Gas prices - What are you paying in your neck of the woods to survive?

[Kyung]

You know, I get a lot of questions about page rates and things like that. People are curious and they want to know. And I see page rates for other parts of the country. Well, the thing is they all have to be put into context, i.e., cost of living. So to get an idea of what things are costing us, let's take a survey of gas prices and miles that people are traveling to work. Very informal, just chime in whatever area you are.

Now, I live in California. Our standard of living is high here. A house despite the recent mortgage meltdown is still going to run you over $600K, a nice house, 3-bedroom. Condos are running $350K to $500K and up.

Gas prices here are about $3.50/gal (in the last week) for unleaded to $3.70 and up for Supreme unleaded for those of you who can afford the "nice" cars :)

I drive anywhere from 10 miles one way to 30 miles one way depending on if I'm working local or hauling myself into downtown LA.

What kind of prices are you guys looking at out there?

It's sad. I read an article the other day about how gas prices are getting so high that people are actually starting to carpool and ride public transportation more often. I'm not sad about that. The sad thing is that we, as court reporters, can't rideshare. Just not feasible. Unless, perhaps, we work in a courthouse.

[Rhoda Collins]

I was thinking that was not great, LOL!

[Rhoda Collins]

oh, okay. But you have lots more room I bet, LOL! I only need mine for me and DD. It is "our" car. She can eat in the backseat without me freaking out. LOL

[Jennifer L. Marquardt]

Gas prices are going up and up, about $3.13 and up in Houston. The one thing I haven't noticed here is anything to offset that for the reporter, like paying the reporter mileage, gas... Some firms will pay mileage only if it exceeds a huge number. What is it like for everyone else due to the gas prices? Have your page rates gone up? It seems like we're making much less now, especially since the gas price gouging has hit.

[Shannon Wise]

Hey guys. I work out of San Antonio, and I live in the Hill Country. Usually 100 miles round trip. That doesn't include the border cities from Laredo to Del Rio because there's no freelance reporters there, so they pull us out of SA. I have a Jetta Diesel. I love it. We get 600 miles easy on a tank with city miles in the mix. Easily could get 700 straight highway, which is over 50 mpg. We looked into that hybrid business, but if that battery ever goes out, it'll cost more than a transmission to replace. And putting over 100,000 miles on my cars, they didn't know how well they did after about 80,000. Definitely not for me. My other car is a VW Rabbit (gas). I get about 33 mpg highway. We pay in the SA area 3.75 for gas and 4.20 to 4.50 for diesel, as of 5/20/08. We've gone up on our page rates, and if we go outside a certain loop in the area for a depo, we charge an extra fee of $40. Everybody else is going up on their prices to adjust for gas, why can't we? We have to travel. It's part of our job.

[Kelli Combs (admin)]

$4.10 next to my house today!

[Deborah L. Willoughby]

Hammond, Louisiana: $3.71 for regular, $3.80-something for mid, and $3.95 for premium. It's killing me. I live in a rural area so I have to travel 45 to 50 miles (one way) most of the time. I usually don't get reimbursed for mileage because the firms I work for are located in (or have offices in) the cities that I drive to, and that's where their clients/depos are usually located too. It's just my tough luck that I live so far away. It really bites! I have a Jeep Grand Cherokee that only gets about 18 mpg. It takes nearly $80 to fill it up. In my defense, I bought it before I started reporting and having to travel a lot. I wouldn't buy something like that now. In fact, I'm hoping not to have to buy another one for a reeeeeeeeeeallly long time!

[Shannon Wise]

The only thing that is going to stop the rise of these oil prices is becoming independent. All the countries that are producing oil that we're buying from are charging less than 50 cents a gallon for gas. Everyone else who is dependent upon an oil-producing company is paying what we are or more. I would suggest that everyone email, call, fax their U.S. rep, their U.S. senator and tell them to let us drill on our own land. Let us build refineries. We need to bombard them like we did on illegal immigration. We are not going to run out of fossil fuels. It is there for us to use, and it will not harm our environment. What's the point of having an environment if we're all stuck at home and we're living in the dark ages? The barrel rate went up today because of yesterday when OPEC saw that the U.S. was going to continue to do nothing. We need to do something and now. There's no overnight cure. But if the environmentalists would have let us drill and build refineries over the last 30 years, we would not be in this awful mess. Plus it also provides jobs. Our economy is dependent up oil. Think about it. Everything we need, everything we do, everything we have is dependent up oil and gas. Why can't we have our own, once again, like in the good old days?

[Rhoda Collins]

I have to agree. I saw refinerys close and lay off over the years where I grew up in PA. My dad had an oil company. He died in '85 and who wanted to hire three 20yr olds?? We had to sell...that was when the price of a barrel was SO cheap! Gas was SO cheap! We were underbidding just to 'try' to get work, no one would hire us.....sigh. Gradually everyone moved to drilling for natural gas, not oil. We still have some old pumps pumping oil on our property. They sound like Indian drums, lol. I missed that sound when I moved away.
Rho

[Shannon Wise]

Why is it such a crime for people to make money? It is not the oil companies' fault that they are making money. You have to consider they are making profits because of India and China now with their growing economy. We have no one to blame but our past political representives, starting mainly with the Carter adminstration. The CEO of Shell made a statement that in one reserve in the US that they KNOW about...I forget the name...we have over a trillion barrels. The dems are saying that the US only has 2% of the world's oil and, therefore, it isn't worth drilling. That's their argument. That is such a lie. The Petroleum Institute reports that we, the US, have the LARGEST oil repository on the planet. Can you imagine? Look how rich Saudi Arabia is. And we've got more oil than they do. It should be a crime that we cannot drill and lower our own prices and charge other countries for our oil production. We need to drill, drill, drill, and build, build, build refineries, but we can't. Why can't we? Well, just call your local EPA and ask. It's pure insanity. There's 40 different laws why we can't drill and why we can't build. It's not the oil companies' fault. And taxing them isn't the answer either. Do you not think they'll pass that on to us? They pay $30 billion a year to the government in taxes. They do so you and I don't have to. If you have a pension plan or your spouse does, I can guarantee you that the oil companies are part of that pension plan. So if they make money, so do you. Think about it, we can't live without the oil companies. If the government makes them fed up with all the regulations, they could just pack up and leave. They don't need us. But we need them, and so does the government, to cover the tax roll. The government really needs to get out of that and everything else and leave it to the free market. Please tell me what government program the government has actually run sufficiently and economically? I think none. Government is not the answer to everything.

[Sue Baker]

It is sad we can't carpool as freelancers. I even ask people if they want to ride together when the depo is far away and 99 percent of the time, they don't. Silly. Houston is so spread out, I drove 45 miles to a job still in the city last week. And the opposing counsel didn't want a copy, just for the other side to Xerox him one, too expensive. And me driving around 96-mile round trip and about 2-1/2 hours for free? It's gonna kill us! America runs on cheap oil. It is essential to our life and work styles. We are going to have to change, and quick. Gas is $3.69 here and we MAKE the stuff! You would think we would get it a little cheaper. But I gues this is the only way to get people's attention and make everyone change. I was around for the first "energy crisis" in the '70's and even owned a car that got 51 mpg (a diesel Rabbit). I thought they'd have much more efficient cars thirty years later, but we didn't learn a thing. So I hope we do this time around.

[Shannon Wise]

That's the problem, we don't really "make" the stuff, not like we used to. There was no "energy crisis." It was man made. It was the government trying to take control over the people, which is wrong, according to our Consitution. We've been shut down by all the environmentalists and their regulations. We've got more oil than anybody else and they won't let us get to it, nor will they let us refine it. More fuel efficient cars are only going to help us personally in our pockets, if that's possible. But you've got to think about the poor truckers out there costing them $1200 to fill up, and they get 7mpg. They are hurting, and when they decide to call it quits, we are in trouble. We depend on them. They're the next rung in the ladder to get us our goods. Apparently Americans are not mad enough and fed up enough like they were with the illegal immigration bill to do anything about it. All of congress' phones where ringing off the wall. You certainly don't hear that today. We as Americans could turn this around and use our own oil if we would just stand up and SCREAM like we did on immigration. I'm tired of hearing about, well, other countries do this and this country does this. So what. We are America. We did not become America and the world's super power by relying on what other countries thought or did, nor did we care what they thought. It's getting us nowhere, obviously. Of course, the other countries want us to care about what they think, because then it's starts chipping at our armor bit by bit. Our economy is dependent upon oil and gas. And countries whose economies fail turn into dictatorships. What a sad, sad state that would be for America.

Sue, maybe this will make you feel better. 2 weeks ago I drove all the way to Laredo, 175 miles one way (they've got one freelancer there), left at 5:30 am, and they settled the case. Got a stinkin app fee plus mileage.

[Sue Baker]

Nope, I don't feel any better. Thanks, tho.