The Truckers had me worried...

[Elfie]

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.

[Delirium]

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?

[lasersailor184]

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?

[Jackal1]

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.

[rpm]

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.

[Elfie]

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.

[WWhiskey]

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) 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!

[Mustaine]

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!

[rpm]

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.

[E25280]

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"?

[rpm]

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.

[Maverick]

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.

[rpm]

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.

[Maverick]

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.

[rpm]

Looks like neither of us really know the answer.