Diesel Prices Are Bringing Some Trucks to a Standstill (Peak Oil is here)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&e=2&u=/latimests/dieselpricesarebringingsometruckstoastandstill

(snip)

His Peterbilt cab and 48-foot refrigerated Great Dane trailer aren't hauling cheese from the Central Valley to Minnesota. The rig isn't delivering groceries across the state or taking produce to market from California fields.

Telles said he and his truck are staying home in Pinole, Calif., about 25 miles northeast of San Francisco, until diesel prices fall or freight rates rise. "I won't haul," he said, "unless I can make a profit."

Diesel is often an afterthought when consumers and politicians are howling over high gasoline prices. But right along with gasoline, diesel prices have exploded throughout California in recent weeks. That has pushed up costs for truckers like Telles, as well as for railroads, construction companies and farmers, among others, and threatens the state's economic recovery.

it won't really be "noticeable" until about 5 years down the
road.
But rest assured, we'll KNOW when it really has hit the fan.

if they can't make a profit hauling them.

Yikes!

That could make it a major problem very quickly

there won't be a disaster because of this. It will mean consumer inflation soon, though.

that's the biggest problem Peak Oil will bring. Massive inflation. Usually leads to much political unrest

My main freight company has placed a six percent fuel surcharge on all freight delivered. It is very noticeable to me. I spend approximately a quarter million a year in freight and six percent is very noticeable for me. :shrug: My prices reflect that added cost also.

but it will be a while before the "average joes" start to really
see it. I give it anywhere from 3 to 5 years before its full
brunt is felt by the sheeple.

I can imagine that as these costs mount...that you will have to start
making some very serious decisions in running your company. Namely,
hiring/firing people, etc.

This is known as "phase one" of peak oil. It'll be gradual...

Solectria sells diesel-electric hybrid vehicles, and I've seen one of their hybrid trucks operate in person.

The drivetrain provides an additional 35% increase in fuel efficiency over the already considerable efficiency of the diesel engine by itself.

http://www.solectria.com/news/sep0799.html

As truck mechanic myself this making things more complicated but also cost effective is good. Industry and other stuff like this should have been going this way from back in 70s when the oil cartel held the world captive. It's only too late when you give up.

The World needs to be more educated, interested and involved. Efficiency with a Ecology is how mother nature works. Man will have become like her if our species is to survive.

Later is becoming NOW


http://www.centralohioansforpeace.org/photos.asp#Photos_jun_03


Light one candle...and pass it on.

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www.brainchildmedia.net

We have real problems and lack the time to attend to the phony ones. We need your brain to focus on the real problems.

Check the oil company profits, and then see if you can find out what they are doing with them besides contributing to George Bush.

If you are really worried about gasoline prices, work to end military demand for oil.

its reality.
Again, peak oil is not about the "end" of oil...its the end of
CHEAP OIL.

is a fact. It simply means that at some point, worldwide production will begin to slow from its highest point, with the result that prices will begin an inexorable rise from which they will not retreat.

The only question is "when". The predictions from those who study this in the profession are from 2015 to 2040.

The U.S. reached peak production in the 1970's and we now supply far less than half our own oil.

There will be serious consequences when production begins to decline and prices start getting very high. Keep in mind that most farm fertilizer is made from oil.

I love Neil Young and that article is an inspiration. I gave it a 5. :7


TYY

another interesting link

http://www.smartmoney.com/barrons/index.cfm?Story=20040315

excerpt:

But this time they and Mr. Market may both be wrong. As the price of crude has moved steadily higher in the past five years, the market had assumed that each increase would be relatively short-lived. Supplies always were ample to meet demand, even as it expanded both in the U.S. and elsewhere around the globe, most recently in China.

That may not continue if, as some experts expect, oil output reaches a peak and subsequently declines in not too many years. The era of cheap, plentiful oil may be coming to a close.

"If you do not include , we are at the peak of oil production. And if OPEC production is included, peak production is pushed out five years or so," says Felix Zulauf, founding partner of Switzerland's Zulauf Asset Management and a member of the Barron's Roundtable. "Before the end of the decade is over, we will have $60 oil," he concludes.

An extreme forecast, to be sure, but one consistent with the estimates of Colin Campbell, a 72-year-old retired geologist who believes production will peak around 2010 and the world will ultimately produce a total of 1.8 trillion barrels of oil. "Everybody calls me a pessimist, but I may turn out to be an optimist," says the Brit, who boasts a doctorate in geology from Oxford and did stints at major oil concerns including Texaco, BP and Amoco from 1957 till 1990.

...more...

(for those that doubt "peak oil" or do not understand what it means :)

Can't seem to get any technology to conserve fuel, oh, no, too expensive....Let the Japanese do it. It's 1973 all over again.

How many of those high-profit SUV's is Daimler-Chrysler gonna sell, along with their infantilely-advertised Dodge trucks, when it costs $4 a mile to move one?

Really short-sighted, if you ask me. but this is the New American Business Model, get in, suck it dry, and GET OUT.

It isn't just the car makers, it's the car buying public too. This country will go into a funk when it can't buy gas guzzlers anymore. That's exactly what happened back in the 70's. It's kind of like Germany after WWI. For most people it will be the end of the world. People will become depressed, quit buying and the economy will turn to s**t. People have to be hit over the head with a two by four to get the message.

Myself I look forward to the day when we are all driving smaller and slower cars and there aren't as many on the road.

The buying public demands those big gas hogs because the marketing people tell them they fill an empty place in their lives... "Got a small Dick? make up for it with a BIG TRUCK! Women won't give you the time of day? Get an Empenada!"

Big vehicles are synonymous with prosperity and success. Both in and out of the bedroom, it seems.
And the fact that the IRS lets you deduct 100 kilobucks in the first year for "business purposes"....

Me, I'd like to keep my Ranger for hauling mulch and stuff, and have something like an Isetta or a Messerschmidt for commuting. But then, I don't have any "issues" with what's in the ol' codpiece, either....

but the automakers have historically used power and size to sell vehicles. They created the demand.

The publics perceptions have been altered by the oil, concrete, and auto industries.

There was a great documentary about it I saw once called, "Taken For a Ride".

http://www.lib.unc.edu/house/mrc/films/full.php?film_id=9903

If the public had clean, efficient, and affordable mass transit (as we once did), they'd use it in a minute. Imagine getting home after work without the mental stress of fighting traffic on the freeways (which grow more monstrous every year). It's a pro-family idea! :)

Then imagine the money the average household would have left over at the end of the month when they no longer have to pay auto insurance, parking, car payments, fuel and maintenance expenses. What a boom to consumer spending that would be! Talk about your high standard of living!

Owning a car is a burden and should be talked about as such. I remember when it hit me about ten years ago that I was driving to a job I hated to pay for the car that I only needed to take me to the job I hated. It's the proverbial viscious circle. I think a lot of people are in that position.

The Japanese kicked the US automotive industry in the rear with fuel efficient cars in the '70's.

Here we go again..

Does that Dart have a 225 in it?
Slant-sixes RULE!

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personally I don't like 6's, I luv the big V-8's myself

but I drive an old F150 4x4 with a camper on it,

not much, about 5,000 kliks in the last two years . .

oh right, . .

re: slant 6's

Your're right - they are one of the toughest, most fuel efficient engines ever built. . .

I worked in a wrecking yard once, and one of the first things we ever did when "stripping" a car was to test, and remove the engine, it's the biggest moneymaker onmost junkers, well, used to be anyways

Anyway, I started to pull a Slant6 and the boss came along and asked me what the heck i was doing

So, I told him, the engine was great, so I was pulling it out

He screams at me " They're ALL friggen great! I haven't sold one of those in years,!!


They are just one of those engines like the 283, the 289, and the 318, that the car falls apart around the engine!

(sigh) I miss the "real" cars of the pre-80's

I sold my Dart "Swinger" many years ago...I always had people stop and tell me their Dart stories. Used to find phone numbers under the windshield wipers with offers to buy...Don't get that kind of attention with a mini-van.

I had a '77 Corolla hatch back thats probably still going down the road somewhere......

Deja vu - I sometimes feel like I'm in Groundhog Day.

Here's a story on that strike which struck particulary hard here in PA, especially after a trucker was killed.

http://ydr.com/story/foi/18309/

The strike was taking its toll in Pennsylvania. Numerous trucking firms completely shut down operations because non-striking truckers were being threatened, according to the Guard’s report. Other firms indicated that they would make deliveries provided trucks were escorted and trucking firms were secured around the clock.

The strike had disrupted food and gasoline deliveries.

The Guard responded by providing escorts for commercial trucks and security for commercial buildings, especially bulk gasoline businesses. The Guard also performed aerial patrols of major highways and patrolled the highways and the turnpike with Pennsylvania State Police.

During the strike, the Guard escorted 2,523 vehicles, provided security at 186 businesses, guarded 225 highway overpasses, conducted 794 patrols and accompanied 591 state troopers on patrol. Lt. Edward Snyder, with the State Police Criminal Investigation Unit in Reading, was a young trooper working outside of Philadelphia when he was paired up with a guardsman.

“Each patrol car had a national (guardsman) with them,” Snyder said. “They were there as extra law enforcement.”

After several non-striking trucks were hit with bricks in their windshields (I believe causing one death).

It was a nasty strike, people were afraid to drive for fear that a brick would hit their car instead of the truck it was intended for. People get mean when their are disparate and the Independent truckers were disparate in 1974.

One of the factors in the Kent State debacle, was that the Guardsmen at Kent State had NOT been mobilized for Kent State but a 1970 Trucker Strike complaining of the increase price of fuel.

The US was reaching its peak oil production and prices were high compared a few years earlier. For example I remember riding with my Father and getting gas at 35 cent a gallon about 1970 (This is BEFORE self-serve). I have seen pictures of Gasoline stations in the mid-1960s with 23 Cents a gallon pricing (But I have no memory of such prices I only turn 10 in 1968). From 23 to 35 cent a gallon is a 1/3 price increase and it hurt truckers. It was this price increase that the Truckers went on strike about (Through all their wanted was increase prices for hauling items cross country, their knew that the Government could so NOTHING about the price of fuel, but the Government and the shippers could provide higher prices for hauling shipments).

The Guardsmen were upset for having to be on duty so long without any real break. Such activity (Mostly standing around being bored as you perform guard duty) is terrible on morale and efficiency of the troops.

Please note one of the problem with using troops, is if you use them, they have no time to train so their combat efficiency drops. The regular forces have the same problem, if you are USING a unit, it can not train, and since it can not train, its combat ability drops. This is why you hear the Pentagon saying it is over extended. The Army like two units in training for every unit in actual use. Because we concentrate on training, our our forces were so good at defeating Saddam. Today, those same units are not as good as their were during the actual fighting, the reason being their have no time to train while their are patrolling.

This was one of the problem at Kent State, Governor Rhodes of Ohio had called up the National Guard so often that its training had suffered. Do to this lack of training as to riot control and what NOT to do, was one of the reason for the Kent State Debacle. Tired troopers, lead by tired officers drove some of the demonstrators from one part of the campus to another. Once they had done that the Guardsmen found themselves outflanked. The Unit should have retreated, but its officers lack of training lead to no such order being given. The Unit knew it could not Attack any further, but no order to retreat was given. In this mess someone opened fired and the rest is history.

I blame Rhodes for over using the Guard and thus not giving them time for proper training, but that is one of the affects of excessive call up of the National Guard, a lesson George Bush seems never to have learned. I hope no new Kent States occur, but given that the National Guard has been concentrating on warfare in Iraq, its riot control training has been neglected. I can see a future Kent State if the Guard is Called out and do to lack of Training another Kent State occurs.

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because nobody would haul the food to the stores because gas prices are too high ......

That's the beginning of Peak Oil.

Inflation. Demand outstripping supply.

Get used to it.

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this is all I found



So

I guess I won't get a response . .

gee

I missed the fun . .

Yes, many products would become more expensive, and many people would lose jobs if long-distance trucking becomes more expensive due to fuel. However, it should also push more small businesses to spring up to produce many of the goods now imported from other regions locally. In this example, truckers are transporting cheese from California to Minnesota. Why!?!? Minnesota has a booming dairy industry. Why can't we produce enough cheese to supply our own demand and employ Minnesotans here? If followed across the nation, the re-emergence of small and medium businesses should help create jobs, and knock off massive community-killers like Walmart that rely on cheaply transported crap to stock their shelves. On a worldwide scale, it would force the US to become more self-sufficient once again as costs of shipping products from overseas go up. If companies can't cheaply import their goods from a foreign country, there would be much less incentive to export jobs. They would have to keep their factories here in the US and employ US citizens.

He said fuel prices are seriously cutting into his profits. He usually long-hauls produce from Florida/California but has started running short-haul dry freight at comparable freight rates. As he says, it's an economic no-brainer.