Our local TV station had a report last nite that groceries prices have increased considerably in the last few weeks. They said meat prices are up 5% which they blamed on the higher cost of corn due to the ethanol push. Diary & veggies were also up & those increases were blamed on the rising cost of oil.
Actually OIL PRICES are the main reason why food proces are going up. The trucking comapnies that deliver the food to the gorcery warehouses can only eat teh higher fuel costs for so long. Every company out there has a Fuel Surcharge on every mile they are running anymore. Now the stores are being forced to pass the costs onto us the consumer and it may not seem like much but it adds up. We pay a few cents more for every item but it adds up in the totals at the end. Yet you see the OIL compaines report 9 Billion in profits each QUARTER and nothing gets done about it.
From somebody who works in this industry, I can tell ya I always have to answer as to why prices are going up, especially milk. Very often its due to increased transportation fees for the usual reason, fuel prices.
Several things here need clarification. As a trucker you’ll notice that diesel fuel really hasn’t changed much in price over the last 6 months, while it is gas that has risen in price. Thus, the cost of delivering food hasn’t really gone up, yet food prices have risen during this same period. Now, it could just be a lag time from when diesel spiked up last year to that spike affecting retail costs, but the rise in food costs right now is more relatable to the spike in commodity prices due to the ethanol mandate.
That being said, what would you like to have done to the OIL companies? It’s not their fault they can’t build new refineries to meet growing demand, what incentive do they have? Too many environmental regs, too low a profit margin on refining oil into fuel, too many EPA seasonal boutique blends to have to retool for every 6 months, too much liability to take on…heck, only a fool would try and build a refinery in the US these days!
Exploration and drilling? Same story, the oil companies are not allowed to explore/drill/develop potential new oil fields in ANWR, off the California coast, et al. How are we supposed to bring down the base price of oil if we don’t add to the supply from our own known domestic sources?
You know perfectly well that when supplies become
FM remember I am a FORMER OTR TRUCKER and there is more to it than what you just listed there. As to your suggestion on the LCV and heavier gross weights FORGET IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. The drivers of today have a hard enough time handling the 53 footers into spaces designed for 40 footers in citys like Boston Philadelphia NYC and others all over the east coast. I for one also would not want to try to take a load that weighs more than 80K down some of the mountains in the west yes they do it now BUT WHERE they do it the DRIVERS ARE BETTER TRAINED. The CDL mills would not know how to train someone how to handle a load that weighs 120K or so. It would take converting ALL THE SOYBEANS AND OILSEEDS over to even get 1/2 of the boideisel needs that the US uses. The simple fact is we are a oil based econemy and there is little we can do about it however the War in Iraq has done little to help matters since that has increased the Goverments own usage by around 200% of diesel and jet fuels. Refinery capicaty is done some right now but will be at same levels in a couple weeks. The trucking industy as a whole was just forced to replace all of its equipment to meet new emission standards and the new ones are even worse and cost even more. All those costs get passed on to the customers and us. It is a circle and we are the final ones that get hurt. Besides if they do raise the limits on weights and allow LCV’s look for alot of the experienced drivers to RETIRE and you will have drivers with and avarage of 1 year OTR time handling those 120K lbs missles and just remember what happened in San Fransisco that would happen a HELL more often those drivers are less safe than the older drivers. I forgot more about trucking than those schools EVER teach any of their students. Why do the companies that train have a 6 to 8 week training program anymore it is to get these students off the range into the real world.
I had one student
FM, I gotta say Greater GVW and Lengths…
WILL.
NEVER.
HAPPEN.
Today’s drivers cannot even get a 53’ trailer into some of those grocery docks MUCH less manuver safely worth a damn anywhere in really big old urban areas. Sure, they can go to Walmart with thier acreage of loading docks and comchecks but truly great old food distrubition areas still in operation in the Northeast demands the best driver we can dispatch up there.
The ONLY place I have accepted those bigger vehicles is on the Turnpike and in Michigan with the B trains. They dont put children on those or pups fresh from driving school and brainwashed to run 10,000 miles each week for that wonderous paycheck.
Grocery prices go up. I still shop for the same quanity of food items each week. For example I consume 5 washington Red Apples each week. The cost on those apples rose from 25 cents a pound through 50 then finally around a 1.00 a pound.
I have seen the Yakima and up into those parts along the Columbia where they had great Apple farms with trees groaning with BIG apples going to wastelands full of tree stumps and back again as the growers go through the best of times and worst of times.
Personally Im GLAD someone gets a load of apples across the cabbage in winter to my grocery store.
What are you going to do with the old 40 foot boxes hunh? Stuff it with 48,000 pounds on the floor and stuff a 53 footer with another several tons and add a third axle under there?
Add that the requirement for drivers to unhook and slide the tandems back to the rear causes problems.
No, Very few drivers who are not already functioning effectively in the food business know how to deal with delivering food. They need to be issued a trainer who will show them how to do it properly for a few weeks, made to hand unload the stuff and then demonstrate being able to get into a variety of places without tearing the truck up.
Some of those places trucks are parked with thier mirriors inside of eac
Wow, no need for me to jump on the trucking wagon as our two experts have so well outlined the reasons not to increase weights. Thanks Safety and Ed.
Our problem with fuel prices right now is refinery capacity. Excellent Wall Street Journal article today in section 1. Oil prices are well below the $78 high reached last year. Margins on refining are at an all time high.
These are very interesting times. The green team and the average family will be at odds pretty quickly if push comes to shove. Higher energy costs will just gut the average family’s finances.
ed
I have not seen a jump in prices at my local supermarket. Milk is still $1.49 for 1/2 gallon of 1%.
I have expected prices to increase in my town because of electricity costs. My house has electric forced air. My January bill in 2006 was $160. This year it was $402. Some of the convenience stores have unplugged the ice cream coolers and shortened their hours.
Deregulation of electricity caused the spike in areas served by AmerenIP. This is short story of what happened. 10 years ago, a rate freeze was imposed, thinking that competition would occur when freeze ended. Illinois Power generated nearly all their own power with coal fired plants. Recently, Ameren bought IP, then sold the generating facilities to a subsidy of Ameren, which is not regulated. When the freeze ended, AmerenIP told lawmakers they were at the mercy of the power producers and would go bankrupt if the rate freeze was extended. When we rate payers saw our power bills, we complained. The lawmakers promised they would look into it.
In addition to some good explanations below, I’d add it’s important to remember we are in a global economy. Crude oil prices are determined by traders on the international commodity exchanges. Production and consumption overseas plays a big role on prices over here.
Oil companies don’t have much control over the prices for crude oil they buy. As I’ve seen explained, Saudi Arabia, for example, announces each month how much oil they will sell next month at what price. Take it or leave it. First come, first serve. They are an exception to my first paragraph because they do not sell through the commodity exchanges. However, they do follow the prices on the exchanges to determine their prices. That way, they need not share their profits with the commodity traders.
Trucks, by the way, consume 3 times the fuel than trains calculated on a ton-mile basis. Therefore, we should haul as much as we can by rail. (Not to hurt the feelings of my trucking friends. I know several.)
Food prices have been reported as increasing in reports made over the past year with much of it tied to ethanol production. Corn prices went from about $2.00 / bushel to about $4.50 / bushel. It’s down now to about $3.70 / bushel because farmers planted man y more acres of corn this year tha previously. That’s not due to transport costs. It’s supply and demand. Some of the increase was due to weather as Australia had a dought in its corn fields last season. Also, USA diverted a much higher percentage of its corn output to ethanol. Higher feed corn prices resulted in higher prices for meat. There was a huge percent increase to chicken prices this past winter.
Weather, too, impacted produce prices for California crops this past winter.
Any vegaterians out there? [;)]
FM,picture this.A 60’ trailer,120,000 gross, and Swift on the side.
I think Im going to be faint.
Especially when I consider inadequate leased power designed to be thrown away in 2 year’s time for more inadequate power that is governed and casterated at less than permissible speed limits existing today.
As far as I am concerned a company truck MUST be capable of generating full horsepower at 2100 RPM (Or 1900 or whatever they are now) at the top of the top gear availible to the transmission. Not having the top two gears unuseable at 1400 Rpm because the speed is maxed out at 62 mph on a very slight uphill grade.
I’ll tell you a dirty secret. Trucking companies cut thier trucks down speed wise and save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year in Insurance Premium costs.
Imagine paying 100 dollars for three months insurance on your personal vehicle. Now imagine if you agreed to cut your vehicle down to 50 mph and pay only 30 dollars every three months. No matter what happens unless downhill, your vehicle as it is right now will only do 50 mph.
What a waste.
Oh yea, one other thing. Increase the Vehicle weights causes our fine DOT to writhe in agony over entirely new weights, length and gross ratings for Scale Law enforcements, permits, re-trofitting max scale capacity and building bigger on-off ramps at interstates and stronger bridges to withstand the increased beasting from the suddenly massive, long and heavy vehicles.
Why not put two or three drivers to work with several trucks to haul the same load and charge the customer the bill for the rate times two or three? One of my companies used to split two steel coils onto one coil per truck to double thier money and reduce the stress on the trailers that way. it was much easier to run one big coil.
Yes we can put two coils on one truck… but why bother?
FM one more thing, it probably didn’t probably didn’t help food prices when they found melamine in that Chinese gluten being fed to pigs.
Hey FM who is going to freaking going to clean up a spill of say 80K of Liquid sugar or Veggie oil that one of these LCV’s spills all over the road and into a pristine waterway like near Glenwood Springs CO. Heaven help us he is caring say a pesticide or a herbicide or even worse Chorline gas or something worse and we do haul stuff worse than that. Heavier and Longer Trucks have NO PLACE in the eastern US one there are WAY TO FEW PARKING PLACES now you try to get a parking place in the NE after 5 PM forget it let alone after LCV’s are allowed. You live were roads are wide cities were laid out were trucks have room to get in and out for the most part. Out east there is NO ROOM FOR ANYTHING BIGGER than a 40 foot trailer pulled by a cabover yet we are taking 53 footers pulled by conventials in there all the time and the ACCIDENT RATE shows it.
We do haul well over 80K
Need over sized permits, Weight permits many axles, special rigged power and escorts and lots of time.
I remembered that our containers used to have permits allowing 98,000 pounds gross weight provided that the box’s maximum gross is not exceeded. I have had rigs weighing up to and beyond 130,000 and believe me, performance suffered; the resulting citations wiped out any profit for that run in the thousands of dollars and that was at one scale house. I think now they try to improve by putting third axle under the boxes on the chassis but I have reason to believe that many of our boxes are overweight.
My solution would be to have regional groups consisting of daycabs taking trailers to and from trains at railheads all around the USA but positioned to favor how the products flow. Instead of trying to dispatch 400 truck drivers out of Nogales to Chicago with Produce, I have a bunch of Nogales locals load these into trains and have the Chicago people unload it.
What does LCV stand for? -Thanks
Longer Combination Vehicle. You’re welcome.
It’s now legal in every state to pull two 28’ foot trailers behind one tractor. In some states you can legally pull three on designated routes. On some routes (New York Turnpike and others) it’s legal to pull two 48’ foot trailers (Maybe 53’ now) behind a tractor. These longer combinations are called “LCV’s”.
You also got your “Rocky Mountain Doubles” - a 28 behind a longer trailer and your “B” trains where the kingpin of the second trailer rests on the rear of the front trailer instead of a “dolly”. “B” trains (they’re trucks) actually work pretty good because they’re basically like an articulated railcar.
The push is on from the truckers to expand their use. Ain’t gonna help 'em. Maybe UPS and FedEx would benifit. They could possibly hang on to some of the perceived savings. The truckload carriers would just get headaches - they’d end up passing the savings through to their customers, have more wrecks, and beat the highways up more than they are.
LCVs can work in areas away from population centers (Utah), but if anyone tried to bring them through the Chicago area it would be a disaster.
The ones that operate in New York State don’t go near “The Big Apple”. They have to break 'em apart and dray 'em - just like a TOFC load.
Ed and Safety,
One question: How is it that the Canadians are getting by so well with heavier GVW trucks on their roads? All I’m suggesting is that we take a look at their regs and see if they can be finessed into our road/TOFC system.
It’ll never happen? Hey, we all thought France would never elect a pro-American conservative as their president…
Moral: Stranger things have happened than increased US GVW/LCV standards. Like the American people pulling their collective heads out of their…um…waste rejection portals, and actually doing THE RIGHT THING.
I have hauled into Canada quite often and had no trouble with thier weights or roads. Just made sure I kept my rig within USA standards which is somewhat “Lighter” than that of Canada. Frankly once I crossed the Ambassador into Ontario I could care less what Canada thought of my vehicle weight.
To be honest I had three concerns when over the border.
1- Customs. Always Customs before anything else. Sometimes I wait a day in the Detroiter until absolutely certain the paper work is in order.
2- Grocery shopping. There are some items we can get that is NOT availible in the USA
3- Getting out via Buffalo when empty out of the Toronto area safely.
And finally the performance of our Governments dont really matter in domestic issues. They say the people has a voice but in the Halls of Congress those voices are very faint indeed.
For one thing FM in Canada there you can not pull a LCV truck til you have at least 3 years OTR experiance. 2 the roads up there are built in the European model where the contractor has to STAND BEHIND HIS WORK FOR 30 YEARS. Here as soon as the work is done it is the states problem. Also Canada is the 2nd or 3rd largest country in land mass but has not even 1/6 of our population so the roads execpt by Montreal and Toronto are no were near as crowded. 3 Down here in the States the ATA and the Mega-Carriers call the shots up in Canada it is the Insurance Companies and the Goverment that do the RCMP aka the Mounties are not someone to screw with I have seen to many drivers end up losing everything because of being a typical UGLY AMERICAN up there. The thing is our INFASTRUCTURE will not allow the larger trucks on the roads that plus the number of drivers with 10+ years of experiance that would tell the compaines KISS MY A$$ as they walked out when forced to pull them. They may work out in the west but here in the Midwest and East Coast NO WAY IN HE!! would I want to see them the 53 footer is bad enough out here.
While I don’t push a rig for a living and will gladly defer to those who do to provide the details, my observations around Chicago show that 53’ trailers are a very tight fit in most parts of the city and I do remember that the brief usage of 57’ trailers was even worse. Most truck and intermodal terminals in the Chicago area do not have direct access to the various expressways, so the drivers have to maneuver down city streets that are pretty tight even for smaller vehicles.
A question for the drivers here: I have heard that triple bottoms (3-28’ pups) do not track very well and tend to fishtail. Is this true?