First of all, with about ten million medium and heavy duty trucks, as well as a number of buses and "oil-burning" cars--meaning diesels and not old Subarus with worn piston rings driven by "environmentalists" of course--it strikes me that even 95 million gallons of diesel fuel burned per day is awfully low--really only about ten gallons per vehicle at most, meaning that the average distance traveled per day by a diesel vehicle is 100 miles or less. In other words, most of our diesel fleet spends most of its time idle.
Next, regarding subsidies, it's worth noting that there are tax credits for ethanol totaling about fifty cents to a dollar per gallon--far exceeding the excise taxes imposed on fuels. In contrast, the total broad definition "subsidy" for petroleum (those subsidies that really aren't) total about a nickel to a dime per gallon.
In other words, alternative fuels are indeed heavily subsidized, but petroleum is not.
Podcast #1047: The Roman Caesars’ Guide to Ruling
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The Roman caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC
with Julius Caesar’s heir Augustus, from whom subsequent caesars took their
nam...
8 hours ago
2 comments:
As an employee of a trucking company, some additional facts. We're happy when our trucks get 6+ mpg. Our trucks travel 3,000,000 miles every day. We have about 7200 trucks, so that's 417 miles per truck per day.
Thanks--I was "guesstimating" that the overall number would be somewhere between 5 and 10mpg. And you are indicating that up to about 90% of the fleet is idle at any given time, which makes sense as I see all those trucks in the back 40 of farmers' yards that only get used at harvest.
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