HAMBURG, Pa. – Record-high diesel prices are putting the squeeze on the trucking industry.<\/p>\n
The average price per gallon in Berks is nearly 13 cents higher than the national average, and local trucking companies say they’re struggling to manage the increase. Experts say those prices won’t just impact truckers, but everyday consumers too.<\/p>\n
And in a lot of ways we’re already starting to feel it.<\/p>\n
The average price of diesel has reached a record high of $6.31 per gallon, according to data from Triple A, with the average even higher in Reading, at $6.43.<\/p>\n
“When you get an instance like this that costs go up, it puts a squeeze on us,” said Bradley Wanner, the Vice President of Peters Brothers Trucking.<\/p>\n
With 85 trucks transporting food all over the United States, Wanner says it’s hard for the industry to keep up with the increasing cost of fuel.<\/p>\n
“When it jumps so quick, you can’t quite increase your rates quick enough to offset it,” he said.<\/p>\n
Diesel prices have jumped more than 70% compared to last year due to ongoing conflicts like the U.S. war with Iran.<\/p>\n
“I think the best, the best thing we can do right now as a trucking industry as a whole is hope they come down,”\u00a0Wanner said.<\/p>\n
Wanner says truck companies base some of their prices on the price of fuel, so with prices this high, you’re going to feel it in the grocery store.<\/p>\n
The fuel price doesn’t just impact supply chains, it also impacts all machinery that runs on diesel.<\/p>\n
“Some of these buildings have to then run diesel generators to get, just keep the service lights,” he said.<\/p>\n
“When diesel goes up there is going to be more of an impact in everybody’s foreseeable future.”<\/p>\n
Wanner says even though fluctuating diesel prices are normal, something like this has been a long time coming.<\/p>\n
“Even if fuel went down, back down to $2 a gallon right now, you’re still going to see increases because there’s been such a pinch for so many years now,”\u00a0Wanner said.<\/p>\n
He said right now there’s simply no stability, and prices on not just food, but all goods will likely be impacted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HAMBURG, Pa. – Record-high diesel prices are putting the squeeze on the trucking industry. The average price per…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":288050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[214,279,60,13886,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-288049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-berks","tag-business","tag-northern-berks-county","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}