Gas prices take slight dip but still around $2 gallon
Gas. Can’t live without it, can’t afford to buy it.
This seems to be the lament of most Americans these days. But oddly enough, there also seems to be a major attitude change over the last couple of decades.
Where once the cost of fuel drove Americans to buy compacts and fuel-efficient vehicles, today’s roads are populated by gas-guzzling SUVs, pickups, luxury sedans and recreational vehicles, and it’s not much different around here.
Warren countians have cringed as they watched the price at the pumps climb above the $2 per gallon mark for regular. Most everyone has felt the pinch, but most haven’t been getting rid of their beloved SUVs. They’ve cut back on other non-essential expenses to compensate.
The good news is gas prices are easing up a bit. A nationwide survey reports gasoline prices fell more than 6 cents per gallon in the past couple of weeks. According to the Lundberg Survey the average nationwide price of a gallon of self-serve regular fell 6.4 cents to $2.15 per gallon, said publisher Trilby Lundberg.
This has been borne out in Warren County as we’ve seen the prices drop from around $2.04 per gallon to $1.99 at many stores.
The lower gas prices are due, in part, to a drop in the price of crude oil, which went from an all-time high off $55.39 on April 22, but has since dropped to $46.80.
According to Lundberg, prices should drop even further, maybe another 5 cents.
While some have blamed local distributors and stores for the increases, and the disparities in price between some areas, the people who run these enterprises are quick to point out their prices are controlled nationally by the major fuel distributors and their own parent companies in the case of many branded suppliers. And these, in turn, are controlled by the ever more volatile price of crude oil.
There are those of us who must purchase fuel in order to do our jobs and make our living, and of these, probably no one group has been more affected than independent truckers, like Warren County’s Billy Joe Starkey. Starkey says as fuel prices have risen it has been harder and harder for him to absorb the cost.
“Diesel’s got so high you can’t make any money,” Starkey said. “It’s around $2 a gallon.” Starkey says, as far as he can recall, the price this time last year was around $1.30 per gallon. “It’s gone up real bad.”
Starkey says it’s especially hard on individual owner/operators.
“I have to pay my own truck payment,” he said, “and everything. I mean my insurance and all, health insurance. If you’re an owner/operator you have to pay everything. My tags are around $1,500 to $1,600 a year. You have to pay fuel tax, you have to pay so much to each state for even running through their state, a fuel tax.”
Starkey says the high cost of fuel is really hard on individual operators and small fleets. While some of the bigger trucking companies can compensate, most smaller operators are unable to do so. Starkey feels the government should step in.
“Prices need to go way on down,” Starkey said. “It needs to be regulated or something.”
Some local officials are strongly concerned with this issue and how it is affecting our economy in general, like County Commissioner Bill Zechman, who says our national energy policy is untenable.
“Oil is supposed to lubricate,” Zechman said, “but now it is sand in the gears of our national economy.”
Zechman says fuel costs leaves many families struggling as it eats into their incomes, particularly for people who find themselves forced to commute significant distances to their jobs.
“What are these poor people going to do,” Zechman said. “It is a tax. It is the cost of doing business. If they’ve got a job where they’re making $100 a day, but they’re paying $20 a day for their gasoline, and it goes up to $25 or $30 a day. This is not a sustainable model, for individuals or society.”
Zechman says the Bush administration’s hands-off attitude toward oil prices has been going on for too long, and has been unduly influenced by the Bush’s ties with the industry.
“A lot of people think the Bush administration doesn’t have an energy policy,” Zechman said. “Not true. They do have an energy policy – but the energy industry wrote it.”
Still, Zechman feels the situation may result in a different energy policy as the political climate changes.
“I would not want to leading a political party that got tagged with this disaster,” Zechman said. “I would not.”