Posted on 05/17/2008 7:12:51 AM PDT by shrinkermd
If you think gas is expensive, be thankful you're not a trucker. Filling up their 18-wheel, 80,000-pound leviathans can cost more than $1,300 these days.
Because of short supply, the price of diesel has gone up more than twice as much as gasoline in the last year, reaching a U.S. all-time high this week of an average of $4.33 a gallon. With little hope of a near-term decline -- oil futures rose $2.17 to settle at a record $126.29 a barrel Friday -- the run-up is causing panic and prompting radical cultural and technological shifts in the struggling trucking industry.
Instead of obsessing over chrome trim or the latest cab amenities to ease life on the road, truck owners and operators who are fed up with getting 5 miles per gallon are delving into long-ignored subjects such as aerodynamics, cruising speeds and tire efficiency.
Engineers and manufacturers are furiously developing fuel-friendly technology. And commercial fleets are using high-tech software to calculate every aspect of their drivers' routes, down to where they should fill up and where they should stop for the night.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
This article shows what innovators can do if the gov’t gets the hell out of the way
I don’t buy it.
Most truckers aren’t owner/operators: they are employees of trucking companies. The fuel costs don’t come out of their paychecks.
Trucking companies (and owner/operators) will pass along fuel costs to their customers, who will pass those increases on to us, the end consumers.
The key to all of this is domestic oil production.
And this is the real Time bomb that will whack the economy not what soccer mom pays to run her Yukon.
Even folks who walk and ride bikes to work pay the price for everything they buy that gets shipped by truck.
When you stop and think about it ... unless you are buying produce, etc., from a roadside stand next to where it grew ... everything we buy at one time or another has been on a truck. Even that which is shipped by rail and plane gets to its final destination by truck.
Another writer writing about something he knows nothing about. Aerodynamic changes to improve truck mileage has been going on for over the past ten years and changes to idle systems and gearing, and computerized engine controls. But the writer just wanted to throw the red neck chrome thing in there.
I paid $4.799 for some deisel for a neighbor who did some tractor work for me Thursday.
I actually wish the independent truckers would park for about 4 days.
Most people in American are clueless about how their food and other products get to the stores they shop in.
I would conjecture that a lot of the problem is overregulation of oil refineries. They have to spend an inordinate amount of time shutting down to change the formula from summer gas to winter and back again, and they have to satisfy a dozen different kind of state regulations. The also are blocked from building new refineries, so distributors rely more and more on foreign refineries. And it’s virtually impossible to get a permit to build a new one anywhere close to the current markets.
It shouldn’t be that hard to adjust the refineries so they produce more diesel. This price inversion has been with us for more than a decade. Diesel always was cheaper than gas, but that normal ratio has receded far into the past.
Bush urged for six years that there should be some deregulation of refineries, but in vain. The Democrats are chiefly to blame, but Bush is also to blame for never publicly stating the case, and never making the voters realize that high prices at the pump are almost entirely the fault of congressional Democrats. Instead, he sits there with a smile on his face while they blame it on those evil oil men, Bush and Cheney.
Will trucking goods across the country become a thing of the past? That's possible. The same energy bill that mandates an end to incandescent light bulbs includes a quiet little program for we, the taxpayers, to upgrade railroad tracks and buy new efficient engines for railroad companies. Looks to me like the government is trying to force us back to an older, slower, less efficient distribution mechanism for goods and services. It may be more efficient in terms of infrastructure, but it isn't in terms of meeting the needs of the market. That's our Congress, favoring railroads over independent truckers...
That's a load.
The transition to gas, as in natural gas and hydrogen, is beginning. It will take 25 painful years.
What’s the transportation cost per ton per mile for the truck versus the rail modes. Long haul I think would favor the rail industry by far and the short haul or distribution sector the truck mode. I don’t know the numbers just a guess on my part and was wondering if you had comparitive numbers.
The indendent truckers need to park them and force rates up. I know it is hard to do if you have a loan to pay,but there must be too many independenrs on the road if the rates don’t keep pace with costs. Take a break and park’em.
Even that which is shipped by rail and plane gets to its final destination by truck, but the balancing act between fuel and labor costs (with speed of delivering shaded in) is playing out now. Rail shipping is much more fuel-efficient, but less convenient. To ship cheaply, these days, get on the train quickly, stay on the train as long as possible, then pay to have your stuff shuffled onto the truck that takes it to its final destination. As with wireless communications, denser population centers will benefit, and we rural remote will pay.
Trunk Rail is pretty much at MAXIMUM CAPACITY, as it is...
We’ve spent DECADES ripping up rails everywhere, because it was so much cheaper to ship directly by truck, even coast to coast.
It’s yet another example of something that is going to take YEARS to solve, becauise of decades of short-sightedness.
Let’s see, truckers are giving up, food costs are going up, if enough truckers quit there will be no or few food deliveries to the cities where most of the environmentalists live. The other people in the cities see what’s happening and connect the dots and voila! Of course the enablers in DC will be ok, they can always retreat to their tax-payer funded bunkers.
Several factors are involved here. For one thing. Diesel fuel for road use is taxed at a HIGHER rate than gasoline.
The Federal tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon. On Diesel fuel, it is 24.4 cents per gallon, so there is a disparity there right away. Also, there is a separate state tax applied to motor fuels, with a slightly higher tax applied to Diesel fuel than to gasoline. Plus, there is also a sales tax rung up in the price of each gallon (a steady 5% to 8% or maybe more on each DOLLAR’S worth purchased), in addition to the direct levy on the fuel, so removal of fuel and sales taxes is a considerable factor in the price of gasoline and diesel. WAY more than the “$30 or so” for the summer, contrary to what at least one candidate for President has said.
More importantly, the cost of the motor fuel, sooner or later, gets included in the price of the goods delivered by the highway transport. This has a ripple effect spreading out through the WHOLE economy, not just a spot factor affecting a relative minority of individuals.
Another is the recent reformulation of Diesel fuel, eliminating all but a small fraction of the sulfur content. This was not done for free, you know. A higher quality of crude oil is required (the so-called “sweet” crude), now made even more expensive because of the shifted demand and the relative scarcity that resulted.
Diesel fuel has a higher energy density than gasoline, and WAY higher than ethanol. Diesel fuel runs 130,000 to 140,000 BTU’s per gallon, gasoline runs 115,000 to 125,000 BTU’s per gallon, and ethanol runs about 76,000 BTU’s per gallon. So right there is a significant difference in value of 12% or more between gasoline and Diesel fuel. Also, another argument for why high ethanol-content fuels are largely a bad idea. There may be other reasons for formulating ethanol into a motor fuel, but increasing economy of operation is not one of them. In fact, injecting water vapor in the intake manifold of either a gasoline or Diesel engine is almost as effective as simply including ethanol in the fuel as an additive. This helps to cause even more complete combustion of the carbon component of the fuel, by undergoing a Fischer-Tropsch reaction right inside the cylinder.
If these Diesel-powered trucks were still using gasoline, they would be getting about HALF the mileage they now get. That is because gasoline engines are inherently less efficient than Diesels, i.e., they operate at a lower compression level, and more of the heat (energy) is lost out through the exhaust and coolant, than with a Diesel.
Internal combustion engines of ANY kind deliver only about 30-35% of the energy produced by the combustion of the fuel to useful work (pulling a load, propelling a vehicle down the road), the rest just blows right out the stack and is carried away by the air stream passing over the radiator.
That is why there has been so much work on some variety of “fuel cell”, which converts this energy released by the conversion of hydrogen and carbon compounds into water vapor and carbon dioxide, and uses the energy produced to generate electricity. The delivery of electricity as a motive force has an efficiency of upwards of 90%, relative to the energy input and the work output.
From http://www.dot.state.fl.us/rail/Publications/ConnectivityNeeds/ch03.pdf
Fuel Consumption –
Fuel consumption in rail transportation is considerably less than for trucks. For example:
According to the Association of American Railroads (AAR)1, railroad fuel efficiency has increased 72 percent since 1980, when a gallon of diesel fuel moved a ton of freight an average of 235 miles. In 2001, railroads moved a
ton of freight an average of 406 miles per gallon.
Another measure generated by the AAR is based on revenue ton – miles per
gallon (RTMG), or consumption associated with loaded miles. Class 1 railroads average 396 RTMG, while trucks, based an average weight of lading and fuel consumption, would produce about 88 RTMG. According to information compiled annually by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy, the energy intensity of Class I
railroads in 2000 was 328 Btu per ton-mile compared to 3,307 Btu per tonmile for trucks.
My Mom is a truck broker, she has been doing this for over 30 years. Her business is in the tank and most of her drivers are leaving the business (all independent). She deals with the largest produce markets in the United States. Gas prices are crippling small businesses.
How about this. How about the gov suspending the “NEW” dry fuel regulation and go back to refining at 1990 levels?
They wont ya know why? Because they dont give a rats ass about us common folk.
And people put up with it..proof that the populace will follow ANY lie told by any liar running for office.
But this is happening NOW:
http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/eve/forums
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_make.html#3choices
http://biodieselcommunity.org/
http://www.smarterfuel.com/
http://healybiodiesel.com/1801.html
There are so many others, I can’t even begin to note everything I’ve researched within just the past few weeks. Folks aren’t waiting, they don’t have to and they can’t. This whole thing with gas is just so much bullshit. The high prices are their last gasp of a dying industry. Americans are inventive and this whole “crisis” won’t be with us much longer, JMHO
Same old news. 25 years of pain ahead, but meanwhile BREAKING: Teddy Kennedy has been rushed to hospital with apparent stroke.
ping
A stroke? Wow, why is that not surprising.
I hear you about the 25 years. Not very many folks are going to go to the trouble of brewing up biodiesel in their back yards or using SVO from WVO from restuarants where an expensive conversion is required.
But take that last link I posted, that dude is selling his biodiesel in Kansas for $2.99 per gallon.
“My Mom is a truck broker, she has been doing this for over 30 years. Her business is in the tank and most of her drivers are leaving the business (all independent).”
I’m a broker and I experience different issues. No shortage of freight or trucks but the carriers are not deadheading ANY. You better have freight coming from exactly where they are to exactly where they want to go. They are not able to eat any miles.
Shiping rates are beginning to go up as they lagged there for a while. We are still making money, just having to make changes. I do raw materials on flats so my market is a bit different from your Mom’s.
How about steam? Runs on anything that burns. Even mummies if you have some handy.
“What’s the transportation cost per ton per mile for the truck versus the rail modes. Long haul I think would favor the rail industry by far and the short haul or distribution sector the truck mode.”
As a general rule, that is true. Several of my customers use rail for long haul. For cost reasons and the fact that if you carry a load out west, it may be hard to get a load back east, so truckers are not real keen on them. They like to stick to familiar lanes whre they can get back home.
Believe it or not, there is a product called Centron that is a diesel enhancer. It can save these truckers at least 10% on diesel by extending diesel mileage. It works by having surfactancts that clean out the water and algae and mineral oil type compounds that improve the engines compression ability.
Feel free to call me if you would have an interest in securing this product Stephen Einhorn 414 453 4488
An ounce of coal will move a ton a mile on rail. About 10x farther than on a rubber tired truck.
Now you know why Warren Buffet is big on train stocks.
Steam as motive power is a great idea, and it was done back in the 1920’s by the Stanley Brothers and Abner Doble.
The Stanley Steamer just blew the waste steam out the exhaust port, necessitating frequent refills of water for the boiler. As far as efficiency of converting the heat energy to motive power, they were neither better nor worse than comparable gasoline engines of the time. There was a wait time to get the water up to boiling at the start, but this was later modified by having a “flash boiler” which provided enough steam for a start in as little as a minute from initiating the start, the remainder of the water in the boiler was brought up to temperature as the vehicle was underway, thus providing for full performance.
The example I saw was at an antique auto show, and the owner had driven the 1909 model in on the freeway. He was keeping up with 70 MPH traffic, quite nicely, but when you think about it, it was a daredevil ride, as those old Stanleys only had two external contracting band brakes on the rear wheels, and they were direct mechanical application. It also had a steam horn that would have done an old steam locomotive proud, with a note that could outblast a Diesel truck.
Abner Doble came to the Stanley Brothers with an important set of modifications, that, he said, would much improve the concept of the steam vehicle. The Stanley brothers sent him packing, so he went home, machined up his own design, got it running, and came back to show off to the Stanley Brothers. Instead of simply letting the exhaust steam be ported off, he sent it through a regenerative cycle, and condensed it back to hot water, which was then fed back into the boiler. The piston-driven engine itself was a four-cylinder double-acting, meaning that steam was ported into the cylinder on one side on the downstroke, and on the other side on the upstroke. A rod connected the piston through one end of the cylinder to a crankshaft on the outside, providing rotary motion. After the steam had exited the high-pressure side, it was then ported to the two larger double-acting cylinders mounted opposite the two smaller high-pressure cylinders, and the remaining energy in the partially spent steam continued to provide more power. When the now nearly spent steam exited the low-pressure cylinders, it was sent through the regenerative cycle, warming water stored in the on-board reserve, before being condensed back to hot water and recycled to the boiler.
There was minimal water lost from this cycle, and virtually all the energy in the head of steam was used directly to propel the vehicle. Abner Doble spurned any kind of mass production, turning out his few vehicles ever built as virtually handmade, and practically every one of them unique, as he would tweak the designs a little bit with each successive vehicle produced.
Piston-driven steam engines produce maximum torque at stall, unlike internal combustion engines, and they need little or no gearing to get going. There is no gearshift transmission, as the steam engine is directly on the drive axle, and the characteristics of a steam engine are such that it can deliver breakaway wheelspin even at relatively high speed and after being already well underway. The more you open the throttle, the faster it goes, until it ceases to have enough steam to continue.
Steam/electric hybrid might move a truck.
I think Warren Buffet either knew about the massive subsidies that would be in the final energy bill, or lobbied to get them in. He’s gotten to be very good at investing in companies that benefit from our tax dollars.
Diesel now costs more than gasoline because the feds made the refineries get more sulfur out of the diesel. Change occurred a few years ago and that was when the prices flipped.
Ban the EPA and individual state’s formulation requirements for gas and diesel and the price will drop. Doing so would prove to people how much of the present price is due to government interference. We sure can’t have that.
Basically, these guys had to be hit over the head with a 2x4 before they would change.
Basically, these guys had to be hit over the head with a 2x4 before they would change.
Once you get beyond 7,000gvw the changes in fuel efficiency are minuscule comparatively. Let us haul 150,000gvw and you would see the cost per ton go down as most trucks would still be getting 4mpg or better.
Remember NAFTA? Remember the politricksters promising Americans jobs-jobs-jobs if NAFTA passed Clinton’s desk? Remember the American truckers protesting NAFTA? Remember the politicians turning their phones off after being deluged for weeks by people against NAFTA? Our leaders and the President passed NAFTA without a hitch... then GATT... etc.
I feel for those of you who think your vote counts, because I used to be there. Sorry to be rude about it. Politics is a game played by masters who have all bases covered and every possible angle plotted. Voters are the pawns who sway eachother but never sway politicians. Voting for 40 years has convinced me of it.
Pray for your leaders. Keep your faith in the one who put them into power, not in your power at the ballot box.
WORD
And the the cost of road maintenance would soar. Big heavy trucks tear up roads far faster than smaller vehicle.
The oil price is set in a global market. Even if the most optimistic estimates of oil reserves in ANWR and other domestic sites prove true, they will barely dent the price.
No, the key is finding ways of moving freight using less fuel, and the easiest way to do that is to move more freight by rail, and more intermodal transport. I'd like to seem wider use of Roadrailers, truck trailers that can double as freight cars. It's no accident that Warren Buffet is long the rail industry.
Not so fast ,, the authors contention that your typical big truck gets about 5mpg just isn’t true ,, most get about 7 mpg ,, a full 40% better than stated and you can bet that owner-operators made sure to keep their tires inflated and to throw in a can of diesel lube every now and again before the prices went out of sight..
I spent about six hours on the Ohio Turnpike last weekend. I stayed close to the speed limit, just to see what it did for my mpg. It made quite a difference. I'd feel a little more sympathy for these guys if they weren't still barreling along at 80 mph.
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