Monday, March 10, 2008

Scratch That!

My truck is full and then some. Pruning debris and remnants of the old fence. I’ll have to spend some time cutting and fitting to get it all safely into the bed for a run to the ‘green’ dump. In fact, it looks like at least two trips will have to be made.

Yesterday was a glorious day for this kind of work. Winter? It had disappeared for awhile and everyone in our neighborhood was busy doing something in their small orchards. I could hear the whine of saws and trimmers all afternoon, and once I had the battery recharged, I was out on the mower, cutting down the tall clover and adding to the noise.

Speaking of the truck, as I was; it has a diesel engine and yesterday I saw that diesel fuel has made it into the $3.90 per gallon range. That’s 50 cents a gallon more than gasoline. That’s bad enough for me, but what if I was driving my own truck for a living? Or what if I had a fleet of trucks to haul groceries from the producers to the stores? Not many years ago, diesel fuel, which is much lower on the distillation scale than gasoline, was far cheaper than gasoline; as it should have been. But now? Could it be that it’s easier for oil companies to raise prices on a product that doesn’t immediately affect the consumer? You really feel the pinch when you fill your own gas tank, but it’s not as noticeable when the price of yoghurt goes up a dime because of higher fuel prices. Stealth increases. They’re everywhere!

We also have a cab-over camper for our truck, bought before the price of diesel fuel went the wrong way. At today’s prices, it will cost $135 to fill the tanks for a trip. So we don’t.

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