The $100 fill up

drkelly

drkelly

Dipstick who put two vehicles on jack stands
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Location
Oak Ridge/Stokesdale, NC
i was always one of the guys that said it wouldn't change how i do things due to gas prices. I was wrong. It is really effecting things, and i got some free gas with work. i guess complaining won't due much, but i like to complain, so what the hell.
 
i used to say that too... and so far i have been able to stick to my guns. If things continue the way the are though, i doubt i will be able to keep on saying it.
 
I love the way people complain about gas prices around me, and then i tell them to look at diesel. I have started running half diesel half used cooking oil to cut prices in half. It works, but handling used cooking greese is not exactly what i call fun. Not to mention the whole shop smells like old chinese food.

How do the oil companys get away with this? Are they taking any hits or are we just paying more because they have an excuse? I have not heard a solid answer from anyone on this issue.
 
farmboy said:
I love the way people complain about gas prices around me, and then i tell them to look at diesel. I have started running half diesel half used cooking oil to cut prices in half. It works, but handling used cooking greese is not exactly what i call fun. Not to mention the whole shop smells like old chinese food.
How do the oil companys get away with this? Are they taking any hits or are we just paying more because they have an excuse? I have not heard a solid answer from anyone on this issue.
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Are you just de-watering, filtering & mixing 50\50??
 
farmboy said:
How do the oil companys get away with this? Are they taking any hits or are we just paying more because they have an excuse? I have not heard a solid answer from anyone on this issue.
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It's called capitalism, it's a free market. More demand, less supply, makes the price go up. Thats the simple answer.
 
Jeff B said:
Are you just de-watering, filtering & mixing 50\50??
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Yep. My brother has been doing it for quite a while. We have a 100 gallon tank to pre-mix now. Seems to be working great. One guy on "the diesel stop" forum even claims to have mixed 90% oil and 10% gas in his 7.3 but i doubt you will see me doing that anytime soon.

Jim, i understand that but at what point does it become price gouging? I guess you have to pay to play, but playing used to be so much cheaper. :lol:
 
I work 10 hours/day Mon-Thurs. That helps to only have to commute 4 days/week instead of 5. I don't know why nobody in the media isn't trying to get more companies to allow employees to do that. Obviously that wouldn't work for some jobs, but for other jobs, it will.
 
farmboy said:
Jim, i understand that but at what point does it become price gouging? I guess you have to pay to play, but playing used to be so much cheaper. :lol:
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As much as I hate to say this,
they aren't making the "crazy" profits everyone says they are.
Yes they are making record profits, but that's because of volume.
Also the stupid crazy bonuses/salaries for the big boys take a chunk out of that profit margin, but it's still not a huge profit margin. (Currently it's about 9% I think? compared with some companies that are in the 30-50% range.)

The main difference, is gas/diesel/oil is a "necessity" for modern living unlike a high end TV or stereo.
Until the demand goes down, or the supply goes up somewhere, the price is going to stay up there.
 
Diesel in Mexico $2/gal

CNN article reports diesel in Mexico is $2/gallon and truckers along the border are going south to fill up. IF this is a global market, why is diesel in Mexico $2/gal? And, I won't buy the argument that supply is excessively high. I will buy manipulation Mr. Big Oil. :fuck-you:
 
SEAIRESCUE said:
CNN article reports diesel in Mexico is $2/gallon and truckers along the border are going south to fill up. IF this is a global market, why is diesel in Mexico $2/gal? And, I won't buy the argument that supply is excessively high. I will buy manipulation Mr. Big Oil. :fuck-you:
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I'm assuming that this is the CNN piece that you're referring to?

That was a horrible piece of "reporting". The fact is that there is a very simple reason that fuel prices are cheaper in Mexico, but CNN wasn't going to let facts get in the way of the story they were wanting to tell.

The fact is that Mexico's entire petroleum industry is wholly government owned. As such, it's the same as buying prescription drugs from Canada. It's not that they're really cheaper, it's just that their cost is heavily subsidized. The prices are set directly by the state, and apparently they have some interest in keeping the cost of fuel artificially low. It doesn't have a damn thing to do with big oil companies taking excessive profits, because they aren't.
 
Hmmmm the government subsidizing fuel..... At first, i cringed at the thought. I am honestly not a fan of the government subsidizing anything. Then i started to think about it. I think i would be just fine if the government started paying half of my GAS bills. But the money has to come from somewhere, right???? Of course, that is the problem. The thing is, if tax dollars are going to be spent, this would be one of the VERY FEW things that the government could spend on that would actually help me. I sure don't feel like i get anything else out of my tax money, because i am the one paying the taxes, not receiving the handouts. This would be the handout that would benefit everyone, even those without cars(lower bus fares anyone?)

Anyway.... i'm sure someone will want to rip this poor argument to shreds, feel free.
 
i have a friend who has worked in the oil business for 25 years, 10 of them at a refinery in alaska. before the soaring gas prices, a barrell of feul, ready to put in a car, was about $4. He said that since feul prices have gone up, its at about $6.70 PER BARREL. the $100+ dollars a barrel is only the gas companies. it has nothing to do with war or bush or any of that.

As for mexico having cheap feul, it has alot to do with the fact that they are actuall allowed to use their own feul. Canada and Mexico are still discovering new feul deposits almost weekly. Just in march mexico found a deposit of Apx. 400 million barrels. All of the experts in geology and mining and all the related fields agree that the U.S. has huge amounts of oil at their fingertips but we dont get to drill for it because of the greenies.

We dont get to tap into our own oil because the environmentalists use that as their agenda to earn $, and politicians support the greenies to get political support. Its a big al-gore style bandwagon.

I agree that we should look for alternate sources of feul, but im sick of hearing the media talk about the feul prices as a result of war and im sick of hearing them say that we are running out of oil when we have plenty



p.s.

what kind of gas mileage does a stock samurai get? 1.3 or 1.6
 
another thing, people always forget to factor in inflation. The U.S. dollar is getting weaker and weaker so it takes more of them to get a gallon than it used to. yes the prices are climbing but part of the jump has to do just the numbers, not the value.
 
CAS22 said:
another thing, people always forget to factor in inflation. The U.S. dollar is getting weaker and weaker so it takes more of them to get a gallon than it used to. yes the prices are climbing but part of the jump has to do just the numbers, not the value.
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Thats true, my degree is Finance and all we frikin talk about is how the Fed keeps causing inflation in an effort to lower interest rates to boost the economy. Its a short term fix but its hurting us in the long run, there's alot of equations and whatnot I could go through but inflation is definitely a problem that just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Ever since the fed started pumping $$ into the economy in an effort to lower interest rates after the big .com bubble bursted back round 2000, that excess $$ supply partially helped to cause the recent bursting of the housing bubble. Which the fed responded to by once again trying to increase the $$ supply even more in an effort to reduce interest rates. Now the damn interest rates are negative (or lower than the inflation rate in the equation sense) which that consistent push to increase $$ supply by the fed just keeps worsening.

This is causing a surge of inflation, and unfortunately the undesired possible effect of our continued inflationary policy could be a signal to foreign debt holders to dump there US treasuries on the market which would cause a spike in interest rates to attract the foreign Debt holders back.

Because of the lack of foreign US treasury debt holders the US economy could be looking at an absolute crash in the way we go about doing things. The US economy consumes far more than it produces (the current middle-class debt-to-income ratio is 141%) the $$ used for that excess consumption is from those foreign US treasury Debt holders that are being scared away by the current inflationary policy that our govt seems so quick to default to in an effort to avoid recession.
 
I don't know if this has been said... But the Gas companies profit margins have not changed (sit around 10/15% I believe)...

The price of crude goes up.. they have to buy it and in turn raise the price..... OPEC's the one getting rich.. I mean seriously... look at Dubai!

NOW to piss off a lot of people... I believe IF we started actively exploring oil in Alaska... throw up a few rigs.. I believe you'd see OPEC say, WTF.. they're serious... and drop prices to prevent us from exploring/finding our own oil... and BTW Alaska has a lot of it! I think read somewhere... it'd cut down our foreign dependency by atleast 25%...
 
BigBody79 said:
damn ricky, all that coming from a guy with a superswamper tatoo.
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X2, LOL! Ricky, that is the most intelligent post I have seen you make. Very nice.

I'll touch on one point already brought up. When the oil company executives went before the government a couple of weeks ago one thing they requested was to allow more exploration and drilling in areas currently off limits.

I think I read the oil companies profits are about 9%.
 
How come no one has mentioned oil futures trading yet? Hello the stock market sucks (for above mentioned reasons) but trading futures on oil and gas is GUARANTEED to make you big $$ for the foreseeable future. So, trade those and drive it up!

It now regularly takes at least $100 to fill up my work truck (35 gallon tank). I expect that very soon the personal use fee that I pay each month (currently $120) will get bumped up to counter the increased costs of operating my work truck. The boss is pushing a few of the other guys into 1/2 tons instead of the 3/4s we have traditionally been using. Luckily for me I do the majority of the trailer towing for the office and usually have a metric F-ton of tools and equipment in the back of the truck to justify having it.
 
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