{"id":300972,"date":"2026-05-20T06:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T06:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/300972\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T06:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T06:33:12","slug":"city-of-lubbock-facing-13-percent-fuel-cost-increase-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/300972\/","title":{"rendered":"City of Lubbock facing 13 percent fuel cost increase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; The City of Lubbock is grappling with rising fuel costs that have increased 13% over last year, according to the city\u2019s Fleet Operations director.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Dominic Esperat, who oversees more than 2,000 vehicles and pieces of equipment, said fuel prices have been climbing steadily.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen prices like this since COVID,\u201d Esperat said. \u201cAnd we can see it\u2019s just increasing at this point. So, we\u2019re hoping for a period of leveling off, but at the moment it\u2019s just been increasing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">PREVIOUS STORY IN 2022: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kcbd.com\/2022\/06\/23\/lubbock-economist-says-high-gas-prices-are-here-stay-cost-cutting-into-citys-fuel-budget\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.kcbd.com\/2022\/06\/23\/lubbock-economist-says-high-gas-prices-are-here-stay-cost-cutting-into-citys-fuel-budget\/\">Lubbock economist says high gas prices are here to stay; cost cutting into City\u2019s fuel budget<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">For the last month, unleaded fuel has cost $2.95 per gallon while diesel has been $4.11 for the city. That compares to this time last year, when unleaded was $2.09 and diesel was $2.42.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The city budgeted $5.3 million for fuel this year and has already spent $2.8 million.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cWe\u2019re thinking we\u2019re going to hit that budgeted number, but it is possible that we may go over,\u201d Esperat said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The city buys its fuel in bulk based on the wholesale price plus taxes and delivery fees. Fleet operations receives a daily quote for prices, and Esperat said his team monitors global conditions and fuel levels to time purchases.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI\u2019d say we try to be strategic with our ordering, but if we need to order the fuel, we will,\u201d Esperat said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The city also works to ensure employees run efficient routes and perform preventative maintenance, like regular oil changes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cJust want to make sure that our vehicles are able to be run, so you know our drivers and our city workers can deliver those services that the citizens want,\u201d Esperat said.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) &#8211; The City of Lubbock is grappling with rising fuel costs that have increased 13%&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[32601,109147,7990,2050,109154,992,5402,11775,15431,25575,109153,4505,109149,2444,109150,109148,42057,14265,497,21011,109151,319,66,168,170,169,4159,17155,223,236,1834,8027,21924,21013,109152,699],"class_list":["post-300972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-32601","tag-adapting","tag-brittany-crittenden","tag-budget","tag-budgeted","tag-city","tag-climbing","tag-cost","tag-costs","tag-covid","tag-diesel","tag-director","tag-dominic","tag-equipment","tag-esperat","tag-facing","tag-fleet","tag-fuel","tag-gas","tag-increase","tag-increasing","tag-kcbd","tag-local","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-maintenance","tag-million","tag-news","tag-of","tag-operations","tag-order","tag-percent","tag-prices","tag-unleaded","tag-vehicles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}