Gas prices and fishing

[Avalon]

Dear Board,

Absolutely it has changed by fishing habits. When I bought my truck in 2000 I could make a day trip for $ 10.00, the same trip costs more than $ 40.00 today. I could drive 1800 miles on less than $ 100.00 worth of diesel fuel in 2000 and now it costs $ 100.00 to cover my 380 mile commute back and forth to work each week. My truck gets the same mileage today that it did in 2000 so something sure changed?

It got bad enough that I parked my truck and bought a "town car", a well used Plymouth Breeze that gets 35 mpg to drive back and forth to work. The first week I had it I spent $ 34.50 to fill it on Friday and figured The payment and insurance is $ 170.00 a month and if I save $ 63.50 X 4.33 weeks in month I'll save over $ 100.00 a month by actually buying something plus save wear and tear on my truck. I figured the $ 100.00 could be money to put in truck to use it on the weekends and I'd still be even?

They must have seen me coming because I've had it a month and since I've had it the price of gasoline has risen more than 40 cents a gallon.

I'm fed up.

Regards,
Tim Murphy

[joerogrz]

I did a paper on fuel prices about 2 years ago for an assignment in one of my classes. There is a website that breaks down the cost of fuel and tells you what percentage of each process goes into fuel. Surprisingly, I found that during the time I did the research, fuel and oil taxes were decreasing while the cost of refining/drilling/transporting were increasing.

Another FYI- OPEC is a cartel. If you don't know much about cartels, they are illegal in the US. A cartel is an informal agreement that benefits each member by raising or lowering prices. For example- Companies 1, 2 and 3 form a cartel. Companies 1 and 2 will raise prices so that company 3 will benefit from sales of a cheaper product. Next Companies 2 and 3 will raise prices so that 1 will benefit.

Also the US is the largest user of oil in the world and can't even supply half of what we use. Drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska would benefit the US by increasing how much oil we can supply to ourselves. However, the NPR in AK covers almost the entire top half of the state and though it would benefit Alaskans by bringing jobs there, it will have a huge impact on migratory animals there.

There are other circumstances that affect the cost of oil also. Trade routes through Asia has an effect in addition to world conflicts in oil producing nations.

I recently found the perfect vehicle for on/off-road commuting that would benefit most sportsmen also. It is a diesel conversion of a Kawasaki KLR 650. HDTUSA builds these for the military and they are currently working on a civilian version that will get better than 100mpg (That's not a typo) at 45mph with a range of 630 miles at the same speed.

http://www.dieselmotorcycles.com/models.htm

While diesel may be more expensive than gas, the cost of operating one of these still trumps a car that averages 50mpg. If I had one of these, the cost of fuel wouldn't bother me at all until it started getting closer to 9 or 10 bucks a gallon.