Trucker Forum - Trucking & Driving Forums - Class A Drivers - Can I spell C-O-N-S-P-I-R-A-C-Y! (Diesel less then regular)

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I run L.A. to midwest all the time and have been for 2 years straight and i am yet to fuel in California...

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Originally Posted by Ian Williams

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Originally Posted by no_worries

There's no price conspiracy...welcome to the market. This happens every year around this time as the local refineries make the shift from Winter to Summer blend gasoline, it's just a little more pronounced this year. Oh, and diesel costing more than gasoline has only been the norm for the last few years.

Refiner Consolidation and their increasing profit margins are only part of the picture.

There are other factors in the world ecomony that have pushed diesel up.

Chinas explosive growth caused electricity shortages and demand for diesel gensets to rise. One of the many hidden costs of all the cheap, low value labor intensive stuff we buy at Wal-mart.

Here in the US diesels are ~3% of new light duty vehicles (4 wheeler). In Europe is now something like 50% and rising. When you pay $5-7/gallon fuel economy becomes a lot bigger selling point.

Air Travel is up from it post 9/11 doldrums in the US. Worldwide air travel is getting common and cheap and the rest of the world gets "southwest" style no frills service. Boeing and Airbus are sold out for 3-4 years right now IIRC.

Kerosene and Jet Fuel come from the same portion of the barrel as diesel.

All of these factors have applied pressure to diesel prices.

If diesel ever goes truly crazy I'll just add a second heated tank and burn Soybean oil in my Liberty CRD. Its ~2.50 gal right now at Sam's Club.

and we haven't had a New refinery built since the 70's(?) because of Enviros and their NIMBY(Not in my back yard) crap.

Was $2.70 here in NC.

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Refiner Consolidation and their increasing profit margins are only part of the picture.

There are other factors in the world ecomony that have pushed diesel up.

I was only speaking to the original poster's comment about the recent disparity in CA between gasoline and diesel. The reason gasoline is so much higher than diesel right now in CA is almost entirely due to our seasonal change in gasoline blends.

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Originally Posted by no_worries

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Refiner Consolidation and their increasing profit margins are only part of the picture.

There are other factors in the world ecomony that have pushed diesel up.

Hmmm does that really account for it? Not trying to challenge you here, just dont understand that huge a desperity and seems kind of convient to explain when the fact of the matter is it should put the price of diesel over an alternative feuls operating expense.

$2.91 at the Petro Wheeler Ridge.

Long time lurker. this is a cool forum with lots of info. 8)

Gman hit the nail on the head. It's all about merger and profit with no competition. last summer, oil companies were making record profits in the BILLIONS....of course, Bush never met a merger he didn't like... :lol: :lol:

Pepe, I don't know how long you've lived in CA but this time of year our gasoline prices always take off. Because of the boutique fuel we use, it's only refined in-state. The switch-over from winter to summer blend often coincides with scheduled maintenance. This year there also happened to be a convergence of other factors; oil jumped due to the Iran deal and demand for distillates has been relatively soft, at least until the last week.

The price of diesel has behaved just as it has for the past few years due to the factors GMAN mentioned. If the price of gasoline hadn't spiked you'd have thought nothing of it. However, gasoline has spiked tremendously here in the past 4 weeks for the reasons I mentioned. That's the reason for the disparity.

As far as why regular diesel isn't cheaper than biodiesel...that's easy. The largest blend you'll likely find is B20. That means that it's still 80% regular diesel. And most of the stuff for sale right now at TS's is only B5. Given the state of the biodiesel industry today, it's going to be a long time before you'll be able to buy biodiesel for significantly cheaper than regular.