How Fuel Prices, Other Factors Impact Your Auto Transport Price
The worldwide economy today is huge, vast and ever-changing. With literally trillions of dollars floating around in hundreds, if not thousands of different currencies, you’d be truly surprised at how price fluctuations or disruptions in one market can impact the prices of goods in another, with perhaps the best example being transportation costs. Let’s take corn. You grow a bushel of corn that you want to sell at the market. Locally, that’s easy – you can take a horse-drawn carriage with your little bushel of corn down to the local market a mile or two away. Aside from time, your transportation costs are completely free. Now, imagine that your one bushel was oh, say, a billion bushels, and instead of a mile down the road the market is a few thousand miles away, across the country. Suddenly transportation is a huge problem – you can take all that on the back of a single mule, now, can you?
The world we live in today, for better or worse, runs on gasoline and its derivatives. Most of that gasoline is in the hands of a quasi-legitimate oil cartel known as OPEC, or the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries. OPEC is one of the most important factors in worldwide fuel prices since they basically control the supply of a vast quantity of the world’s oil – this is also partly the reason why most western countries have a vested interest in the happenings of the region – much of their country’s oil comes from the area. Getting to the oil requires vast oil drilling operations, both on land and overseas. From there, refining the crude oil into gasoline and its many octane variants, then transporting it all to wherever it has to go. And all the while, most of the companies operating in the Middle East have some kind of beef with someone else, so protecting the entire operations, from drilling to refining to distribution is crucial.
All of those things add up, like credit card bills. One or two major expenses here or there isn’t a big deal, but when you factor in all that has to happen in order to get the gasoline that people use to them, you start to see why oil prices and oil barrel prices are skyrocketing. So when it comes to auto transport, prices for that industry are heavily reliant on gasoline prices (well, diesel prices, but it’s still the same process from start to finish). Auto shippers also have to factor in things such as the routes available to them, weather and traffic conditions in areas they’re servicing, scheduled and unscheduled maintenance costs. and more. The same is true of just about any business – costs tend to increase with the complexity of their supply chain, and auto transportation is no different.
If you’re searching for a quote to ship a vehicle, you can fill out our free online quote request form and get one right away. If you have questions about our services, make sure to give us a call at 800-930-7417 to speak to one of our own live agents, who can answer your questions and also help you get your free car shipping quote today, for absolutely no charge.
Since 2007 Dave has written all the content and blogs for American Auto Shipping and during this time added the duties of customer support and transport logistics.
He currently resides in Washington with his three kids and their mom and cat. A fan of Marvel movies and good stories, when not shipping cars Dave can be found working on his novel, enjoying a good book or playing some tournament HALO.
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