By Greg Johnson, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Oct. 31 print edition of Transport Topics.
The average price of retail diesel in the United States rose 2.4 cents a gallon to $3.825 last week, the second straight increase after five weekly declines, the Department of Energy reported.
Trucking’s primary fuel has gained 10.4 cents over those two weeks, after dropping 14.7 cents during the prior five weeks, DOE said after its Oct. 24 survey of fueling stations. The latest increase left diesel 75.8 cents above a year earlier.
DOE also reported that the average price for retail gasoline slipped 1.4 cents to $3.462 a gallon. Gasoline has now declined six out of the past seven weeks for a net decline of 19.9 cents. The current price is 64.5 cents higher than the corresponding week of 2010.
Also last week, crude oil briefly rose to near $95 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange based on supply concerns, the highest level since August, before dropping back, news services reported.
“Diesel is rising because refinery exports of distillates are up, and this puts pressure on domestic supplies,” said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy.com, a group of websites that tracks pump prices. “Gasoline prices are not as high because there is big demand for diesel in Europe, where gasoline is used less.”
This situation encourages refiners to export diesel, which reduces domestic inventory and pushes prices higher.
DOE’s Energy Information Administration reported U.S. distillate exports reached 912,000 barrels per day during the week of Oct. 14 — the highest level this year since Jan. 7.
Exports, coupled with the onset of the heating season, will keep diesel prices high, DeHaan said.
High pump prices leave truckers to press on with fuel-saving programs.
For example, Miller Truck Lines Inc. said it has implemented a program to purchase, and then finance, auxiliary power units for its owner-operators.
“We just rolled it out,” said fuel manager Monica Neeley. “Fuel is the largest expense we incur and we’re constantly working to reduce that expense.”
She said Miller already makes APUs available for company drivers, and wanted to help its owner-operators reduce their fuel costs.
“They keep us in business, so we need to keep them in business,” she said. Under the program, owner-operators make a hefty down payment, which she de-clined to disclose, and then pay off the balance.
According to a salesman at RigMaster Power Corp., APUs generally start at $7,800. He said APUs consume as little as 0.3 gallon of diesel an hour when they replace idling truck engines as a source of power for heating and cooling.
Despite high fuel prices, an executive with Zenith Freight Lines LLC said the company does not employ speed governors. Instead, the 90-truck, Conover, N.C.-based truckload hauler of furniture trusts its 110 team drivers to run between 65 mph and 68 mph, said maintenance supervisor Oral Roberts.
However, Zenith does try to limit idling and has a five-minute engine cutoff, he said.
Meanwhile, crude oil on Oct. 26 fell below $92 a barrel after DOE said stockpiles gained 4.74 million barrels in the latest week to 337.6 million. The increase was far larger than analysts had expected, Bloomberg News reported.
