ST. PAUL, Minn. (KFGO) – Truckers in Minnesota are now paying $1,000 to fill their 200-gallon fuel tanks. John Hausladen President of the Minnesota Trucking Association says the price for a gallon of diesel in Minnesota averages $5-a-gallon.
“This is a serious issue for trucking companies to manage because fuel at these new prices has become our number one cost jumping over labor costs. And the challenge with trucking companies are while we can recover some of this from our customers we only pick up about 60-to-70 percent of that price increase through surcharges,” Hausladen said.
He says that’s not a sustainable business model. Hausladen is calling on the Biden administration to help bring the prices down. He says the trucking association has always supported funding for infrastructure maintenance and improvements so a gas tax holiday could damage those efforts. Hausladen says there need to be permanent reforms that benefit truck drivers.
He says it’s been a double blow to their members who are also dealing with driver shortages and he’s not sure how long many smaller haulers will be able to hang on.
“I’m concerned we may lose some trucking companies out of this. We’ve seen this in the past when prices go up. And right now with the capacity shortage, the last thing we need is to lose trucking companies. So we need the federal government and the president to take leadership and address this. These prices were going up before the Russian crisis in Ukraine,” he said.
Hausladen says truckers are resilient and they’ll find a way to get the job done, but he says it will come at a cost.
“I can’t say what this is going to equate to the end consumer but we do know these costs are going to work their way through the system because trucking companies just don’t have the capacity to absorb it. They’ll have to push it on to their customers into the goods that they provide and that will flow down the chain,” he said.
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