Life on the Road - Trucking News Blog

The oil companies….right?

Well, actually no.  The oil Companies, those eeevil oil companies that have invested untold billions of dollars in exploration, production, development, research ,transportation and retail of fuel, nope…not them.  They’re the LAST people that should be blamed.

They’re running as fast as they can while governments of all flavors heap extra taxes and fee’s upon them. Citizens groups and the Main Sewer Media heap scorn upon them and normal everyday folks complain.  What are they to do?

The government, aided and abetted by the greens won’t let the oil companies drill in several places where we KNOW there is oil.  ANWAR (what a misname.  A bleaker area you’d have to go to the moon to find and what wildlife?), the west coast,and  the east coast.  There’s oil and gas there but ;it’s off limits.

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As I wrote in a previous post. Fuel prices are high and they’re going to STAY high.

And this is a GOOD thing.

(boink!!!!!!!???, this is a good thing? How can that be? Stay tuned, more on that later)

Whatever can we do?

Well, buying a new truck is right out. I checked into that this last month. To replace my old KW it would cost me just about TWICE what I paid for it about nine years ago. Not quite but almost. I paid ninety something thousand in the year two thousand and the local KW dealer wants almost a hundred and seventy thousand for a very similar replacement.

And the new truck get’s worse fuel economy.

So no thank you. I’ll overhaul and rebuild for a while.

How long a while?

That’s kind of what THIS post is about.

Things are being done. It’s possible to get diesel from other places than an oil well,

from plants, algae and trash.

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You’re really, really not going to like this. The gloom and doom folks are getting pretty prevalent. Pretty well positioned and fairly authoritative too.

High Gas Prices are here to Stay.

says, in part, that:

“NEW YORK, April 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - CIBC (CM: TSX; NYSE) -
Increasingly tight oil supplies will continue to push the price of oil
higher with the cost of crude hitting US$150 a barrel by 2010 and soaring
to US$225 a barrel by 2012, forecasts a new energy report from CIBC World
Markets.”

Home in Texas the Houston Chronicle reports:

< There’s more to $120 oil than speculation

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When Life hands you a Lemon, make Lemonade. Or When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Or It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the DOG

and like that.

Winston Churchill said…..”"never, ever,ever, give up

Comprende?

However, not giving up, not quitting may not be the same thing as continuing with the same old thing.

Tactics they call it. The strategy is the same (make more money) but the tactics might change.

If one thing doesn’t work, try something else.

Almost every truck driver started out pulling a dry box. Of those few that didn’t many of THEM started by pulling a standard Flatbed. (of course there are the exceptions like me. I started out hauling bombs during the VietNam War, Police Action, Conflict)

Dry Vans have the highest turnover in the Industry. It’s no wonder a HUGE percentage of folks who think they “have what it takes” to be a trucker don’t. Just about EVERY trucker is “one in a hundred”. THAT many drop out, more maybe.

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run in circles, scream and shout! It’s the end of the world isn’t it? Global meltdown,  Economic Recession, terrible, bad. Oh yeah, I forgot, People are ALREADY doing that.

News Flash. This has all happened before. We did OK then, we should do OK now. Overall. Mostly. Some won’t. Deadwood will be trimmed, the herd will be thinned. Those of us who survive (and I use this term in the loosest possible way, we’ll most likely ALL literally survive, some of just a little leaner than before, financially and perhaps in a different occupation) will have better opportunities than before.

Once again the Power of the Internet lends a more accurate perspective on current events than does the pandering News Media. Google is still your friend and Wikipedia is a quick and easy way to get an immediate overview of “what’s happening”. Vast vistas of info are available for anyone who has a little bit of initiative. Being uninformed is no longer an excuse anyone can find out just about anything with very little effort and very quickly.

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We must repeal NAFTA!

We’re exporting all of our jobs overseas.

NAFTA opponents point to the 2.4 million U.S. manufacturing jobs that have disappeared since NAFTA took effect in 1994, a drop of about 14%. In Ohio, site of Tuesday’s hotly contested primary, manufacturing jobs are down by nearly 200,000, or 20%, during the same time.

This graph…by none other than the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve clearly shows that Manufacturing Output in the United States is declining since the implementation of NAFTA.

We clearly must. (!!!!)

hmmmm. That graph is not so clear. It’s too small too. Let me enlarge it, Whatzamatter with the graph?

Oops. It’s flipped. Let me flip it back over where it’s supposed to be.

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From the Washington Post we find that:

Offering the gloomiest assessment of economic well-being in close to half a century, a new survey has found that most Americans say they have not made progress over the past five years as their incomes have stagnated and they have increasingly borrowed money to finance their lifestyles.

Sounds bad doesn’t it? Horrible horrible. The economy must be in ruins for them to have to borrow money to splurge, er, to live a decent life. Those poor people. AS you read further down into the body of the Article we find that: :

Even as they struggle, however, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they are better off than their parents were when they were their age.

Wow…better off than their parents. Furthermore we find that:

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In 1999, after months of soul searching, bank statement searching, and just plain searching I decided to buy a new truck. After that it was pretty easy. I just selected a dealer who would give me a decent trade on the truck I had at that time (more searching), decided just WHAT I wanted in a truck, and plop down a fairly hefty deposit, and then wait.

About six months later the truck showed up at the dealer. I drove in with my ‘ole Pete, swapped for a brand new shiny KW and drove off.

That was it. No worries beyond the “normal” worries. It worked out pretty well.

That was nine years ago. The OLD KW has been rode hard and put up wet too many times and she’s showing her age. In creaks, rattles, moans and groans if not in looks. She still looks pretty good for an old truck, pretty good. Some clearcoat is gone, a couple of nicks, a scratch or two, but she looks pretty good.

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I read a LOT. I don’t read to get informed or to get edumacated, I read because I enjoy it. It’s relaxing and stress relief.In the course of my reading I came across an outfit called Baen Books. They do E-Books. They are about the only outfit that does it right in my very biased opinion. Well, to read ebooks you need some kind of electronic device to read them. I use computers. Either desktop, laptop or palmtop…I’ve experimented with them and have them all. Heck, I even read ebooks on my phone.

What does this addiction of mine have to do with buying trucks? Well, I’ll tell you. Some of the ebook addicted readers of the Jim Baen publishing house (of which there are several thousand, poor souls.) felt that they needed a special ebook reader. One that would work better than what I’ve mentioned above. This was in the days before the Amazon Kindle a device I don’t have. Won’t have because it embrasses DRM and I can’t abide DRM I refuse to use VISTA for that same reason…and others.

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With the cost of fuel at about four dollars a gallon it’s getting pretty expensive to get a good night’s sleep. My little kitty slurps about a gallon to a gallon and a half an hour at idle. That figures to about (gulp) four to six dollars AN HOUR! The cost for idling all night will pay for a motel room many places. Which, now that I mention it, is what I, and a lot of heavy haulers do on occasion. If you’ll notice there are a lot of daycab heavy haulers. Many of them are not local they’re long haul like us, but use a motel every night.

Personally I don’t like motels, but that’s just me.

So what other options are there?

Well there’s ShorePower and a company that now calls itself ShorePower

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