OT Deisel vs heating oil $

All pricing is driven by supply/demand. It is always true that the buyer determines the pricing, never the seller. The soccer moms in the bimbo boxes can drive less by combining trips and eliminating unneccessary driving.

People driving to work can carpool and use public transportation to save gas.

Truckers/Farmers have none of these options. They must drive to survive. They use the lion's share of diesel. No matter the price, they must stay on the road/in the fields.

Therefore the pressure on diesel prices increases even if the usage of gas lessens.

The only effective way that I have found to lower prices is to deal with the supplier with the lowest prices. It takes time and effort to do this as it often involves research and jeopardizing long term relationships and friendships, but it always works.

Only if worldwide demand for petroleum-based fuels were to drop (or possibly if massive new domestic supplies discovered and increased refining capacity built) can we ever expect to see prices start to decline.

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Want a non-petroleum example? Look at bottled water:

The product falls free from the sky! Or where I live it can be purchased for something like 80 cents a thousand gallons from the municipal water supply. But people eagerly drop $1.25 into vending machines for 16 OUNCE BOTTLES of the stuff!

As long as people continue to buy it bottled water at this price level, it’s price is gonna hold. Diesel, heating oil and gasoline prices behave no differently.

Sorry for the long post/rant.

We did have a waiver to use no tax fuel after the storm but that is history. It did not save anything because we still had to pay the tax. We just could not get enough road diesel in the tanks fast enough. With several refineries down the supply was short and the lines of trucks was long. To help out we got a wavier. This allowed us to load faster because we could load in the off road lane and reduced run outs at the loading racks. Now that all the refineries are back up and running it is not needed any more.

We were even given preference in traffic lines. Any gas tanker could come to a road block and run the shoulder like a police car and was allowed to cut in ahead of everyone.

And please tell me you do not believe every thing you hear on TV about New Orleans????? ?????

Until last year, #2 heating & #2 fuel were the same thing here from the coop. Now the fuel is 2% bean oil, heating oil was still all diesel. They got to have 2 tanks of stuff, seperate compartments, etc.

As a farmer I'm all for the biodesel, was surprised we didn't get the 2% for the furnace as well, keep it all the same.

--->Paul

Put the "traditional" No.2 into the heating tanks till everything is transitioned over?

I can't imagine the furnaces would care about a little bit of Soybean oil!

But I don't know.

Also heard more deisel cars and trucks then in the past.

Gary

I was kind of surprised to see a 27 unit condo development that was just built in town advertising "Oil Heat & Hot Water!"