Australia, like many countries around the world, is in the grip of a fuel crisis.<\/p>\n
The nation has experienced some of its biggest ever spikes in petrol and diesel prices – and the lorry industry has been among the hardest hit. <\/p>\n
Operators are reliant on diesel, often to power heavy long-haul road trains, and many say costs have more than doubled since war broke out in Iran, sending oil prices to record highs across the globe.<\/p>\n
In a rare national address, Australia’s prime minister recently made a three-and-a-half minute plea about the country’s fuel supplies. <\/p>\n
“These are uncertain times,” Anthony Albanese said during the prime-time televised address.<\/p>\n
“But I am absolutely certain of this: we will deal with these global challenges, the Australian way.”<\/p>\n
He asked everyone to “think of others” when using fuel and opt for public transport where possible, so that supplies could be saved for “people who have no choice but to drive”.<\/p>\n
But for Aaron Fischer, an owner-operator of a lorry company, Albanese’s words brought little relief as he spent another sleepless night trying to keep his business afloat. <\/p>\n
“I was laying in bed the other night with my laptop, just running through numbers,” he tells the BBC.<\/p>\n
“I need to know what I’ve got coming in and going out to make sure my maintenance bills are right, my fuel bills are fine, my tyre bills are good.”<\/p>\n
The price of diesel has seen his fuel costs skyrocket.<\/p>\n
“Before all this stuff happened, it used to cost me A$3,600 (US$2,540, \u00a31,890) to fill up a tank… now I’m spending $7,500. That’s the problem: it’s literally doubled my bill.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia, like many countries around the world, is in the grip of a fuel crisis. The nation has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-527891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}