by Joel Addington
Contributing Writer
For the last week, retail gasoline prices have sustained a spike to more than $3 per gallon, the highest point ever for this time of year and about 80 cents more than a year ago, according to the Department of Energy.
Locally, retail prices ranged from a low of $2.98 at Sam’s Club on BeachBoulevard (for members only) to a high of $3.23 at the Shell on West C.R. 210, according to www.jacksonvillegasprices.com.
That means more people on the buses and tighter margins for gasoline retailers. “It’s killing us,” said Jim Smith, president of Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association. “Ninety-five percent (of gas stations) are owned by independents. This is not big oil. They pay for gasoline and taxes at the time of delivery, so the cost they face to do business is astronomical.”
Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA) is feeling the pitch as well, despite buying fuel at the wholesale price of $2.72 per gallon last week.
“That’s without any local, state or federal taxes,” said JTA spokesman Mike Miller.
However, he added, JTA is still paying 25 percent more for fuel than it did last year. And while ridership numbers haven’t been calculated for November, Miller said, “Our operators are seeing more people at the regular stops, and hits on our Web site have also increased.
“We’re assuming (high gas prices) will continue to increase ridership for us as more and more people compare the price of gas to the price of riding,” he said.
Greyhound couldn’t definitively link an increase in bus ticket sales for the Thanksgiving holiday to prices at the pump.
“The Thanksgiving travel period is one of our busiest of the year and we’re coming out of a busy summer travel season,” said Dustin Clark, Greyhound spokesman. “Statistically speaking, I can’t correlate an increase in riders due to high gas prices. That may be a factor, and we encourage our customers to save money on gas and ride Greyhound. But on the environmental side, we take about 33,000 cars off the road each year.”
The jump in fuel prices has also raised the cost of shipping.
FedEx.com reports the company will raise its air and ground fuel surcharge percentages Dec. 3.
Each FedEx customer pays a percentage of the average cost for a gallon of diesel fuel for ground shipping and a much higher percentage of the average cost for a gallon of jet fuel to send a package by plane.
The ground percentage (5 percent) is set to increase by a quarter of a percentage point, while the air percentage will increase by one percentage point to 17.5.
For Greyhound, Clark said the cost of fuel is such a small percentage of the ticket price that, “you don’t normally see a ticket price increase directly related to fuel prices.”
While most reports point to an increase in the price of crude oil ($83 per barrel in the U.S.) as the source of the recent pain at the pump, Smith blamed an under-regulated commodities market.
“Congress passed a bill after Enron creating an oversight committee for commodities trading,” he said. “But they never funded it. Because of that, the (Atlanta-based) Intercontinental Exchange is probably responsible for 80 to 120 cents of the increase (of gas prices in the last year) because of their trading practices. They manipulate the price.”