Posts Tagged ‘pricing’
The Cost of Higher Fuel Prices: No More Vehicle Allowances & No CCSD Trucks for Commuting
When the first rates increase was in the works (September 2007), gasoline in California was hovering around the $3 mark. The price is now 50% higher at $4.50 per gallon and continue to rise. Diesel has gone from a little over to $3 to around $5. In an effort to compare the increased costs, I reviewed the expenditure reports for May 2007, July 2007, September 2007, October 2007 and May 2008. Since the expenditure report doesn’t list the price per gallon, I used a little algebra and a calculator to determine an average price per gallon for gasoline and diesel for each of the five months. (See methodology at the end of this post.)
Based on the information from the expenditure reports, the Ditrict is spending somewhere around $3000 more per month on fuel than only one year ago. The increase from January 2006 (using the California average price of diesel) is closer to $5000 a month increase. Reducing the amount of gas and diesel used (by eliminating the vehicle take-home policy) and reducing some of the fixed costs in the budget (vehicle allowances), the CCSD may be able to
make up the difference between what has been budgeted for fuel and what the cost actually is. Without raising rates.
| May-07 | Jul-07 | Sep-07 | Oct-07 | May-08 | |
| Gallons of Gas | 1643 | 857 | 664 | 910 | 1000 |
| Average Price per gallon | $3.57 | $3.31 | $3.26 | $3.27 | $4.47 |
| Total spent for Gasoline | $5,865.51 | $2,836.67 | $2,164.64 | $2,975.70 | $4,470.00 |
| Gallons of Diesel | 2103 | 1714 | 500 | 2394 | 2793 |
| Average Price per gallon | $3.18 | $3.45 | $3.54 | $3.78 | $4.37 |
| Total spent for Diesel | $6,687.54 | $5,913.30 | $1,770.00 | $9,049.32 | $12,205.41 |
| Total Fuel Expenditures | $12,553.05 | $8,749.97 | $3,934.64 | $12,025.02 | $16,675.41 |
PLEASE NOTE:
The numbers in the table are off by a bit, most likely due to the 9/10ยข tax charged in each gallon and because it seems the price per gallon c
an change as many as 3 times per month (at least according to the numbers on the expenditure reports.) It will probably be obvious I didn’t major in math…my B.A. is in English. Trust me when I say that getting this data correct and in a format that was at least somewhat useful was a challenge…fun, but a challenge. Please let me know if you find some error or fallacy in my methodology. I was mainly trying to understand how much the rising cost of fuel has affected the CCSD’s budget
Methodology: Each month there are 3 payments made. The amount of fuel used is divided by department and by type. I started by picking an expenditure that was ONLY gasoline and divided the total gallons into the amount paid ($$), to get average price per gallon ($pgg):
($$/g=$pgg)
Then I multiplied the total gallons of gasoline (tgg) by the average price per gallon to get the amount spent on gasoline that month ($gm):
($ppg * tgg=$gm)
Next, I subtracted amount spent on gasonline for the month ($gm) from the total expended on fuel for the month ($tfm) to get how much was spent on diesel for the month.
($tfm - $gm = $dm)
I divided this result by the number of gallons of diesel used in the month (gd) to get the average price of diesel per gallon for the month ($pgd).
($dm/gd=$pgd)
From there it’s a hop skip and a jump to the rest of the numbers.
Whew! I think I’ve earned myself a Bombay Sapphire Martini with a yummy garlic stuffed olive drowning in it. Want one?
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Tags: Cambria, CCSD, comparison, diesel, fuel, methodology, pricing