storage tank removal and replacement. Obviously, we locals are aware of this and go elsewhere for fuel.
As I exited from I-80 west last night, a tractor trailer that appeared to have come from the eastbound exit ramp approached the completely darkened and barricaded station, slowed to a crawl and hit the hazard lights. I really hoped he wasn't too low on #2... and he basically only had 2 opportunities to "turn this rig around" and either get back on I-80 or head the other way and get to US 46 a few miles the other direction where there are several stations available.
I'm considering asking the DOT if they would consider temporarily covering those "Services" logos of any business that is closed for such a long-term project. You really feel bad seeing someone in such a predicament, especially a trucker who likely is well out of his familiar territory.
|
|
