Cash or credit?

Cash or credit at the pump? It used to happen at fueling stations all the time. Many thought the practice had gone away. But it never really did.

And it’s raised another question in the mind of some truckers. How is it that a station can charge less based on how you pay? To one trucker who called our program, it sounded like a form of price gouging aimed at credit card-using customers.

But in fact, it’s not.

Most of the discount they’re offering for cash payment is due to how the credit card companies make their money. They charge a percentage of the purchase.

I remember it used to be 4 percent of retail purchases. So when you paid a dollar, 4 cents went to Visa, Mastercard or whoever.

Now that a gallon of fuel is more than $4 … that 4 percent becomes 16 cents to Visa, not 4 cents.

I’m not sure 4 percent is still the number, but I’m pretty sure it hasn’t gone down.

Part of what’s driving this as well is the incredibly thin profit margins local fuel stations have on diesel purchases. Some only pull in a few cents per gallon in net profit. So 16 cents off that becomes a make or break situation.

I’m not trying to justify what they’re doing. I don’t think I could look myself in the mirror in the morning if I tried to justify anything fuel companies did right now. But this is why they’re offering that discount.

That being said, I think one more point needs to be made: If you are charging more for credit card purchases, you should have to put the higher price on your sign.

If cash buyers get a discount, bonus! It’s like Christmas.

But no one should ever be subjected to pulling in for one price, only to be charged another when they walk in to pay.

Getting the priorities straight

More and more states and cities are passing laws against hand-held cell phone use.

And while there are some studies to indicate using a cell is distracting to drivers, and therefore constitutes a safety hazard, some contend that other, more serious problems should take precedence.

I do think those critics have a solid point. With murders, robberies and violence in the streets, we would seem to have plenty of work for our law enforcement to do. Certainly I think most would agree those would take precedence over stopping Johnny from talking with Buffy on the cell phone.

However, to the credit of the folks in California (you won’t hear me say that often), I do think we need to do something about many four-wheelers’ driving habits.

How many times have you seen someone putting on makeup, turning completely around to discipline a kid, doing paperwork from their job, bending over to pick up something off the car floor … or nearly hitting your rig because they were gabbing on the blasted phone instead of driving?

That’s what the folks in California are trying to put a stop to.

Of course, if instead of that, they required driver’s education, that very well might solve that problem – and a whole mess of other problems.

But I guess that would be too hard for them to do.

Barn door closed, horse long gone, while foxes guard hen house

U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters recently traveled to Atlanta to “unveil the Bush administration’s comprehensive new transportation plan.”

Her big announcement came only 174 days before the 2,920-day-long Bush administration will end.

Odd timing, it would seem, to announce with fanfare that the administration is, at long last, “completely overhauling” the nation’s transportation system.

The truth is that if Bush and Peters were the parents, and our highway system was the child, they’d both be hauled off by social services for parental neglect.

The only things they’ve done for the system in eight long years is to allow the Highway Trust Fund to go bankrupt and to urge the states to sell off their roads and bridges to Wall Street and/or foreign investors.

OOIDA’s Todd Spencer says they “hung out the for sale sign.”

So, Peters’ insistence that – in 174 days – they’ll fix our “broken” system would be laughable if it weren’t so condescending.

The truth is, they left the barn door open for eight years and, sure enough, the horse (read highway system) that was once the envy of the world galloped off (read went broke).

But, if you can handle mixed metaphors, the foxes who’ve been guarding the transportation hen house will scamper back to their dens in 174 days.

Then maybe that ol’ horse can be coaxed back into the barn.

A constant irritant

Illinois and its long-running split speed limit are constant irritants for truckers.

Of course, the Land of Lincoln doesn’t stop with that. They apparently have found ways to rub it in.

A trucker called us recently about billboards he had seen in Illinois that said something to the effect of “Truckers, here’s your sign,” followed by a picture of a 55 mph speed limit sign.

Needless to say, that trucker was more than a little irritated by the implied message – that truckers somehow didn’t see the thousand or so speed limit signs already out there? Do they really think truck drivers are that stupid? Or blind?

They must, or why would they spend the tens of thousands of dollars necessary to keep a billboard up?

The state’s government seems to have a long-standing problem with truckers, which is sad, considering the portion of their economy that’s dependent on trucks. The split speed limit is just part of it, but it’s an awfully big part.

Because split speed limits are unsafe, OOIDA has put a massive amount of effort over the years into overturning that law. In fact, the association has done far more than any other group out there to oppose split speed limits, especially in Illinois.

Due to the Association’s efforts, the Illinois General Assembly has voted at least three times I know of to end lower speed limits for trucks. And several of those votes were veto-proof majorities.

Then, each time, the governor vetoed the bill, and a bunch of lawmakers from the Chicago area – which isn’t affected one way or the other by this – changed their votes.

Some of those lawmakers who I spoke to seemed unaware of the problem split speed limits posed. Some simply listened to what the AAA Chicago Motor Club – a supporter of splits – said, but never checked it out to see if those statements were factual. One lawmaker didn’t even seem to know the split speeds didn’t affect her hometown, which sits well inside the metro area.

Shockingly, one lawmaker – a member of the state’s Senate Transportation Committee – didn’t know the difference between an Interstate highway and a U.S. highway with traffic lights.

Informing people like you about that history is one of the most important things OOIDA does – so that the next time the governor or the lawmakers who changed their votes are up for election, truckers who live in Illinois can make their voices heard in the most effective way possible.

‘I’m Mad As Hell’

In the 1976 Oscar-winning movie “Network” Peter Finch plays a TV network anchor who, after reflecting on how the world works, tells his viewers, “I’m mad as hell … and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Well, count me mad-as-hell too – about the current state of affairs.

The housing industry tanks because a bunch of greedy suits at big mortgage lending companies take ridiculous risks to lend money to people they know will probably be foreclosed on … and, sure enough, they were.

Now it looks as if you and I – the working folks – will get to pay $25 billion to prop up the quasi-governmental private companies (“Fannie Mae” and “Freddie Mac”) that provide the foundation of the mortgage lending industry.

The suits won’t be paying this tab.

In fact, I suspect they’re busy shifting the money they made on subprime loans from stocks to commodities like oil as a defense against the plummeting U.S. dollar.

Of course, the huge influx of speculative investor money into oil is blamed by many for increasing the price of oil – and diesel and gas – by as much as 60 percent.

So what’s in your wallet? A bunch of commodities futures … or barely enough to fuel up the family car?

One could go on and on about the inequities of our world – the frightening price of groceries … the total lack of government regulation that allowed Enron to collapse and take the life savings of thousands of employees with it, etc.

I don’t know what the solution is.

But trust me. I’m mad as hell and I’m not …

… well, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do.

Striking up the (lap) band

I have a confession to make. I have known several people in my lifetime that have had, or are going to have, or are just considering, weight loss surgery.

No, that’s not the confession. It would be a pretty boring one if it was. The confession is this: until very recently, I always thought of having surgery as the easy way out. A cheat. Just eat right and exercise. It may take a bit longer that way, but it will work. People who have band surgery or stomach staples are just taking a short cut. They just don’t want to do the work, right?

Wrong.

A recent conversation I had with Land Line Now listener Kevin Raines opened my eyes to the reality of something seemingly as simple as Lap Band surgery. Kevin had the procedure himself a few years ago. And hearing his story convinced me that there is nothing easy about it.

Kevin had to give up eating meat, bread, soda and a host of other things. The surgery helped him along, but he still had to work at it to lose weight. There was no short-cut about it.

There’s an entire industry out there that is centered around weight loss. And while many of the products in that industry – such as the Lap Band System – are legit, there are many others that are little more than snake oil.

Diet pills, creams, oils, weight loss contraptions (Thigh Master, anyone?). They all promise to help you lose weight both quickly and easily. And they all lie.

The truth of the matter is this: when it comes right down to it, there is no quick and easy way to lose weight. I’ve been on Weight Watchers since January and it has taken me six months to lose 30 pounds. And I’m still a long way from my goal.

But I’m willing to keep going. To work at it. And no matter what you do, that’s what it’s going to take. Things like band surgery and stomach staples and gastric bypass surgery will help. That’s been proven. But they aren’t overnight miracle cures, either. And they sure as hell aren’t the easy way out.

They can be powerful weapons in the battle of the bulge, but ultimately, a weapon is only as good in a fight as the person wielding it.

Drilling is good, but we can do more

How to fix the oil price crisis has become one of the great puzzles we’re all trying to solve. Some have proposed drilling for more oil at home.

I think we all agree that more domestic production would be good. Controlling our own domestic supply prevents disruptions in other nations from affecting our economy.

But we’re looking at 10, 20 or 30 years down the road before any of that drilling would have an effect on the price of fuel.

Our government can, and we can, do several things in the meantime that will have a much more immediate effect on fuel prices and our economy.

We’ve discussed those many times on our program. Regulating speculation in oil markets and cutting demand are among them.

For example, many of us look at fuel economy standards as something that just involves the four-wheelers. But if the four-wheelers used 10 percent less fuel, that would significantly reduce demand for oil overall, which could in turn lower prices that truckers pay.

If we find affordable ways to make alternative fuels, if we cut demand for other products that use petroleum, if we find ways to power things electrically that are now powered by oil-based fuels – anything like that could lower demand.

And there’s another issue – the oil companies already have leases to drill on thousands and thousands of acres of land in this country. Why aren’t they exploring or drilling there? And if they’re not going to, should we allow someone else to try?

I do think we need to tap our domestic reserves. But there’s a lot more we should look at as well.