Being robbed

In the case of Australia yes and no. Where we refine all our own gas locally from local fields of sweet light crude about 38cents of the USD$1.05 per litre pump price is tax the rest of the cost is due to paying the global rates per barrel to the oil companies as set on the Singapore market.

The reasoning being if the Australian Government were to step in dictating to the oil companies what they were allowed to charge domestically the Oil companies are currently free to sell all their Australian oil reserves overseas on the open market causing severe Gasoline shortages at home.

 

It's funny how people's memories change facts. According to this your Frontier got about 22 mph. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/findacar.htm

 

That's what "I" got with my Frontier on the highway.
I did everything short of an exhaust system to get the best gas milage I could.

BZ

 

ok First off have you ever gotten 2+ feet of snow and had to get to work or back home from work at 5AM with an AWD car? I've owned a subaru and toyotas and when it comes to that amount of snow you need something called ground clearance to make it through. also I would like to see someone put an 8' plow on anything with a 4cylinder or even a 6 and plow a storm with wet snow.

I should have also mentioned that I work at a car dealer and couldn't really pass up the deal that I got.
Also you don't see a whole lot of used mini vans for sale in Maine. Probably because they are useless in a big snow storm. And believe it or not not all the roads in maine are paved and we have this thing called mud season. It's not fun.

 

There have been several rebellians in the UK re the price at the pump. They all achieved zero.
The most effective one was everyone should avoid buying gas on a particular day of the week, every week for as long as it could be kept going. Once it got onto the news networks it began to really gather steam, but did it make a difference......you guessed, it didn't make a damn of difference, the prices just kept on going up.

 

Bubba,
I missed it where you called him a name and I have read your post many times. However, if he is talking about socialism like its the only thing to save us from ourselves than I can see where he deserves the moniker of liberal. But conservation to socialist mindsets only comes into play when they are talking about the less equal animal then themselves. And to save the forests from human interaction like removing the fuel so one little spark will light up a whole forest. And stopping hunting deer because its more humane to let them over populate and starve since there is no other predators around. If you was calling him a liberal then you should be ashamed its not their fault. Liberals feel they owe a great debt to their fellow man, a debt they plan to repay with your money. They didn't think about if their feel good ideas would work in the real world. It just looked good to them at the time. Give people with government jobs power over something and they will do as little as they can stretching their muscles ever chance they get. Don't believe me go to the DMV sometime. They are bastards.

 

I owned a 1996 4cyl ranger. Standard shift, no ac, cruise, power steering or nothin. I averaged about 22 mpg, just like the website I provided said. Sorry, ain't buying for a sec you got anywhere near 30 mpg unless your talking about coasting downhill...
I decided after a year and half and 40k that small 4cyl trucks make absolutely no sense whatsoever when a comfy larger truck with air, auto and power steering gets avg of 4mpg less. (talking about a 6 cyl chev or dodge1500 or F150). My back still hurts after selling that POS 5 years ago.

 

I've got a "beater" truck, mechanically fine just ugly on the outside. It's an 86 Nissan 4cyl single cab, short bed. No air, stick shift. I've had it since 1994 and I never have gotten anything higher than low 20s in mileage.

 

My Dad has a 94 nissan with a 4cyl 4x4 and a 5speed. I'm not sure if someone put lower gears in it or what, but that thing at best gets 17 or 18 mpg. She's wicked low geared goes pretty good but on the highway she's screeming at 70-75mph. So he stopped driving it and drives his full size 82 Dodge that gets just as good of milage.

 

Correction

OK Chesthing I went to the sole authority on this matter for accuracy, my wife, and here is what the conversation sounded like:

"Hey Honey, do you remeber the little Nissian I had"?

"Yes, why?"

"Do you remeber the gas milage I used to get?"

"Ahh...I think it was like mid to high 20's...why?"

"Are you sure? I could have sworn it was like 35 mpg highway"

"(Laughter)...no Dan...my [Ford] Escort got about 35 mpg. You must be confusing the two, there is no way in hell the Nissan got 35 mpg...(more laughter) Why is this SO important?"

"Ahh...well I put a post on VFRWorld that had some 'mis-information' and now I must eat my words".

Thanks Wife!


So there you have it! My apologies in my mpg numbers. I was wrong.

BZ

 

No big. I'm amazed mini-pickups still sell when the mpg just doesnt make up for the discomfort and lack of room. That's one class of vehicle I can say with absolute certainty I will never buy into again.

 

I know, but I hate mis-information, especially when I dispense it LOL!

My wife is a real mpg junkie...well because she is an environmental scientist (no busts please, she is NOT the typical treehugger. Trust me, I could not be with someone like that).

Anyway, I thought she may remember and I was starting to get the hard challenge from you all, so time to check the ol memory!

"The mind is a terrible thing"! LOL

BZ

 

Being an environmental scientist, I'd like to hear her opinion of which will come first: economical collapse from running out of cheap oil or global collapse from burning too much fossil fuel. I sure wish our future looked brighter. :frown:

 

Chesthing,

Economical collapse? No, America and the rest of the world have moved to a global economy. I forsee a economical pinch that may affect many countries, mainly the developed world (US and Europe) with China and India using so much fossil fuel technology. These two countires will become the dominent cutomers of the middle east and I think this will cause our prices on fossil fuel technologies to skyrocket. What I question in all this is we live in a very innovative market driven society, so you think our market would be adapting to this, but my husband Dan (I guess you know him as Bubba Zanetti) and I recently watched the documentry "Who Killed The Electric Car". I felt it really encapsulated the mentality of our government and car industry in its reluctance to accept new technologies that appear to have a market and could spawn a whole new industrial base in this country, but are pushed to the wayside for current profits. So my prediction is be prepared to spend more on all products that are based in fossil fuel technologies. Our society will adapt to it like we always have...remember the Great Depression.

Global collapse? Again, probabley not. Us scientists have really only been tracking the weather patterns for about the last 150 years. However, we do have the ability to see into the past weather patterns with oceanic and Antartic ice core samples. So I DO believe global warming is a fact and it will continue to cause "extreme" weather behavior and patterns. But I don't think it will wipe us out. The human species is very very adaptive. We are almost like whitetail deer. Humans come in and develope an area and although the forest is gone, the deer stay around. I am sure many of you have seen this phenomina. Humans are not much different.

Everybody is all doom and gloom. My husband grew up during the cold war so he likes movies about 'the end of the world'. The cold war ended as I was coming of age, so I don't have the same outlook and don't always relate to that thinking.

Time will tell as the data is collected and the weather changes.

I hope I answered your questions.

Jen or Ms. Zanetti

 

Yeah, I like the BMW and Volvo wagons. But, not quite the interior room of a mini van due to the lower roof height. None really have a real 3rd row (some sort of have a make shift rear facing one), where as a minivan has real seating for 7 or 8. And at that, the seating is going to be more comfy for adults than an SUV in the third row, due to the lower floor height.

I can clearly remember picking up a changing table for my son, and at the same time someone else was buying the same one. They had a Ford Exploder, the changing table which fit in my Prius (although I did have to fold down the rear seats), did not fit in the back of the Exploder, distance between the rear wheel wells was too narrow, but fit nicely and without struggle in the back of the Prius (don't need big wheel wells for wheel articulation off road). Since the Exploder driver was previously giving me crap about needing a truck, it gave me great pleasure to close my hatch, and be on my way while he tried to make other arrangements.:tongue:

Mercedes has that AMG wagon that is supposed to be a rocket. And BMW has a, not availible in the US, M5 Wagon that looks pretty sweet, supposed to handle great -- but likely doesn't do great on gas. I might think about it though. Thought about a 3 series wagon before we saw the Prius. That is the thing too, when they talk about the cost of the Prius over convential engined vehicles, it often gets compared price wise to the Corolla, and I have yet to meet a Prius owner who was considering the Corolla.

 

Gasoline and natural gas to heat your home are two totally different things, that is why you have the PUC on gas, and not on gasoline. If the Exxon station down the street decided to double their price one morning, you could drive to the Chevron station. If PG&E were allowed the same freedom, and actually did that, what could a homeowner do? Largely nothing. It is highly unlikely that you happen to have the pipes from several other gas companies coming into your home, few of us do. Essentially PG&E has an allowable monopoly and therefore is subject to increased scrutiny and regulation.

There is also the expectaion that a dwelling, in this day and age be equiped with certain things to be considered habitable, electrical service, water, sewer, heat. There is no expectation that people have to be able to drive to live.

Although highly desired, gasoline isn't necessary, to exist. Lots of people, a significant portion even, in this country do not own a vehicle and live productive lives.

As most of the gas companies are publicaly traded companies, their profits and earnings are readily availible to the public. You could call their investor hotline and they would likely be happy to send you an annual report.

 

Yechhh, hideously ugly. Not nearly as much cargo carrying capability as you would think. Blind spots galore. And then there is the reliability question. Plus rear wheel drive, for those that do face snow on a regular basis might be tricky.

 

Not buying gas for a day or a week, without actually changing one's usage. Hurts no one but a few of the mom & pop stations who would potentially lose sales of the add on stuff. If you weren't going to buy next week, most would make darn sure to fill up on Saturday, so you would just be giving the oil companies some money sooner, and a bunch again at the end. Yeah, that would show em:wink:
Gas will continue to go up in cost people, it may take some bumps down here or there along the way, but overall, and over time it will unquestionably cost more. You have to realize that. Make your choices about where you live/work and what you drive with that in mind.

If you shift all the purchasing to one or a few companies, why wouldn't they just raise their prices? Their demand has gone up, baring excess capactity at their refining and transportation facilities, which very few if any of the oil companies have; their supply would stay the same and then start to dwindle. So they would raise prices. You have the rule of supply and demand. Meanwhile Exxon, which surely is aware of this campaign could ride out the week or two before the others had to go up -- and they could do so easily. As soon as there is a 3 cent difference in price, any sort of cohesion in the boycott group would just fall apart, and people would go back to Exxon. If, and this is a big if, you could ever possibly get enough people to even partake in this at all.

 

There really shouldn't be a any regulation on free markets. Sure it sucks when oil companies rip us off. The price goes up a lot after a hurricane and then falls for the elections. Some blame bush for it. Others who know better see thru that and see the supply and demand side. But all I want to know is why haven't there been an inquiry into why it hasn't fallen back down. The huricane is over. It doesn't take this long for them to get back up and running. They have the money/ man power/ resources. The elections were the only thing to get the prices to fall overnight and all the stupid leftist pukes want to do instead of ask questions about gas, is relive the 60's and protest the war. That isn't what people were pissed about IMHO.
I know that other country's pay a lot for gas. More than us but I don't feel sorry for you. You wanted government control over your lives and now you have it. Ask your handlers (if they will let you) why can't we have cheap gas too.

The way I see it and I think that I gave it to you in a earlier post too (but nobody said anything) is the gas companies don't need our money. They will not lower prices out of the goodness of their hearts. They need competition not regulation from a beurocratic agency full of fatass burger flippers. It may seem like a pipe dream but how would like to know that it won't affect you how high the prices of gas goes up or down because you don't need them anymore? A different engine is needed. One that won't continue to nickel and dime every week to fill up. (does that seem nuts) And the worst part is the hippies will love it because they can upgrade their micro bus's to use it stop being hypocrites. Soccer moms can have a hummer for the 2.5 children and it wouldn't be look at as a gas hog. I think I made my point and I think you already know how useful this will be. Now the fun starts. Anyone think I have a great pipedream going? Or do they think I can do it?

 

actually I have driven in 2' feet of snow
and without AWD
but stick snow tires and drive properly and an AWD vehicle can do amazing things, short of actually going off road

never mounted a plow, didn't even know that was part of the disussion
but don't they sell plows for lawn tractors?:wink:

never said no one needs an SUV or truck, just that the vast majority of us do not
I will go further and say if you live somewhere where you do, that is a choice you make, and that is part of the cost, if you will, that is associated with that choice. There are all kinds of choices we make, the thing is to own up to them and not deny them. I have friends that have SUVs and have no problem with. Why? They never complain about it, they knew what they were subject to when they made the choice. I also have friends who I berate for their choice. Don't buy a gas guzzler and then complain that the price of gas is high. If that is an issue for you, look at ways to cut consumption. There are almost certainly options for you. Now, those options may not be worth it to you, and that is fine. But these are the choices you make. Don't be a solo driver in a Yukon, doing a highway commute to an office job of 50 miles and complain.

If you live on a private road, in a snow area that doesn't get plowed; well that is an choice you made.

Have an aunt an uncle in Maine actually, plus 3 adult cousins. Last time I was there my aunt was driving a Ford Windstar/Aerostar and my uncle a Ranger pickup, and he is in the construction industry (electrician). I want to say the pick up is even rear drive, but not sure.