For close to 40 years, we have been robbed blind by one of America’s largest industries, at a huge cost to the consumer, and for some strange reason, no one has done anything about it. This hand in American pocketbooks and wallets, has continued without interruption. No one seems to be objecting. I hereby vigorously protest, and I hope the victims do something. We are all victims. If Poland, Hungary, and East Germany can throw off their totalitarian oppressors, surely we can throttle the oil companies!
The plain simple fact is that diesel fuel and #2 heating oil, (which are virtually the same), require but a fraction of the refining of gasoline. Diesel and #2 heating oil, not only require less refining, but are less dangerous to refine, and require fewer additives. In other words, diesel costs a lot less to produce than gasoline. These facts always had the price of diesel about a third lower than gasoline, at least till 1973. Diesel has more energy (BTU’s) per gallon than gasoline and doesn’t explode, so it is the preferred fuel for heavy equipment. A gallon if diesel can move a truck close to twice as far as a gallon of gasoline. Since the shortages of 1973, all oil companies have raised the price of diesel to a higher price than gasoline. The effects are not hard to observe.
Let’s say the average highway tractor-trailer gets five miles per gallon, and is paying $4.00 per gallon for diesel fuel. This is an 80 cents per mile fuel cost. If diesel cost a third less, and it should, the per mile cost would be 54 cents per mile. An extremely conservative figure of a quarter billion miles per day being driven by truckers, plus railroad locomotives, farm tractors, and home heating furnaces, means Americans are having several BILLION dollars per week added to the cost of virtually everything. The diesel gouge costs you maybe an extra $10 or even $20 each time you buy a week’s groceries, a few hundred for each car purchased, and many dollars extra for everything we buy; day in and day out. Home heating costs are at least a third more than they should be if oil is used. All merchandise requires transportation of some sort, and every food product requires diesel farm tractors, trucks and equipment to produce. The cost to America is astronomical.
I defy anyone to prove me wrong. The plain, simple fact, is the oil companies have engaged in a huge price fix for close to 40 years. Where are all the highly paid bureaucrats in the Justice Department? Why has a literal, price fixing, crooked, cartel, been allowed to exist in America all these years? Why hasn’t the marketplace brought the diesel price down? I just don’t know, but I’m certainly tired of this, and I wish some oil company would compete rather than going along with the fix. America would welcome diesel competition. It would save us billions a year.
If we had a truly free market system in America, this wouldn’t happen. As it is, there are so many intricate, unfathomable, sticky wicket deals between industry and government, that we may never know.