Oil Prices, Trucking and Economics; December 2000 and Now

Many believe that we may be seeing $4.00 per gallon gasoline prices in the near future in 2006. Indeed it appears we are headed that way as oil barrel prices just shot by $70.00 and do not look like they will be slowing down. Why you ask? Well several reasons and Hurricane Season is still on its war.

If the 2006 Atlantic Tropical Season is anything like the 2005 record breaking Hurricane Season you can bet there will be issues indeed. Why are commodity traders so certain of a big Hurricane Season? For the same reason that Weather Experts are; we are in a 2 decade high intensity loop cycle, we are coming off a La Nina Pacific Ocean cycles and Climate Change is at issue, meaning high ocean surface temps.

Now lets look back at December of 2000 and what I said about Oil Prices then and how this affects Trucking and Transportation; It appears we are having a terrible situation with the diesel fuel prices in the US. It is affecting everything, since everything we buy is shipped by train or truck and most of the times both. We have artificial fuel price manipulation and large trucking companies operating at less than 3% margins. We have seen 100s of medium size trucking companies file bankruptcy and 1000s of small companies file as well. This is causing problems in the used truck sales market.

You see I was running a Franchise Company with a Truck Detailing Center in Denver at the time and w had noticed this affected our Truck Detailing Sales and monthly volumes. Also with all these used trucks on this market it is affecting new truck sales right after several major mergers. There had been lay offs at all large trucking company manufacturers. Employees from Volvo, Peterbuilt, Daimler Chrysler who have been laid off were screaming blaming economic slow down and high oil prices.

Today we have already seen FedEx raise their shipping rates twice in 90-days and the last increase was another 5.9% and this increased cost in shipping adds costs to all the items sold and shipped. This slows the economy and causes artificial inflation and hurts the consumer, small business and the bottom line of corporations. It is a serious deal and we could easily see $90.00 per barrel during peak Hurricane Season and the Iran show down heating up due to UN Resolution impasse over nuclear weapons manufacturing by late September. So be ready, as soon we will see a major increase in oil prices and it will be much different and much worse than before and it will be serious. Consider this late in 2006.

Lance Winslow - EzineArticles Expert Author

"Lance Winslow" - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/