Good Morning.

You know, during the school year I am hyper-aware of fuel prices.


At the beginning of the week, before we started bombing Iran again, ordinary mid-grade gasoline was trading at about $4.89 at the Shell station near campus.

I filled up yesterday at $5.19.

Of course, I am endlessly mystified by those price fluctuations. It's a big station, so there's likely a 30,000 gallon tank underneath there. (That's three tractor-trailer tank units.) But that gas was already drilled, shipped, refined, and shipped again. It was bought and paid for months ago.

So how can the price change overnight for something that is already on-site and for sale?

It's the bane of everyone's existence now, but oil companies invented surge pricing aeons ago.

Of course, that's not the only problem. My personal vehicle is a car that is 12 years old and has over 160,000 miles on it. On the highway, it will still pull down around 42 mpg.

The Ford F-550 cutaway bus that I for work will turn in around 6 mpg all day. I go through half a tank of gas every day, and when it's low it can easily take over $150.00 to fill it.

There's no incentive to do anything about it. There never has been. There probably never will be. Improving things like that costs money....and thus reduces profit. As we all know, that is something that corporate America simply will not do.