Diesel prices continued to head south this week, with the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration reporting that the average price per gallon fell 4.6 cents to $3.945 per gallon.
This decline comes after a 3.6 cent drop last week. Diesel prices have been down consistently of late, with the average price per gallon falling eight times in the last nine weeks. It has been below the $4 per gallon mark in four of the last six weeks.
Compared to a year ago, the average price per gallon is up 11.7 cents, said the EIA. And since reaching a more than four year high of $4.15 per gallon the week of October 15, the average price per gallon has fallen a cumulative 20.5 cents.
In its recently updated short-term energy outlook, the EIA is calling for diesel prices to average $3.97 per gallon in 2012 and $3.84 in 2013, with WTI crude oil is expected to hit $94.26 per barrel in 2012 and $88.38 in 2013.
As previously reported, regardless of the fluctuation in diesel prices, shippers are cognizant of the impact diesel prices can have on their bottom line—for better or worse.
And they continue to be proactive on that front, too, by taking steps to reduce mileage and transit lengths when possible as well as cut down on empty miles.
And even through shippers want to adjust budgets in order to offset the increased costs higher fuel prices bring, it is not always an easy thing to manage.
The focus from a supply chain management perspective, according to shippers, is more on utilization and efficiency by doing things like driving empty miles out of transportation networks.
Shippers have told LM that adjusting budgets is only part of the solution when it comes to dealing—and living—with fuel price fluctuation.