High Cost of Diesel Plagues Trucking Industry

If filling up a 15- or 30-gallon gas tank has become aggravating at today’s prices, imagine buying fuel by the tanker load.

“It’s a huge problem for motor carriers,” said C.M. “Bud” Coleman Jr., the president of Commercial Carrier Corp., an Auburndale trucking firm with more than 1,000 diesel-hungry engines to fill daily. “Nobody knows where this (the price of fuel) is going.”
Rising diesel fuel prices have been a concern in the trucking industry for more than a year, he added. Hurricane Katrina turned it into a crisis.

“It’s an absolute disaster,” Coleman said last week as news of the storm’s impact on oil production along the northern Gulf of Mexico was beginning to trickle in. “I worry about the impact from the damages to the oil rigs and the refineries.”

Lakeland (FL) Ledger