The price of diesel, now at $3.73 a gallon, is up by 29 cents from a month ago and 84 cents from a year ago, according to AAA, the national motorist club based in Heathrow, Fla.
“Fuel is the second largest expense, right behind labor,” says Sean McNally, a spokesman for the American Trucking Association in Arlington, Va. “Typically, in a normal year it is 20 percent to 25 percent of operating costs but it can get as high as 35 percent.”
In an average week, a long-haul trucker will put about 2,000 miles on his vehicle, which gets no more than 7 miles per gallon, and typically more like 5.5 or 6 m.p.g. That means over the past month, even the most efficient truckers paid an additional $88 a week to top up.
