VOICES CHANNEL 19
6 |
Overdrive
| April 2015
Visit Senior Editor Todd Dills' CHANNEL 19 BLOG at OverdriveOnline.com/channel19 Write him at tdills@randallreilly.com.
There's a double-edged-sword
aspect to fuel's recent price decline:
Fuel surcharge amounts also have
declined. For owner-operators using
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the freight rate, we've been seeing
total spot-market rate averages de-
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fuel's fall.
Cheaper diesel, however, isn't
the only reason for falling surcharg-
es. Some carriers and shippers, if
watchers are correct, are adjusting
fuel surcharge approaches as fuel
mileage improves. Surcharges often
are charged/collected at a per-mile
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the U.S. Department of Energy's av-
erage fuel price (and how much that
average extends above a base price,
often $1.25) and the carrier's base
miles per gallon, often 5 or 6 mpg.
Gordon Klemp of the National
Transportation Institute told Overdrive
Editorial Director Max Heine that
many carriers' contracts with ship-
pers are seeing that base mpg rise
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surcharge by averaging a better mpg
becomes less likely for leased own-
er-operators.
About 3 in 4 readers who use a
base mpg in their fuel surcharge
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between 5 and 7 mpg. Using a mpg
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some commenters noted, isn't the
only method. One independent gave
the example of percentage of the
freight bill on LTL loads, adding:
"Shippers have gotten pretty savvy
about this subject. … What's always
been interesting is the resistance by
shippers to increasing base rates in
lieu of reducing fuel surcharges."
Sound familiar? Weigh in on the
subject in the Feb. 24 post on the blog.
Poking around Overdrive's SoundCloud
channel one day, I realized that a lot
of artists I'd covered in my Channel
19 blog were represented there. These
ranged from trucking troubadours
Tony Justice, Bill Weaver, Keith
Sampson, Howard Salmon and Jan
McCarter to non-trucking songwriters
Noah Collins of the Cumberland
Collective, Lindsay Lawler, Erich Mc-
Mann and recent country sensation
Sturgill Simpson.
Our new "Music to truck by" play-
list unites some of these artists, and
more, for your listening pleasure in a
regularly updated package. For good
measure, Overdrive's music-related pod-
casts are included, such as last year's
Trucker Talent Search performances,
samples of tracks from Justice's "Ap-
ple Pie Moonshine" record, Salmon's
recent "Who Would They Look Up
