Unpleasant firsts

[Lasgambler]

$5/gallon for diesel

Yep I'm feeling pretty smart for having bought my oil sipping little yanmar.

Chris

I was thinking I should put my Turbo Yanmar Engine in my F-250.

 

[Kendrick]

2) Another thing is that with most products you can decide whether you will buy that product or not. But with energy sources, gasoline, oil, diesel, LPG, electricity, we might be able to cut back a little bit, but we almost have to buy their products.

that is why I am getting a pellet stove and growing my own heating fuel. kero prices killed us this winter cause we were a couple days to late signing on our house to get a fixed rate. we spent 1500$ to heat this winter only cause we couldent afford to keep the heat above 50 somthing. once i get the farm in full swing i will be buying pannels not leasing lines for electricity. the house has somthing like 2k sqft of space right now and the barn 3500 ish thats room for a lot of pannels whether its hot water or electric, all can be put to use some how.

I have every intention to be 90% self sufficent in 5-10 years. specific consumables will need to be purchaced. if the momma turky in my yard keeps up her roudy attitude shes gona be part of that self sufficency and her chicks wards of the farm till thanks giving.

Lasgambler the sad part is that i know there was a metro that got 54 mpg in the 80's people high up with ajendas are keeping it from happening in a timely manner. yes the epa standards have somthing to do with it so does lazyness and the ajendas.

 

[bigshovel]

Without a doubt I fall into that category of "part of the problem not the solution". My wife and I are without children and we both have lifestyles that are of the outdoor nature and both drive gas and diesel guzzlers. She runs a Jeep with a v8 and I run the largest and heaviest suv ever built Ford Excusion diesel. It now costs as of this morning 186 bucks and change for 41 gallons of diesel. That will last me about 8 days depending on how much I am dragging a trailer. She will burn 30 gallons of gas per week as an average. I have no plans of changing either vehicle due to fuel cost, I just prefer all that steel instead of plastic and supporting the overseas workers. As for my hobbies, they mostly require fuel of some sort as well, I will continue those as well as long as cost permits. I feel If we as AMERICANS waffle and reduce our usage, fuel consumption on foreign shores will increase and our prices will escalate even further.

Brad

 

[Kendrick]

hehe to continue would delve in to the tabu.

suficing to say i have made my choices as to where i will spend my money. being satisfied with where you are spending yours is all about being american. if you dont agree with how something works find a replacement or fix. that is why you probably wont buy a toyota and why i dont plan on having many bills that go to outside the farm.

 

[jcmseven]

Oil pricing has little to do with how much we as Americans drive. Yes, there is SOME correlation but it is not a strong one. The price of oil is determined in the commodities and futures markets spread throughout the world. Since oil is a consumable resource, these brokers barder essentially on the total likely consumption of oil, which currently is being driven not by the US but rather by developing nations, namely and primarily India and China. Futures assessment is beyond my pea-sized brain, but I am not alone in this. My FIL, who has a PhD in economics and is considered one of the world's top experts in rate of return, estimates that most doctoral-level economists do not fully understand this aspect of economics, in part because it is nebulous by nature. Assuredly if they do not understand it, very few of the general public does and probably very few in politics do either (they likely would understand less than the general public). The short message here is we are all feeling it in our pocket books, but all the Toyota Prius's and tiny shoebox cars we can buy are not going to fix the issue--though they would temporarily save us money on an individual basis. I do not believe this next statement is political (too much--and forgive me if it is): but I find it comical that each of the major candidates (presidential and otherwise) places blame on "big oil" for our price problems and claims that he/she can fix it. They can't. To claim such is misleading to constituents. The world commodities brokers--at least at this juncture--could care little about our specific needs and less than the prospective needs of these rapidly developing nations who are exponentially consuming more oil. Also, bear in mind in the two countries listed above we are speaking of approximately 1/3 of the world's population so there is some clout there. In short, our nation's desire to place blame (at the encouragement of some media) on "big oil" and using this as a political/social tool is a narrowminded view of the entire problem. The perception it is just "not right" that a company should make a big profit when consumers struggle. The oil companies are reaping the benefit of an aggressive commodities stance and I personally cannot fault them for doing so. And if it were simply a supply and demand problem, Norway and other high oil production Scandinavian countries would have much lower prices than they do. If I recall, their gasoline and diesel are more expensive than ours currently, tax irrespective. Also, bear in mind the US only gets between 13-20% (depending on who you believe) of its oil from the middle east, contrary to popular opinion. In a local news broadcast recently, people were interviewed about how much oil we actually (as a nation) import from the middle eastern countries. All answers were over 50% and some were at or around 100%, neither of which are close. I think this shows how far off our assessment truly is about from where the oil actually comes. Some large oil producers import NO oil from the middle east, a fact I personally found surprising. I do not intend this to be political and do not wish it to be taken that way, but it drives me temporarily crazy when I hear on the news, etc. about this issue and know it is not "as advertised" in this case--or that only a portion of the story is told.

John M

 

[kycontrols]

The price of gas and diesel is sad and mad. I have started to change my habits, I mow every other week, try to merge trips, etc. I am not surprised by current pricing. With the growing economies overseas, all commodities are increasing in value, just look at steel and food prices. I also figure I can buy that used F250 for the 'farm' cheaper now.

I did notice tonight an interesting add in craigslist for bio-diesel. I do not have anything that can use it but I found it interesting

 

[john_bud]

Fellows, we're probably getting too close to politics which is a prohibited topic on Tractorbynet, but . . . . Eddie, your point is well taken and a valid one. But there's just a few flies in the ointment.
1) With other products and companies, competition works to keep prices down to some extent. But instead of competition, all the oil companies are working together to keep the prices high for all; no competition at all.
2) Another thing is that with most products you can decide whether you will buy that product or not. But with energy sources, gasoline, oil, diesel, LPG, electricity, we might be able to cut back a little bit, but we almost have to buy their products.
3) With most products that you decide to buy or not buy, it only affects the company that made that product. With gasoline, and especially diesel, the companies that transport it have no choice but to pay the price, so that increases the price of everything else we buy.
4) Yes, you can buy stock in the oil companies and participate in their obscene profits. But what percentage of the population is able to do that? Isn't that kind of like the management of the oil companies saying "I've got mine; too bad about you?"

Mr Bird,

I most often find myself in complete agreement with you on many different topics. You seem to have a very broad and open view. However, I do disagree with your statements that the oil companies are in collusion. There have been several investigations by both the free press and a half dozen from the US government. NONE of them have found any collusion. NONE. I am not in any way shape or form associated with any energy industry. But, I don't like to see smear tactics unwittingly repeated, especially by someone that I respect. It may be popular to imagine that there is some group of fat cats smoking cigars that have jacked up the prices for pure profit, but there isn't. No one can flip a switch and make it 1986 again so we can all enjoy unlimited fuel at $0.899/gal.

If you want to blame someone -> read Eddie's post again. Plus add a huge dollop of blame to the tree huggers. No refineries, No oil fields, No hydroelectric dams, restrictions on windmills (ever seen a pile of dead birds under one? I never have and yet that's the concern?), over 100 different formulations of fuel (with NO PROOF that it makes a hill of beans of benefit. In fact, the oxygenation additives are known carcinogens and are now in the global water supply). The list goes on. How about Nuke power? The founder of Greenpeace renounced the anti-nuke stance and was kicked out. He now understands that nuke waste is small and very easy to contain. Not like the giga-tons of CO2 that have been spewed out by burning dead dinos. The potential for environmental harm is stupendously greater with coal/oil burning than nuke, but science is more foreign than speaking Latin so people ignorantly fear it. Speaking of that -> everyone does understand that one power plant burning oil or coal generates more free radiation into the atmosphere than all of the nuke plants ever in production? It's true. The amount of radiation per ton of fuel is small, but the number of tons is literally beyond comprehension. There is also 10,000x more KW available from fissile materials than from all of the hydrocarbon based materials (coal, oil, natural gas, bio, etc) on the planet.

There is no energy crisis. There is a political crisis keeping the energy from the people to benefit a very few misguided special interests.

Now, if you want to be scared. Less than 1/2 of the people on the planet have electricity. Think they don't want it? Wonder how high the power bills will go to when they get it? How about when they get thier first cars? Trucks? Bass Boats? Weekend homes on the lake?

Sorry if this has crossed the political line.... but as you can tell it's a burr under my saddle! I only wish more people were like Eddie and would show up to the poles and vote for a total no body for office. Get all 'da bums out! Do like that cell phone commercial and put fire fighters in!

jb

 

[weldingisfun]

Drill Here
Drill Now
Pay Less
American Solutions for Winning the Future

 

[Bird]

John, I think my post was poorly worded. I never meant for it to imply that the oil company executives got together in a meeting to plan this. But if you and I are selling the same product and making big profits, what usually happens? One of us will eventually cut prices to take business from the other. Has that happened with the oil companies, as it used to do 50 years ago? How many here are old enough to remember the gas wars of the 1950s and the cheaper "independents" battling the bigger name brands, and of course there were more name brands than today. Nope, not at all. Today they know the market will be there; people have to buy their product whether they want to or not so none of them is trying to get more business by under selling the competition.

As for the rest of your post (and Eddie's), yep, I pretty much agree.

 

[john_bud]

John, I think my post was poorly worded. I never meant for it to imply that the oil company executives got together in a meeting to plan this. But if you and I are selling the same product and making big profits, what usually happens? One of us will eventually cut prices to take business from the other. Has that happened with the oil companies, as it used to do 50 years ago? How many here are old enough to remember the gas wars of the 1950s and the cheaper "independents" battling the bigger name brands, and of course there were more name brands than today. Nope, not at all. Today they know the market will be there; people have to buy their product whether they want to or not so none of them is trying to get more business by under selling the competition.

As for the rest of your post (and Eddie's), yep, I pretty much agree.

I recall the gas war days (sigh....) but those days are gone. Cheapest i ever got gas was $0.149 a gallon. Growing up I used to cruise all night from about 7pm until midnight and fill up the tank above where I got it for 2 bucks. Those were the days.

I also recall that the oil companies were laying off workers and losing money hand over fist.

Should the oil companies make 10 billion a quarter in profit? Well, it's only a 7% profit, what's so "wind fall" about that? If they made ZERO % profit it would only lower the price of gas about 15 cents a gallon. Remember that there is more TAX per gallon than oil company profit per gallon. Also, the stations, wholesalers, and everyone else in the chain is making a nibble of profit too. Those little nibbles are greater than the big bite the oil companies are taking (when added all up).


It's a complex problem with no simple solution. In fact, when (not if) the next guld hurrican hits and wipes out production for days, weeks or months the price of fuel will probably hit 6 buck a gallon. I'm buying enough gas to power the chain saw and splitter for heat this winter. Next year I may be a 2 bite ax and a 16 pound sledge!

Oh, I figured you would probably agree with most of my other post. Just didn't know how much of it was toeing over the line! I actually LIKE a nice agreeable forum to talk about tractors and the issues that surround them. Also, you may not hear it often, but you are one of the better mod's on any forum. Keep up the good work!
jb