By Greg Johnson, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Sept. 26 print edition of Transport Topics.
The average pump price for U.S. retail diesel declined for a second straight week, sliding 2.9 cents to $3.833 a gallon, the Department of Energy reported.
The decline followed a 0.6-cent dip the prior week, DOE said after its Sept. 19 survey of fueling stations.
Although diesel is now 29.1 cents below its recent high of $4.124 set on May 2, the price is still 87.3 cents higher than a year ago.
DOE also said the price of gasoline dropped 6 cents to $3.601 a gallon in the week. It also was the second straight decline, following a 1.3-cent decline the week before. Like diesel, gasoline is 87.8 cents higher than the corresponding week a year ago.
“We’re entering a period where traditionally, there is a little bit of weakness in the price of diesel,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with the Oil Price Information Service, citing the end of the summer driving season. “There’s a lot of fear in [the markets], and fear translates into lower prices.”
Despite the recent drop in diesel, truckers are continuing to seek ways to keep their fuel expenses in check.
“We’ve [cut back] the speed on our trucks to 68 miles per hour, and we have a no-idling policy,” said Jim Coleman, operations manager of motor carrier D.G. Coleman Inc., Commerce City, Colo.
Coleman, whose company operates 78 tractors, prefers every truck fill up from the company’s fuel tank. But because that’s not always practical, he’s worked out a deal with Travel Centers of America to cover his fuel transaction fees.
“That saves us 3 cents a gallon,” said Coleman, who’s in his 29th year at the company that his father, Dan, founded 40 years ago.
When D.G. Coleman trucks need to fuel on the road, they head into a TA or a Petro travel center, he said. But bulk fuel purchases are the way to go, Coleman insisted.
“I can control bulk fuel purchases a lot better than I can do with the on-the-road buys,” he said.
Similarly, Fanelli Trucking & Warehousing also stays on top of its fuel by limiting over-the-road fuel purchases.
“We buy in bulk so we try to fill up at our terminal,” said Earl McCardle, president of the Pottsville, Pa.-based regional carrier. Fanelli Trucking turns out about 85 trucks daily and each one covers about 2,200 miles a week, McCardle said.
He also said Fanelli offers financial incentives to its drivers based on their miles per gallon and reductions in idling time. He declined to specify what the payments are.
If sellers need the business as part of their weekly cycle and the trucking company has a large enough volume, it can probably get a good price when buying fuel in bulk, said Charlie Harper, who handles shipments of refrigerated and dry freight for Miller Truck Lines LLC in Stroud, Okla. Harper explained that MTL operates about 400 trucks that run about 250,000 to 300,000 miles a week, Harper said.
Meanwhile, crude oil for November delivery remained relatively stable last week, closing at just under $86 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Sept. 21.
Oil, which has risen 19% over the past 12 months, had risen immediately after DOE reported that domestic oil supplies were at their lowest level since January, but dropped after the Federal Reserve said there remained significant downside risks to the economy, Bloomberg News reported.
