The Truckers had me worried...

[rpm]

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.

[Holden McGroin]

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, ....

[rpm]

No indirect to it. Trucks pay fuel tax per mile run in each state, either buy the fuel or pay the tax anyway.

[WWhiskey]

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!

i would love to have that newsletter from the gov. hint hint

[Jackal1]

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.

[DieAz]

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.   

[DieAz]

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.

[Rash]

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.

[DieAz]

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)

[wrongwayric]

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%.