Over the past few weeks, I’ve been scoffing at all the news reports claiming “The price of gas is nearing $4.00 a gallon!” mostly because I’d already been paying well over $4.00/gallon for diesel.
In fact, just two weeks ago, the price of diesel in my area went up to $5.02/gallon.
Am I pissed? Of course, we all are, right? You guys might not drive diesel vehicles, but every semi that delivers your goods to your stores does, and guess who’s paying the price? For my car, it’s costing me just over $60.00 to fill up if I’m totally empty. Granted, at 50 miles to the gallon, I can commute to and from work for two weeks on one fill up, but come on! My car can run Bio-Diesel, but I’d have to drive 115 miles out of my way to find the one station in the region selling that stuff.
So yesterday afternoon, I realized I needed to fill up. I made it to work, and I probably could have made it home if there were no traffic delays or issues, but I’d have to fill up before this morning for sure. When you take traffic, the time of day, and routes into consideration – it worked out that I got gas after work, before driving home. That let me combine a trip to the grocery store, thus saving on, you guess it – diesel.
Imagine my surprise when I pull up, swipe my card, and start pumping diesel that’s marked $4.86/gallon !
I smiled!
I was happy to see it had gone DOWN for a change. Not much, but down is always better than up.
Then I sighed as the irony of this situation slapped me in the face. I’m so used to the idea of $5.00/gallon, I was HAPPY to see $4.86.
That’s what this world has come to. Make them bleed profusely, so that when the flow is ebbed to a steady loss, they’ll feel the healing powers.
/Sigh.
The Velvet Zebra 
I know what you mean, Kristine. Gas had been $4.04 here and it recently went down to $3.94. I’m still peeved at $3.94, but I also made certain I took advantage of the slight price decrease while it lasted. I just wish I had some type of storage tank and the money to buy gas in large batches whenever the price went down.
Unfortunately, we’ve already cut out most of the extra driving, so whatever the price is, there’s no real change for us. Even when it goes down a few cents, that translates to very little savings at the total amount. I don’t even worry about it. I just adjusted the amount I budgeted for gas each week when the price started going up.
It gets even more interesting once you leave the protected environment of the USA. This morning I paid 1.32 UKPounds for a litre of Diesel (well 45 litres actually..). That works out at US$9.89 per USGallon at current exchange rates.
The cost of fuel in the UK is not (as far as I know) overly inflated; it’s probably a good indication of what a reasonable going rate for fuel should/could be in the USA. I shudder to think what that would do to the US/World economy.