Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: lasersailor184 on March 23, 2008, 11:49:34 PM
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http://www.qctimes.com/articles/2008/03/19/news/iowa/doc47e03e9ea03bd427238845.txt?sPos=3
I was very worried about the intent of the trucker's strike on April 1st. Not many people understand that government price freezes would royally screw us over. They think it's just something the government can flippantly do.
However, the Truckers are going on strike against TAXES.
diddlyIN' A! Good work truckers! I'm glad that they recognize that the government often makes many times in taxes on gas and diesel what the oil companies make in profit.
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Most people have no idea just how much truckers pay in road use taxes. Every highway in the US is a toll road. I was an owner/operator running 48 states in the late 80's. States charge you fuel tax whether you buy fuel or not.
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Dan Little, the owner/operator of a livestock hauling company in Carrollton, Mo., estimated Tuesday that at least 1,000 other truckers from across the United States have committed so far to joining him in a strike on Apri
:D Big whoop. A few bull haulers out the way. Speed sales will drop accordingly. :)
I was an owner/operator also and ran cross country for 20-25 years.
I went through a few of these so called strikes.
I rolled through them all. The truck was my bread and butter and that of my family.
I dodged more than a few bricks, concrete blocks, etc. thrown from overpasses. Was tried to be blocked in at truck stops numerous times. Lame attempts to get the job done IMHO.
When it all boils down ALL of them accomplished only in turning the trucker against the trucker.
If they wish to really get the job done, start a nationwide petition to contact the lawmakers in each state and go up from there.
The rest is just BS.
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States charge you fuel tax whether you buy fuel or not.
How do they charge you a fuel tax if you aren't actually purchasing any fuel?
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I'm glad that they recognize that the government often makes many times in taxes on gas and diesel what the oil companies make in profit.
Indeed. I don't mind paying some tax on fuel, out here it's roughly .45 per gallon. I'm sure it's higher elsewhere.
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How do they charge you a fuel tax if you aren't actually purchasing any fuel?
Most states have a minimum fuel purchase requirement when you pass through their state. It is their calculation of how much fuel you should use going across. If you do not purchase the fuel and do not have a fuel permit (read that tax) you pay a fee.
It`s easy to get around. :)
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Most states have a minimum fuel purchase requirement when you pass through their state. It is their calculation of how much fuel you should use going across. If you do not purchase the fuel and do not have a fuel permit (read that tax) you pay a fee.
It`s easy to get around. :)
Sad.....so in essence, at times you can and do pay tax on the fuel twice?
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they'll just give the loads to mexican truckers ...
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For most of my life diesel has been priced lower than gasoline, I don't know what has changed in the last couple of years to flip that around.
In this state taxes are lower on diesel as well, curious.
shamus
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they'll just give the loads to mexican truckers ...
yep
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Laser,
Did you even read the article you linked? They aren't threatening a strike because of taxes. They aren't protesting the taxes, they are just asking for relief from the taxes simply as a way to make fuel cheaper for them while it's this high. They also understand it won't make a bit of difference to the fuel companies or to the folks who actually set the price of fuel. They are just asking for a break.
The tax rate is also based on a per gallon rate, not based on the price per gallon.
While the road fees talked about here are interesting, I haven't seen any of them based on driving my rig through 32 states so far when I didn't buy any fuel in the state. I also buy my fuel at truck stops due to the rig I use and it's twin 150 gallon tanks. We often plan our route based on the availability of a flying j in the area we want to go.
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I seriously doubt you will ever see a truckers strike. In the 13yrs i've been driving over the road i've heard it talked about on almost a daily basis and it never happens. It's also illegal for someone to actually organize a drivers strike nationwide. Can not remember the actual law and wording but it is a federal crime. The best way to protest the fuel taxes is if every trucker refuses to purchase there IFTA sticker! No sticker means no taxes for the government and you can't run without one. It's also not a crime to not get one as long as you don't drive/buy fuel. Could you imagine the governments panic if every trucker/company said hey we're not going to renew our IFTA so basically we are shutting down? Trying to get 2 truckers to agree on something is like trying to get 2 AH players to agree on the best plane. I've ran loads into and out of union plants that have been strikeing and had them cuss me out, block my truck, and other things. The best one was a striker confronting me saying i should refuse to haul the freight and support them. My reply was, no problem here is what the load pays me, you pay me that right now i'll unhook and go home for the day and be with my family who counts on this money to feed and clothe them. Funny but i got no reply.
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I work for a trucking company, and for those of you that don't know all trucks must log each mile driven in each state, then pay per quarter a tax on those miles driven. each state must be broken down, and if the DOT does an audit they can / will pull your permits.
To give you an idea how big fuel tax reporting is the software package we are getting has a license for their fuel tax portion for $10,000. thats only for the part of the software that helps prepare the reports you have to file... in fact we are getting proposals from 3 different companies for their solutions right now...
it is a HUGE part of trucking, much more so for companies than owner-ops as we have a base of trucks they can audit any time they want.
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Do truckers pay a fuel tax at the time of purchase of the fuel?
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Do truckers pay a fuel tax at the time of purchase of the fuel?
yes. we also have to report every gallon purchased, where and when it was purchased, report it to the state it was purchased in, then pay a tax fee each quarter, above what they paid at the pump, and above the tax on miles driven in said state.
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yes. we also have to report every gallon purchased, where and when it was purchased, report it to the state it was purchased in, then pay a tax fee each quarter, above what they paid at the pump, and above the tax on miles driven in said state.
That is ridiculous.
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Aren't the trucks paying for the use of the road as a commerical enterprise? It isn't like Mr Bob driving to work, these roads are the base for the truckers being employed. So, having them pay a tax for the use of the road which the trucks cause so much wear and tear on makes sense to me.
Now, if the rates are too high, that is another discussion altogether.
Maybe they can remove all diesel fuel tax for commerical business until the economy (ie the oil price) stabilizes?
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True Delirium, but how often is tax money collected these days actually used for the reason it is collected? How much of that tax money is going into the general purpose fund?
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I seriously doubt you will ever see a truckers strike. In the 13yrs i've been driving over the road i've heard it talked about on almost a daily basis and it never happens.
Stick around. You will see it.
I went through all sorts of truckers strikes. Freight haulers, Teamsters and even a couple of independent strikes. Those were real entertaining.
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Aren't the trucks paying for the use of the road as a commerical enterprise? It isn't like Mr Bob driving to work, these roads are the base for the truckers being employed. So, having them pay a tax for the use of the road which the trucks cause so much wear and tear on makes sense to me.
Delirium, take a look around. Everything you see came on a truck. The highways are a part of the national infrastructure. Most people like to complain about trucks because they are too big, too slow, too fast, smelly or just basicly in their way. They do not realise that without those trucks you would be walking on a dirt path searching for food.
They are not tearing up your road, they are keeping you alive and able to live the lifestyle which you've become accustomed to. Trust me, you do not want to see a full blown strike.
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Aren't the trucks paying for the use of the road as a commerical enterprise? It isn't like Mr Bob driving to work, these roads are the base for the truckers being employed. So, having them pay a tax for the use of the road which the trucks cause so much wear and tear on makes sense to me.
Now, if the rates are too high, that is another discussion altogether.
Maybe they can remove all diesel fuel tax for commerical business until the economy (ie the oil price) stabilizes?
Isn't the tax at the fuel pump enough? Why tax them repeatedly? Which is apparently what is happening.
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Still trucking, just got off the truck to come home and read this!
i havent heard of the strike this time but it will not happen!
alot of the companies have changed over to a fuel surcharge type of system so the truckers dont have to pay for the extra price hike of fuel! it is past on to the consumer in price hikes of goods transported, like milk or any other thing you might want to buy! just go to the grocery store and look on the shelves for produce, from as far away from your location as possible, and see how much higher it is than 1 or 2 years ago! this plan was started when fuel got to 1.85 per gallon and this months surcharge is 44% so if it cost $1.00 to transport a gallon of milk before it now costs $1.44! the average price of goods buy the ton is .16cents per mile per ton one way, in 2000 it was .12cents
the ones hurt the most are independant truckers who dont have the surcharge sysem in place(such as myself) :furious i pull a belly dump trailer working mostly for the state or fed.s building roads and they dont pay the fuel surcharge, we must bid the jobs according to the projected fuel costs one year in advance. last year we bid the jobs we are doing now when the price of fuel was out of control at $3.00+ lucky for us we decided to go for broke and bid at $4.00 hopeing to make up some of the money we lost from the bids the year before, we survived just barely, only to have the price now at $4.00 so we are not going to recover our loses but atleast we will survive, the next thing to happen(and this is the funny part) the state sent me a letter saying they were going to raise the price of all my permits, because of the higher price of fuel has caused there expense to be much higher!
I am there only expence yet they will not give me any extra money for my higher expence, I know, because i asked!
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I feel bad for owner-ops, they are going to disappear in the next few years, especially if Schneider makes that acquisition....
as for fuel surcharge, WWhisky is right. I am in charge of the calculations at work among my other non-IT duties. Every Monday the gov sends me an email of the "national" fuel rates, and we calculate off that. this week: 46.7%
for every $1 of goods, 46.7% is added to the freight charges, this week. last week it was 44.something.
We have a few owner-ops doing line hauls for us, we are all LTL otherwise. Those guys have to sit in bumbleboink wherever waiting for us to find them a profitable load, NO ONE is allowed to drive more than 150 empty miles in a week. With a new Kenworth getting 5.6 MPG average that's a little over $100 in wasted fuel.
Another of my duties is the daily/weekly/monthly fuel consumption reports. We just installed PeopleNet units in all our trucks. With them we can call up to the minute fuel consumption, total idle minutes, and a poop-ton of engine data. Our fleet on a whole is making 5.7 MPG, but we have guys with 40-60 hours of idle in a single week! cutting down on that, plus changing idle RPMs and stuff should save us up to $300,000 in fuel costs in 1 year alone. If we can get some of the more over zealous drivers to shift a bit lower in the RPMs and do some other tweaks we should be able to push that number up to over 6.2 MPG. You wouldn't believe the difference even .5 makes in overall costs.
It isn't easy talking to professional drivers about their shifting patterns, but it has to be done or we will go out of business. When making close to 1/2 you revenue just to cover fuel costs has to be passed on to the consumers the consumers will go elsewhere. Luckily we have a real nitch business in what we do so we aren't in real danger, but the OTR stuff is really bad. We just acquired another company because they went bankrupt, they didn't manage or monitor costs. We acquired them by default because they owed our company over $500,000.
Now we have 11 2007 Kenworth sleeper cabs for sale all with less than 250,000 miles. Try and sell them in todays trucking market! :furious
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I can't help but sympathise with the drivers on this. Yeah, they have a LOT of idle hours but most companies will not pay motel expenses unless you sit for 48 hours. You want a guy to freeze or sweat for 48 hours before he gets a room? They need to make onboard generators standard equiptment on fleet trucks. That or quit being such tightwads and pay for motel expenses on the first night. Trust me, that ain't gonna happen.
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For most of my life diesel has been priced lower than gasoline, I don't know what has changed in the last couple of years to flip that around.
In this state taxes are lower on diesel as well, curious.
shamus
New emissions requirements made the refining process much more expensive. Have you noticed it is now all "low sulfur diesel"?
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It costs more to put less additives in?
Diesel is basicly a byproduct of gasoline. The raping of consumers at the pump will eventually lead to the collapse of the American economy.
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The stuff they are taking out is sulphur. It was already in the fuel, put there by nature. Taking it out to meet the epa regs is what is causing the price differential. The amount of sulphur pre epa was 2000 ppm. Low sulphur fuel was set at 500 ppm. Ultra low sulphur fuel which is the latest epa mandate is 15 ppm. Now taking the sulphur out also reduces the lubrication factor of the fuel causing early and excessive wear of the fuel system components. Ironically according to a fuel distributor that gave a presentation the best lubrication substitute to add is bio diesel. A 2% concentration or B2 has all of the lubrication the old diesel had. It also acts like a fuel system cleaner. Go figure.
Coupled to that is the fact that China is taking a bunch of diesel fuel to use. Their fuel use will only go up as they industrialize further. More pressure on the use of oil.
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Mav, unless I have been told the wrong info, sulfur is added to diesel much like lead was added to gasoline. It gives lubricicity to the fuel. As I understand it, it is not "put there by nature". I could be wrong, but I was told this by someone that works at the refinery near here when low sulfur fuel was introduced.
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The info I have been given is that the sulphur is there normally, kind of like in coal. If it wasn't there would need to be extra refining steps to remove it.
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Looks like neither of us really know the answer.
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OK, after a quick Googling it looks like we both may be partially correct. Sulfur occurs naturally during the refining process, some refineries add sulfur (thru a hydrogen process) to increase lubricicity to meet customer demands.
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How do they charge you a fuel tax if you aren't actually purchasing any fuel?
Well indirectly they do.
When I buy a loaf of bread, I pay for the fuel to fire the ovens, harvest the wheat, transport the wheat, brew the yeast, ....
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No indirect to it. Trucks pay fuel tax per mile run in each state, either buy the fuel or pay the tax anyway.
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I feel bad for owner-ops, they are going to disappear in the next few years, especially if Schneider makes that acquisition....
as for fuel surcharge, WWhisky is right. I am in charge of the calculations at work among my other non-IT duties. Every Monday the gov sends me an email of the "national" fuel rates, and we calculate off that. this week: 46.7%
for every $1 of goods, 46.7% is added to the freight charges, this week. last week it was 44.something.
We have a few owner-ops doing line hauls for us, we are all LTL otherwise. Those guys have to sit in bumbleboink wherever waiting for us to find them a profitable load, NO ONE is allowed to drive more than 150 empty miles in a week. With a new Kenworth getting 5.6 MPG average that's a little over $100 in wasted fuel.
Another of my duties is the daily/weekly/monthly fuel consumption reports. We just installed PeopleNet units in all our trucks. With them we can call up to the minute fuel consumption, total idle minutes, and a poop-ton of engine data. Our fleet on a whole is making 5.7 MPG, but we have guys with 40-60 hours of idle in a single week! cutting down on that, plus changing idle RPMs and stuff should save us up to $300,000 in fuel costs in 1 year alone. If we can get some of the more over zealous drivers to shift a bit lower in the RPMs and do some other tweaks we should be able to push that number up to over 6.2 MPG. You wouldn't believe the difference even .5 makes in overall costs.
It isn't easy talking to professional drivers about their shifting patterns, but it has to be done or we will go out of business. When making close to 1/2 you revenue just to cover fuel costs has to be passed on to the consumers the consumers will go elsewhere. Luckily we have a real nitch business in what we do so we aren't in real danger, but the OTR stuff is really bad. We just acquired another company because they went bankrupt, they didn't manage or monitor costs. We acquired them by default because they owed our company over $500,000.
Now we have 11 2007 Kenworth sleeper cabs for sale all with less than 250,000 miles. Try and sell them in todays trucking market! :furious
i would love to have that newsletter from the gov. hint hint
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If we can get some of the more over zealous drivers to shift a bit lower in the RPMs and do some other tweaks we should be able to push that number up to over 6.2 MPG.
Hope your company is not running any Detroits when you try that theory. :)
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Mav, unless I have been told the wrong info, sulfur is added to diesel much like lead was added to gasoline. It gives lubricicity to the fuel. As I understand it, it is not "put there by nature". I could be wrong, but I was told this by someone that works at the refinery near here when low sulfur fuel was introduced.
The info I have been given is that the sulphur is there normally, kind of like in coal. If it wasn't there would need to be extra refining steps to remove it.
actually both of you are right.
in some parts of the world oil is low or no sulfur, in other parts it is high to very high.
at the distilleries/refineries it is manipulated to provide a consistent fuel within certain parameters.
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at the distilleries/refineries it is manipulated to provide a consistent fuel within certain parameters.
In this you can read "normal part of processing".
big oil is again using EPA as another reason to line their pockets from fuel pump sales.
the sulfur removed can easily be sold to makers of matches, gunpowder, chemist, etc.
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Refiners take the sulfur they collect from the desulfuring unit and trade it for sulfuric acid. They use the acid to rejuvenate catalyst and wash impurities out of gasoline and other products. You can’t run sour crude (high sulfur) through a refinery that isn’t designed for it. It will clog up the works.
Diesel is going up because our refineries are geared for producing gasoline. Diesel and other distillates are just a by-product of producing gasoline. Right now, the demand for gasoline is down, so there’re fewer by-products (diesel).
I believe Europe is more flexiable in refining more gasoline or diesel, whatever they happen to need.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_refinery
read about the operation and look closely at the fractional distillery drawing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_distillation
Diesel is going up because our refineries are geared for producing gasoline. Diesel and other distillates are just a by-product of producing gasoline.(diesel).
{sarcasm on} yeah it is "geared" alright.{sarcasm off}
there is no gears about it. simple enough to turn a switch to boil that thar crude to the right temps to make pure honeyfied gold.
(funny in a way, its own by-products can easily fuel the process. similar to making chunk charcoal. small amount of wood burning to start the degassing of wood releases the gasses to burn to continue the process til the wood is out of gas, leaving behind charcoal. whew, what a messy way to say it.)
running crude through a still a lot like making moonshine.
the main difference is from the moonshine the water and brewer's grains gets tossed to the hogs. and the higher poisonous alcohols (hopefully) gets released in the air for the Angel's share.
from crude every part of it is used by a lot of other industries, each so-called by-product is sold at a profit. (nothing wrong with that)
but gouging fuel prices makes the prices of everything rocket out of sight. causing all sorts of problems. there is a very good reason Energy prices is regulated. since the laws pretty much outlaws and/or makes the costs (taxes) out of reach for personal distillation of fuels for personal use, fuels prices should be regulated as well.
(ok spent enough time proof reading, fixing errors I've seen. if there (dang it Edit:) are (not is) anymore errors of any kind, I don't care. figure it out yourself. blahhh)
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Read why the Eisenhower interstate highways were designed is one thing to start with. After seeing the autobann (sp) in WW2 he realized the importance of a good transportation system in both peace time and war. Through years of missuse of our tax dollars by both the federal and state governments our roads are in sad shape. :( Toll roads in my opinion should be flat out illegal or as in the case of 1 or 2 states use absolutely no federal/state money to keep them up. Also it should be illegal for any foreign country to own/purchase key pieces of our national infrastructure. There should also be a national speed limit for all vehicles, personally i think 65 for everyone is a reasonable speed, the exceptions being in heavy urban areas and the mountains. The only way i could ever see the truckers actually carrying off a strike now days is if all the american drivers, cars/trucks, ect. stand up and say enough is enough. Oh and use that indiana toll road owned by a foreign company and now the rates are going up 72%. :furious