Miscellaneous Forum

Let me know if you are affected by the gasoline price and how it affected you!

My budget for gas has increased from $20 a week to $50 a week! This means that I have to have $200 a month for gas! (This excludes the other gas expense of my family).

In a year, my gas expense totals $2,400! This amount could have bought me a good trip to another country!

UK petrol now costs around 1.09GBP per litre. That's more than 2USD.

It had been around 95p per litre previously.

I don't drive very much, mostly only to work and back, with slightly longer trips at weekends. It probably costs me around 30/40USD per week, give or take, and has done for some considerable length of time. US petrol prices have always been much lower than those in the UK.

Don't make me jealous, Jo!
We, portuguese are paying fuel at $200 per liter and gasoline about $220!
In a meeting last week our minister announced that the prices of gas to industry were going to drop between 5 to 20%. In our region they went up 7%!
In this matter, living in USA is a blessing (at least for the moment!)

I don't own a car and only rent one a couple of times a year, but the price increase affects me nevertheless, in the form of drastically increased food costs. I'm changing my eating habits to accommodate this.

Douglas has a point.

From fuel fro tractors to transport of goods to the Super-market, fuel prices will affect everyone.

No more than 6 months ago I drove a free car all included.
Retired since, I had a job juggling what kind of car to buy.
With the future scarce resources I settled on a frugal Citroen C1.
At 56-58 MPG it was a wise decision.

I do not think fuel will get much cheaper in the short term.

Sunday May 11 early morning $1.25 Cdn /litre which is about $ 4.8 US/ US Gallon.

Hav been keeping monthly costs about the same by maintaining correct tire pressures and eliminating frivolous trips.

I just did some quick maths and found out that the 1.50 Euro I'm paying per liter equal $ 8.7696 per US gallon.I know that people in the US need their cars more than we do in Europe, because there is less public transportation, but also here there are many people who have to take their car in order to get to work.
These prices are affecting all of us.

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the cost of travelling. Canadian airlines have announced fuel surcharges. We are rethinking our purchase of an RV when we retire. Maybe we will just camp out in our backyard!

I work in the courier transportation industry and this year expect to pay out more than $11,000 in fuel costs. Fortunately, our company will be adding fuel surcharges to every order.

Mid size excavator 35 gals daily
Large excavator 75 gals daily
Tractor trailer 1 50 gals daily
Tractor trailer 2 130+ gals daily
Dump truck 65 gals daily

Around 355 gallons of diesel fuel a day @$5.00 in New York
$1775 a day in fuel
At these prices it is very hard to keep the trucks and machines running,nobody giving us a increase in rates to offset the rising fuel rates.

Speaking of fuel consumption, those big CAT 797-B 400 ton haul trucks used in the oilsands in Fort MacMurray, Alberta to haul bitumen sand to the extraction plants so that we can use the oil and gasoline derived from it...each one uses 65 gallons (255 liters) per hour! to power it's 3450 horsepower engine. That works out to more than 500,000 gallons per year. Currently there are more than 120 such trucks in use up there.

Big railway locomotives use about the same amount.

The world's largest container ship, the Emma Maersk is powered by a 14 cylinder Sulzer diesel generating 110,000 horsepower... it uses a phenomenal 1650 gallons of heavy fuel oil per hour.

http://people.bath.ac.uk/ccsshb/12cyl/

I'm a therapist and I work in people's homes. (Kind of like a social worker.) We have a 15 county radius and I work 3-5 cases at a time. I have to see each family every three days, at least. I end up paying $200-300 in gas every two weeks. We do get mileage reimbursed, which is good, and we get it every two weeks. The last two months my mileage check has been almost as much as my paycheck. Still, I have to be able to come up with that money up-front for the gas. That means I am paying more than $6000 a year in gas. If gas continues to increase but our mileage rate doesn't (always a possibility since we are grant-funded) I will soon have to quit my job because I won't be able to afford to go on my visits. We have to work with our families 8-10 hours per week. Some of the therapists I work with are now going and spending 4-5 hours with their clients at a time so that they don't have to go back for a few days because they can't afford the gas to get there.

I know the argument that we shouldn't complain because gas in the U.K. is higher. My in-laws are from there and live there and my husband and I get it all the time. But the argument that the mass-transit system there is better is valid. I live in the country. We don't have a rail system, a bus system that runs from town-to-town, or a subway anywhere in the ENTIRE STATE. The argument, too, that ours is still cheaper also isn't very valid. My husband said that when it rose in England by a couple of pence everyone went into a frenzy. Ours will raise by 50 cents over night. We just can't keep up with it. Here in Kentucky, our gas has risen by more than $1 in the past two months. That means I am now paying an extra $16 every time I fill up. Considering how many times I have to fill up in a month, that is an extra $128 that I wasn't even paying out 6 weeks ago. It hits hard.

Almost $4.00 per gallon here in California.
Since we always have to drive to get anything here, I try to bunch my errands together so I don't make too many trips.
I envy people who live in cities where public transportation is practical.

Jeannette

Keti
You're taking your mother-in-law with you???
You sure you want to do that? LOL
Jeannette

Oh, Ok
As long as she has her own little cottage ;-)
Jeannette

Yup, gas is almost $4.00/gallon. It's quite the hot potato in US politics right now. The answer is quite simple really, but there will be so much disagreement in how to do this, that our politicians will try to take the easy road which will do very little in easing the rising prices.

I spend between $225-$250 on gas every month. I also own an SUV, albeit a small one. However, right now, it doesn't make much sense in dumping the SUV for a car with better mileage since it's paid off and I don't feel like adding another monthly payment to my bills.

Joker
Have you ever thought of paying cash for the new car? LOL
J.

haha, yeah, I could do that .. then my expenses wind up on the credit card :) A vicious cycle a lot of us live in these days.

i ride my bicycle to work and it's the same price it was 10 years ago.
it's free :O)

From what I have been seeing on the finacial chanels , maybe $4.00 per gal. in 6 month will seem like a low price ***** they are saying possible 150.00 a barrel and maybe towards 200.00 per barrel ***** I hope they are dreaming !!!

I just did a quick approximate cost check on fuel in various countries. America in some respects you are very fortunate in the price you pay for fuel. Offsetting this is the price you have paid in lives lost in Iraq to keep a foothold in a major oil bearing country.
Cost per litre in AUD Dollars ( Exchange rate about AUD.93 to 1 USD.)
UK $2.42
Germany $2.50
Australia 1.50
USA .86

I have a small diesel car and get about 5.4 litres/100km or 58MPG (imperial gals) The fuel prices are affecting where and when we go. We try and combine two close destinations into one trip which does help.

Gasoline or Petro ***Has always been less in the U.S , maybe because we drive more , I myself drive 25000 mile per year **** So what I am saying is we buy allot of fuel ***** also I do not have a big suv ***Z4

>>>>dnwitte,i dont know about the us,but i personally havent noticed any food price increase (i buy food almost every day) here in finland.<<<<<

Most of our fruits and vegetables, other than grain products, come from Florida, California or Mexico, so for most of the country food has to be transported huge distances by truck. Independent truckers might not be getting a supplement for the cost of fuel, but the trucking companies are certainly passing on the cost.
As for our midwestern grainbelt, the moronic production of ethanol has driven up the cost of corn, which is crucial to almost all manufactured processed foods and to feeding meat animals, and of course those costs are passed on to us too.
Here in the northeast we have a very short growing season, and given the value of land, farming on a large scale isn't economically viable, so we're stuck with paying a heavy transport premium for everything we eat.

One way or another we are all affected by the cost of fuel. I have heard discussions by analysts that oil may rise to $200 / barrel. This may sound farfetched but $80/ barrel sounded farfetched when oil was $50/barrel.At $120 / barrel now it was a conservative estimate.

Most Of the fuel stations in the U.S. are now adding ethanol (10 % ) I think that my car uses more of it *** I guess it has lower b.t.u. rating ***so if that is true what is the goverments point if we are using more fuel at a higher price *****

particularly given how much fossil fuel it takes to produce the stuff.

The US is the 3rd largest producer of crude oil in the world, but a large part of the problem has been refineries. That is, not enough of them. The ones we do have all operate at 100% capability, but getting new ones are next to impossible. If, somehow, new refineries can be built, gas prices will come down. Good luck with that. Too much government red tape and environmental concerns stop any hopes of new refineries dead in its tracks. Same goes for increased oil exploration and drilling.

As for alternative fuel sources, that's great, but nothing that can stop the rising cost of gas in the near future. As another post said earlier, the whole ethanol thing is a bit much. Ethanol is a derivative from grain (corn), lots of it. Grain that is needed as food. So, there's a tradeoff .. increased food prices or gas? Which is it?

I wonder if all people in the world affected by the fuel cost refuse to buy it for seven days, would the world price of crude fall? Let us assume that there would be solidarity on this boycott.

In February I got a RT flight from Austin to Frankfurt for the same amount I paid to fly to Paris more than two years ago - including taxes and fees $420 (that is not a typo). Gasoline costs suck. But luckily, at least getting to my foreign destination has not. And thanks to Clickair, I can use major airports and get into and out of Barcelona.