Actually the cost to fill my truck was more then $1200, the two saddle tanks took 150 gallons each, on my semi-truck in July 2007. Independent drivers (those drivers who owned their own rigs) were going out of business right and left. Most of these independent drivers had little leverage to pass these historic prices on to their customers. The company I was driving for had a fuel surcharge built into their contracts with many of our customers and they shared with the increase with prices.
My truck was a year old Freightliner that was getting around 6 miles a gallon, decent mileage for a semi tractor, meaning that it was costing the company that I drove for a little more then .80 cents a mile. If you add my per mile wage .34 cents per mile, licenses, insurance, office administration and truck upkeep, the cost to drive that 2006 Freightliner down the road was more then $1.40 a mile. I do not know how my company made any money, let alone stayed in business.
The reason for the current raise in petroleum products is, to say the least, "complicated." To say that greed was the only factor would be convenient, but sadly wrong. There is no simple answer with regards to this problem, the answers are convoluted for the average person, "boy am I average," and those technical folks in the know refuse, or are unable to answer questions about their industry in a concise simple form.
Its all about control, profit margins, the declining dollar value and as some think, lax regulations on extended housing loans, expenditures without recovery, (wars) tax rebates/cuts and free trade without reciprocation. The percentages of imported crude oil to the United States from the Persian Gulf typically is between 10 and 15%, Our biggest supplier, (of imported oil) comes from Canada, while the U.S. gets imported crude from many smaller suppliers.
Instability drives crude prices and to say the least, "the United States is hugely unstable." The Pentagon is now directing wars on three fronts, unemployment hovers around 9%, America's economy is sluggish, the value of the dollar runs hot and cold,
The raise in crude effects everything that we do, from farming, to industry, to government operations, to the family vacation. As a nation we rely on petroleum products and when prices raise, we curtail our consumption in all sorts of ways. However business is hard pressed to cut back on use, hence prices raise for the lowly consumer, as a way for business to recover the higher cost of producing product.
The excise tax, built into the price of a gallon of gas, has a long and fruitful history and has tacked on from .1 cent to as much as .18.4 cents a gallon during the tax from 1932 to the present. Originally the excise or "road tax" was instituted by the Secretary of the Treasury as a tax-raising and expenditure-reduction proposal which was to last only until 1934, guess what.....1934 was skipped over by the fed and the tax remains to this day. Like a banker, the fed has never seen a dollar that they didn't want a piece of.
Today gas prices, "as of 4/18/11 reported by the department of U.S. Energy" averages more then $3.84 a gallon, while the price of diesel fuel is at more then $4.06. The squeeze is on as summer approaches, a time when family outings dominate our domestic economy. Summer is also the time when there is more activity in the trucking industry, as delivery helps to fuel summer trade.
The simple answer to why gas prices are on the raise again is fear. The entire petroleum industry is driven by fear coming from several different directions. Fear of instability, fear of war, fear of deposed country presidents, dictators or leaders, and the fear of lower prices by a multitude of reasons. These people that trade in petroleum futures must be the most stressed people in the world.
The current raise in crude prices is being blamed on unrest in the Middle East and some African countries and is being ignored as just another burp in the world of free market trading.It seems as if nobody in government has the ability to understand, or do anything about the recent raise in prices.
Economists steadfastly downplay the effect that speculation has on the price of crude, instead say that "speculation does not drive the oil prices, driving does." Well, I'm not an economist and I non-the-less have an opinion and thankfully that opinion is unencumbered by some ideology or hidden agenda. I filled my pick-up truck the other day and it cost me close to $80.
When petroleum companies report "windfall" profits, I get pissed off, wondering why, or how gas companies can make these types of profits when the average workers wage has been stagnate since the 1980's and the Reagan era. I can remember the very first gas attack in the United States back in 1974. Prices doubled and tripled almost overnight, lines of cars around the block were waiting for a chance to fill up. The reason given, shortages of crude oil and the possibility that the world was running out of petroleum producing capabilities.
I swear to God, that was the beginning of an organized effort to regulate prices and to control the prices. I have watched prices, over the years, raise for a while and then fall back to within a few cents of where it was, but always on the high side, you know, "going from $2.00 a gallon, to $2.50 and then back to $2.10." I always called that pricing system "an exploration to see how far petroleum company's could good with pricing before custom uproar demanded a lower of the price." And it's worked, we now have price per gallon gas at "almost the levels" of a couple of years ago and when the prices come down to $3.75, the price will be called "good."
When I used to drive, professionally, I was amazed at the number of gas hogs that people were driving at the height of the last significant raise in gasoline prices, eight of ten were gas guzzlers. Clearly American citizens were not interested in saving money at the pumps. Clearly the United States driver was not concerned about the availability of gas, rather he was concerned, (a little) about the price.
We Americans share the blame for higher crude prices by the very driving practices that we continue to pursue. As the saying goes, "bigger is better," and that sure is correct when we chose the vehicles that we drive. When I hear people talk about cancelling a family vacation because gas prices are too high, to me, that means that those families could not have afforded the vacation anyways, no matter what the prices were.
In the final analyse, we share in the problem that is the petroleum industries pricing structure and how they arrive at their prices. If Americans refused to pay, the price would come down, they don't produce gas to sit on, it's to be sold, and like my father said, "half a loaf is better then none." Better governmental regulations are necessary to help stem the tide of higher prices as well as the greed factor that now permeates the industry.
Again we need to govern ourselves, I say "lets have a drive out, a day when nobody drives," wouldn't that be fun to watch. Can you imagine the look on the collective faces of the industry, priceless.
We Americans share the blame for higher crude prices by the very driving practices that we continue to pursue. As the saying goes, "bigger is better," and that sure is correct when we chose the vehicles that we drive. When I hear people talk about cancelling a family vacation because gas prices are too high, to me, that means that those families could not have afforded the vacation anyways, no matter what the prices were.
In the final analyse, we share in the problem that is the petroleum industries pricing structure and how they arrive at their prices. If Americans refused to pay, the price would come down, they don't produce gas to sit on, it's to be sold, and like my father said, "half a loaf is better then none." Better governmental regulations are necessary to help stem the tide of higher prices as well as the greed factor that now permeates the industry.
Again we need to govern ourselves, I say "lets have a drive out, a day when nobody drives," wouldn't that be fun to watch. Can you imagine the look on the collective faces of the industry, priceless.
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