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Filling up the gas tank in your car is increasingly costly, but if you drive a truck diesel fuel
prices have spiked sharply due to supply disruptions because of the war in Iran and are now at
a record high above $6 a gallon for all the semis crisscrossing the state carrying the goods
and products we consume sell and supply the cost of diesel is a blow to transport companies
and likely to show up downstream in the cost of things we're joined now by Dan Johnson
president of the Wisconsin Motor Carriers Association and thanks very much for being here thank you
for having me so what kind of a shock are these diesel prices right now well obviously just
like anybody else we're seeing the the spike and it's it is a great concern to the trucking
industry it's not that we haven't been through this before but this is clearly the highest that
it's been in record so it's something that our trucking companies they're they're dealing with
they have to absorb those costs in some fashion they're trying to mitigate as best as they possibly
can but yeah it is a cause for concern right now with those trucking companies what concerns do
you have that those prices will just keep breaking records well everybody has that
concern I mean we like to see things level off and hopefully dial back quite a bit
but you know who knows I mean they just have to plan and prepare one thing with the trucking
industry is they're very resilient they've we've seen price spikes this like this before back in
2022 when it got near $6 per gallon for for diesel they adjusted they overcame some of them did
have to step out of the industry because they couldn't handle the expenses and then there was
a shift within the trucking industry and then the prices came back down but now we're we're back to
another unfortunate record high and they're dealing with it as best as they can right now
just for a sense of understanding what does it cost now to fill up the tanks on a truck like this
right well you know they they did a study the average cost per mile for a truck and we're talking
about all the fuel and the other expenses it's about $2.32 per mile that it costs them to to run
a truck down the road so anytime you add that when you add another dollar to diesel prices that's
going to add another 14 cents per mile to that to that truck cost so you you expand that out over
thousands of miles and we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars that it's going to cost
per truck to run them either in the state or across the country so everything is going to be
impacted i think in the supply chain with of course the consumer being at the end of that
supply chain so who bears the cost at the start well the the trucking company does
they bear that cost now they do have some some agreements in place perhaps with their fuel
distributor for discounts and they also have the ability to apply surcharges to their customer
if they have an agreement if if the price goes above a certain amount in the diesel market
that they can add a fuel surcharge now that is available to our medium and larger
size fleets who can make those who can make those agreements and enter into those negotiations
but our smaller fleets in the private carriers they're probably at a disadvantage because they
don't have the opportunity to do that and they're probably going to be paying the retail cost for
diesel prices how might we see the downstream cost be affecting everything well it's always
you know it's always hard to say how it's going to manifest itself throughout the supply chain
because there are so many components within the supply chain again the consumer being the last
part of that supply chain so there's certainly the potential for consumers to see and increase
cost for groceries and other items other necessities that they need but you know it's going to be up
to the trucking company the wholesaler the distributor and the retail to make decisions of their own
how much they potentially pass along to the consumer so i read on your website that 95
percent of manufactured tonnage is transported by trucks in Wisconsin are some customers
pulling back on orders or production because of the cost now it's very possible we haven't
really seen any kind of hard data right now the economy is moving at a pretty good pace so there's
a lot of things that are that have already been set in motion as i mentioned previously you know
the the trucking company is they don't have the opportunity to stop they have to keep moving the
freight they have to keep moving the product to market so if there are orders in they have to
keep moving that along the supply chain and get it to its final destination so as to whether
there's any stoppage from the production side i really don't know what that's happening
but certainly there could be those that are taking a bit of a pause right now and waiting
for those diesel prices to come back down with everybody talking about this right now the cost
of gasoline and the cost of diesel how does it kind of highlight the work that members of your
association do every day and we might take for granted well absolutely we have 3.5 million drivers
out there crisscrossing the nation and they're bringing us everything everything that you own
everything that you have at one point in time was delivered by a truck and there's a man or a
woman behind that wheel who's delivering those items from the producer to market or in here in
Wisconsin we're a big agriculture community from the farmer to the consumer and what they do every
single day in all sorts of conditions whether it's weather bad traffic distracted drivers
construction zones everything that they have to deal with every single day puts more pressure
on the work that they do and and we absolutely do take it for granted unfortunately and you know
back during the covid years when things were disappearing off of the shelves people were asking
where's all the where's all the supplies that we need i'm like well it's on a truck and it's
coming here and people started recognizing the the importance of the Wisconsin and the american
truck driver to deliver those goods to market and it's it's unfortunate that another
incident or issue like this of of rising diesel prices has to bring that to light but
that's where we are and people really should take time to appreciate what truck drivers are doing
out there to keep the economy moving even in light of rising diesel prices all right
dan johnson thanks very much thank you so much appreciate it
i'm just wondering i think i read something um when i was looking at all this like hundreds and