Fuel Slips for Third Week
This story appears in the March 25 print edition of Transport Topics.
Retail fuel prices declined for a third consecutive week as the national average for diesel dipped 4.1 cents to $4.047 a gallon, while gasoline slipped 1.4 cents, according to the Department of Energy.
Diesel has now declined 11.2 cents over the three weeks. Gasoline, which fell to $3.696 a gallon, has come down 8.8 cents after the three straight declines.
Diesel is now 9.5 cents below the corresponding week of last year, while gas is 17.1 cents lower, DOE reported in its March 18 national survey of 350 filling stations.
Meanwhile, the price of crude oil on March 18 was $93.74 but closed slightly down by March 21, hitting $92.45 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Crude sold for $107.27 a barrel a year ago, but dipped as low as $77.69 on June 28.
Denton Cinquegrana, executive editor of U.S. refined products for the Oil Price Information Service, said he doesn’t expect major changes in oil prices in the near future — unless the economy “tanks” or “goes gangbusters.”
“It doesn’t look like it’s breaking one way or the other,” Cinquegrana said. “It looks like it’s actually pretty comfortable in the low 90s [per barrel] right now.”
M. Bjorn Petersen Transportation Inc., Glendale, Ariz., a long-distance carrier with about 60 power units, saves on fuel by running super-single tires, equipping trailers with side skirts, operating diesel-fired heaters in truck cabs and using only one fuel vendor to get discounts.
“Don’t really take it the wrong way if I start crying,” owner M. Bjorn Petersen joked. “It’s not really you. It’s fuel prices.”
Petersen said his company also is saving on fuel by purchasing trucks with only one drive axle.
“Most tractors have two drive axles in the rear,” Petersen said. “We only have one. We get two-tenths per mile more on the one axle.”
The high cost of diesel has sent trucking executives such as Patrick Cozzens, president of Modern Transportation, based in Sewickley, Pa., looking for less expensive alternatives.
Cozzens said in an interview last week that he has been following developments in natural-gas heavy trucks for the past four years as a potential cost-cutter.
Next month, the bulk and liquid carrier will add four trucks powered by Cummins Westport 12-liter ISX12 G natural-gas engines to its fleet of more than 350 tractors.
“There have been a handful of these engines in beta testing,” Cozzens said. “The first two or three are going to the trade-show circuit. But these are the first four to actually go into service.”
Cozzens said his company will use the four trucks that will burn the less expensive fuel for a 310-mile dedicated lane between Moncure, N.C., and Savannah, Ga.
Modern Transportation is leasing the four trucks from Old Dominion Truck Leasing and has worked with Clean Energy Fuels Corp., which has agreed to open a natural-gas fuel station at a Pilot Flying J in Latta, S.C., Cozzens said.
“It’s a real great innovative story of several partners: the customer, the trucking company, the leasing company, the fuel company and the equipment manufacturer, all working together to make this happen. A lot of things had to come together,” Cozzens said.
Modern also governs its trucks at 62 mph on most routes, improving fuel efficiency by almost a half-mile per gallon, Cozzens said.
It also is cutting its fuel costs by switching from an overdrive to a direct-drive transmission, Cozzens said.
Five years ago, the company moved to wide-base tires but now plans to move back to fuel-efficient duals. It also gives semiannual bonuses to drivers based on their fuel efficiency and safety performance.
