Friday, February, 4, 2000 Fuel cost hurting farmers By Beurmond Banville, Of the NEWS Staff

MADAWASKA  The busiest shipping period of the year is coming to northern Maines potato growing country, at a time when the high cost of diesel fuel is making it hard to get the potatoes from northern Maine to East Coast markets.

There is a limited amount of northbound trucking, coming from Boston and Portland, and most of the time, independent truckers travel north with no loads. The high cost of diesel fuel, up to $2 a gallon at some outlets, is stopping truckers from traveling empty.

Instead of going north from Boston, they are turning their trucks south.

We even have operators who have parked their trucks, instead of hauling without making money, Cary Burlock, general manager of Dysarts Transport Inc. in Bangor, said Thursday. If the rigs are paid for, they figure they will lose less money parked in the driveway than deadheading north.

Deadheading means trucks traveling with their freight boxes empty. In addition to operating its own fleet of trucks, Dysarts also brokers for independent truckers. Burlock said his company is having a difficult time getting independents to come north from Boston.

Its causing a crunch, Bruce Sargent of Sargent Trucking Inc. of Mars Hill, said about the effect of diesel prices. We have a lot of stuff that has to move, and we have little or no trucks to move it with.

According to an official with the Maine Potato Board, Aroostook County moves between 16,000 and 17,000 truckloads of potatoes a year.

That is in addition to the amount moved by McCains, the major potato processor in the area, said Michael Corey, executive director of the Maine Potato Board.

More than half of last falls crop still is in storage.

Ive heard that truckers are concerned about fuel costs and the distances they need to travel to get up here, Corey said Thursday. We dont have many options for getting potatoes out of here.

A trucking official at the McCains processing plant in Easton agreed Thursday that trucks are tight at the present time.

If we did not have our own fleet of trucks, we would be having a hard time getting our products out of northern Maine, the official said, declining to give his name.

He also declined to say how many loads of potato products are shipped from the plant each week.

Some growers, such as Edwin Pelletier and Sons Inc.s farming operation in Frenchville, have trucks of their own.

The Pelletiers have 12 18-wheelers hauling up and down the East Coast.

Its always a problem to get trucks to come up here, and its been even worse in the last couple of weeks, Philip Pelletier, one of three brothers in the Pelletier operation, said Thursday. When our trucks are all out on the road, its harder and harder to get [independent] trucks, especially in the last couple of weeks.

Right now its near impossible to get trucks to come up here, Robert Berube, a broker with Hapco Farms Inc. in Fort Kent said Thursday. We could have problems in getting the crop out of here with the price of fuel the way it is.

Theres no doubt that the price crunch on fuel is causing a major problem, Berube said. Even the local truckers are moaning and groaning about hauling because of the price of fuel.

Berube said the problem is a serious one, and politicians are doing very little about it.

The market is very slow, at this point, because we cant guarantee delivery, Berube said. Some days you cant get a truck to come up.

Burlock of Dysarts pointed out, The price of fuel doubling in a matter of days a few weeks ago was hard on independent operators and its hard on companies. The price nearly doubling, its astronomical.

Its a problem nationwide, but its worse in the Northeast, the general manager continued. We havent been in this situation since the Gulf War, and even then it wasnt this bad.

While the price has stabilized in recent days, the price of diesel fuel, and also home heating fuel and kerosene, has remained at an all-time high.

Some fueling stations in the St. John Valley were selling diesel fuel at more than $2 a gallon on Thursday.

Burlock said that even a price surcharge, charged by the independent truckers because of the high cost of fuel, is not bringing trucks into Maine north of Portland, and especially north of Bangor. The surcharge can be 1 additional cent per mile for each 5 cent increase in the cost of fuel.

In Aroostook County its even worse, Burlock said. Transportation costs for hauling potatoes has been depressed for 10 years.

Corey of the potato board agreed that there are concerns out there about the cost of shipping potatoes.

I suspect that when seed potatoes start moving, which will occur shortly, it will be even more difficult to line up trucks, the potato board official said.

Sargent said it is just easier for trucks to head south after leaving Boston. In a matter of hours, truckers can be in New Jersey, where the price of diesel is $1.50 a gallon or lower, and they are hauling full loads of goods at the same time.

Its causing a crunch, because we have a lot of stuff that needs to move and no trucks to haul it, Sargent said. We are up on the other end of the deal, and we are further away from everywhere.

-- Dad in Maine (goshen@Maine.IHope), February 04, 2000

Answers

This is EXACTLY the type of scenario predicted concerning Y2K but naturally we can't attribute it to Y2K because the media said it never happened.

Soaring petroleum product prices due to interruption in supply and/or manufacture of said in turn causing delays or total interruption in the delivery or supply of goods. In this case agriculture products. When is the last time we've ever had this problem in the 48 states? If I was a trucker, what would be the incentive to deadhead up to Maine and at the same time absorbing much higher fuel costs?

Can we say "expensive spuds" (except in Maine of course).

AND OF COURSE, we have to admit all these problems are normal because its too difficult to dredge up statistics from previous years to prove that the quantity of current problems are out of line OR deteriorating infrastructure has finally caught up to us (naturally at the same time as the potential for Y2K problems).

Oh well, TB2000 is probably my favorite bookmark because of the variety and instantaneous breaking news posts.

-- Guy Daley (guydaley@bwn.net), February 04, 2000.

I think that most of the time people have imagined domino effects as if one day the tires would fall off of the trucks, traines and planes and no one would know what to do about it. Instead what we are seeing in mainly economic impacts caused by subtle problems which are manifesting themselves in price increase and lack of supply. The effects will be economic as well. A trucker might be able to run his rig if fuel were high, but maybe it doesn't make any sense to him to do so until the price is right. So he shuts down and waits, which results in more shortages, delays, price increases, etc. Well, the wheels did not fall off, but the trucks are stopping anyway.

-- ..- (dit@dot.dash), February 04, 2000.

From the Portland (Maine) Press Herald, 2.2.00

After leveling off and even falling earlier this week, the wholesale price of home heating oil was rising again Thursday in New York. That's a sign that retail prices in Maine may climb again, at least briefly. The statewide average price early this week was $1.66. Dealers will be deciding today and this weekend whether to increase prices to their customers.

Heating oil is double its price last year at this time. Diesel is still 1.89 to 2.09 a gallon, Kero seems to have come down a little -- I spotted it yesterday at $2.35 a gallon. And to think my neighbors thought I was really overreacting to this y2k thing when I bought in that extra firewood last fall.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), February 04, 2000.

Guy - correct. And for the pollies who are tallying bad predictions, you might want to tally the valid ones, too.

For example, see the Supply Chain Data Point, which partly reads:

"Second, I suspect long-distance transport will be scarce and valuable. We won't waste it on merely diversifying a diet, and will instead use it to supply a basic diet. It's worth more to get beans to NY than to get oranges to someone who HAS beans. So here in the PNW we'll probably be eating lots of beans and potatoes, but no oranges. In Florida they'll have oranges and rice, and no beans. That could be done simply by hyper-taxing what fuels we have, and food-shipping would be priced out of the fuel market. A few, of course, will pay any price, just as in England during the war you might see an orange or two a year.

The corollary is that we'll be eating seasonally again. No more fresh out of season stuff from South America. We'll eat what's available until we're sick of it. Gorge on cherries and you'll see what I mean. Canning will be back in a BIG way."

Got Mason jars and lids?

-- bw (home@puget.sound), February 04, 2000.

'Course, that doesn't mean it's quite time to get out the old pressure-canner yet, but at least I've got ONE prediction that isn't [yet] proved totally ludicrous. Not that I want these things to come true ...

-- bw (home@puget.sound), February 04, 2000.

Dad in Maine, I am concerned for you folks up there. My brother's wife is from Presque Isle, and they lived there for some years. I know that when the potato crop suffered, the people there suffered badly financially. In fact, he was transferred by his firm to Massachusetts, where I lived, and could not sell his house in PI because no one had the money to buy. He lived in my house for 7-1/2 months before finding a buyer. So it's more than just that the rest of us may have less variety or pay more for what's in our diets...it's the suffering of the locals who cannot get out their crops that concerns me. You have my prayers.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), February 04, 2000.

Elaine - I'm not trying to belittle the problem by saying we'll have less variety. That's just one of the ramifications. I have family members (by marriage) in Maine, too, and others in Minnesota who are in real trouble if they have to depend on just what they grow. My mom has a garage full of wood, a stuffed pantry, and that's not necessarily enough.

Stay prepped, stay alert. We are hitting the iceberg now ...

-- bw (home@puget.sound), February 04, 2000.