America's Truckin' Network -- 12/3/25

the supply is pretty much the same. You can only put so many gallons in the tank underground and go on and that. If there's a lot of demand for that, then of course people are going to be you know, the demands there, so the supply is less and of course the prices go up. But over the last year we've seen pretty much around the time of thinks well, Independence Day, Memorial Day weekend and there that gas prices actually came down a little bit, were held steady right

up to the Thanksgiving holiday. A lot of people were talking about and actually in the news they were talking a little bit about this, which was kind of interesting because it was positive news for the Trump administration, which surprise, surprise, they actually reported on, but talking about that gas prices were approaching the lowest that they had been in over four years.

forty six, down seventy one cents. That is down seventeen dollars and forty four cents since Inauguration Day, or twenty two percent. And I've been talking most of the summer we actually since oil price has been falling, that we're not seeing this reflected in gasoline prices. And I have quized several people on that. We've had Phil Flint on

this program talking about that. And when they talk about going into the summer season, you have the summer blends and you have to have certain additives to that for pollution controls, and you know, the distillates and the processing

going through the refinery and the costs of that. Also in the spring, when they start gearing up away from the heating oil and the decent you know, the heating oil during the winter months and getting into the gasoline season, then you have the changeover and the refineries and the prices. You know, the supply goes down because they're not refining

as much. And then at the end of the term when the summer driving season is over and then shifting to the winter blends, that the maintenance goes down, and you know, all.

what they talk about. Towards the end of the season, after you get out of the summer driving season, when you have the peak gasoline demand, the demand isn't there as much, and so then the prices come down. It made the net well headlines from the National News talking about the gasoline prices fall to a four year low on cheap oil, flat demand. Now again, when I look at gasoline prices and for the first time for a long time, technically nationwide the average for gasoline is down

below three dollars a gallon. But you know, the way they put the prices on the Marquee and whatever, it's always, you know, two dollars and seventy five cents point nine. You might as we'll call it two dollars and seventy six cents. But right now the national average is two dollars ninety nine cents point eight, so eight tenths, so it averages out or you know, round up to three dollars. But it is technically below three dollars a gallon, which is a good thing. Uh, And prices are coming down.

In the story they're talking about while gasoline prices tend to fall after the peak summer demand months, demand months when drivers hit the rather on vacation. The cost to fill your tank has been relatively flat this year, with prices held down by cheaper cruit. Now on the plus side of that, the gasoline prices haven't gone up. If you look at the prices as what they were last year versus this year, they are relatively the same or

within a couple of pennies of each. So as far as inflation is concerned, when you look at energy prices, where you look at gasoline prices, that isn't affecting your your bank account or affecting your your you know, your monthly payments, your budget for the year or for the month on a on a major way, because again you're paying the same amount basically this year as you were last year, and depending upon how you drive, the fuel

efficiency and so on will make a big difference. But it's been interesting that actually people are starting to talk about that and the fact that I'm actually starting to see this price is narrowing to the point where it's it's noticeable, but not as noticeable as it could be. And as I've mentioned, if prices on gasoline were about fifteen percent lower where I think they should be. We'd be paying a national average of about two dollars and fifty five cents a gallon, and there needs to be

a little bit of Now. I know, these refineries are working at massive amounts. I mean they are working at ninety six ninety seven percent capacity, which is in efficiency, which is a lot higher than most businesses operate. And so credit to that. But again, as I mentioned before, we have not built a major refinery in this country

in over forty seven years. We've upgraded some, we've expanded some within the territory or within the location of these refineries, but in terms of actually manufacturing a new or building

a new refinery, it just hasn't been done. And then you see the gasoline prices out in California, which are more than two dollars, more than two dollars a gallon than the cheapest gas in the country right now, Gasoline in California is at five four dollars and fifty four cents a gallon, and at Oklahoma is two dollars and forty cents. Folks, that is a two dollars and fourteen cent difference. And you've got all these regulations on the

gasoline prices in producing in California. They put all this mandates in terms of additives that have to go into the gasoline there to control, as they say, pollution in that part of the country. Yet they will push all these environmental controls in certain areas, but then allow these wildfires to go crazy, which wipes out all the stuff that they've done in terms of cleaning up the climate or cleaning up the environment.

to fifteen years. So everything they've done out there has been useless based on their environmental policies as far as clear cutting, making sure that they keep the brush low and by the way, if you've got fire hydrants, make sure that they have water in them, filling the reservoir, doing the basic things that government are supposed to be doing so on top of that, on top of being a situation where you have a fire hazard on a yearly basis, and then you've got these right now, what

I think, I don't even think of the eleven thousand structures out there. I think last count was that there had been something like fourteen hundred applications that have been filed. And again that number is down because of all the restriction and all the requirements going into cleaning up the site and making sure that it's ready to be built

on before you even apply for the application. So the building permits that have been issued are paltry, the amount of applications are low because of all the government red tape, remember the press conferences that we're going to streamline all

these things. So you've got this crazy situation out there, and plus the fact that they're paying two dollars and fourteen cents more per gallon because they have special refineries out there, and then they criticize those refineries and put more restrictions on them to the point where where the refineries there that can actually produce the type of gasoline that is demanded by that state they're moving out. So it's even more high because there's even less refineries that

are doing that. So this environmental policy out in California is nuts. But at least across the country, what we're seeing as far as gasoline prices, they're starting to come down, and of course based on some of the more inexpensive they keep calling it cheap oil, but it's just less expensive oil that we have in this country. Coming up, we're going to be talking about some manufacturing numbers that we saw, which kind of a good news bad news situation.

I'm Kevin Gordon, America's truck a network seven hundred WLW.

One season will come down to one race. Following the action over the weekend at Abu Dhabi, Max verstapp And won the race and a championship leader Lando Norris fishing fourth for a staff and is now Norris's closest rival heading into next weekend, just twelve points behind.

the extended period of malaise. Now, if there are less orders, that means that they're that, you know, the customers have slowed down. And why has the customer slowed down? Have they slowed down because of pricing or because of demand? And if it's demand, could it possibly be because the

interest rates are too high? If people are wanting more products and they're going to go out and have some of this stuff manufactured and provided for them, that maybe the market isn't there yet because of waiting on interest rates to come down. And it was funny yesterday going into actually going into Monday, all I saw, as far

as the headlines Jerome Powell to speak. And this was the thing is if some you know, you're waiting for the Messiah or somebody to stand on a mountaintop and give some sort of a grand and glorious speech in terms of what's going on as the economy is concerned.

all in the first place. But again, you know, and I backed that up by the fact that when you look at his track record during the Biden administration, when you had inflation month after month after month after month going up and up and up, he kept saying, well, you know this, this inflation is transitory, and no, we don't see in a situation where we need to raise

interest rates in order to slow the economy. Down any or to slow the inflation rate down, none of this sort of stuff until it got to a point in July, in June of twenty twenty two, when we hit a nine point one percent I can't emphasize that enough. Nine point one percent inflation rate. It was the highest in forty years. Let that sink in for a moment. And yet the Federal Reserve kept talking about transitory inflation. This is only temper, it's not you know, it's not going

to be there forever. Well, the problem is, and I keep pointing, and I kept pointing it out at the time, even and even today given some of the numbers, is that it's not a matter if you're starting off at at you know, if you're talking about a dollar today, it's not as if the inflation for that month bumps up and then you start all over back down to

a dollar. So if your inflation goes up three cents, then the next month you've got a dollar three, and then if it goes up three percent from there, then it's now up to a dollar six, but a little bit higher than a dollar six, because you're taking three percent of a dollar three, not not three percent of a dollar. And so then the following month, if it goes up three percent, it's not going up three percent based on that dollar. It's going up based on what

has already been layered on top of that. And then in the month at June when it went up nine percent, it doesn't come back down from that. The only way that that comes down is if you increase activity, you increase the purchases, and you increase the economy to the point where those prices do come down because there's so much being it costs less to manufacture the facility, the items that you're producing, or the amount of items that you're buying. Look at a truck. I mean people in

the trucking industry, you know all about this. If you're driving a truck and the truck is full, then you're getting the most bang for your buck in terms of those items in there, and it's costing you. It costs you the same to run that truck. But if the load is full, then you're spreading that over the total of what's in the truck itself. So if your truck is empty, then you're costs for skyrocketed because obviously you've

got no revenue on the other side. But the more revenue you have to offset that that cost of operating that truck comes down per mile based on what you have in terms of you know, the cost. The cost is the same per mile, but it spread over a larger amount of revenue, and so it doesn't look as bad and it's and it helps your bottom line.

dealing with. Now now you can you know, control that to a certain extent by lower energy prices and those types of things, cutting out some of the government regulations so it doesn't cost you so much in terms of compliance, which adds to the cost of the thing, the item that you're selling. So those prices will come down. But when you have so much activity going on, then it increases the amount of items available. So the only way

to get those prices down is more volume. And if you have more volume and more people buying, then you wind up having the prices come down tremendously. But what they're not talking about is when you look at how many contracts have been negotiated the UAW, the railroad workers, ups, the dock workers. I mentioned railroad who else the well, I mentioned auto workers, and there's a couple other ones, But there's been some major contracts the dock workers on

both the East Coast and the West coast. When you factor in those those prices in terms of the increase to produce those items or to move those items, that adds to the cost of the item itself. And so when you have added prices in terms of payroll is concerned, those prices are going to go up. You're not going to go back in at some point in time and say, okay, you know, in this contract UAW or railroad workers, you are getting a ten percent increase in your salary each year.

And then when inflation starts coming down, you're not going to go back in there and say, well, we're going to take a percentage or two percent off of your pay. No, that pay is in there, and that's already baked in.

Now again, I'm not criticizing, I'm not saying that people don't deserve higher wages, and especially when you take into consideration that there was such a freeze on wage increases going back to some of the pre pandemic some of these government some of these contracts with these union workers, it was locked into place and didn't come up for negotiation until twenty twenty, And of course they're not going to do anything to go siations during twenty twenty during

the pandemic, So whatever contract expired in twenty twenty was pushed off and wasn't negotiated on until twenty twenty one, and even into twenty twenty two when they finally hashed out all the deals, because again, when you had the supply chain issues and that going on, it was no time to go back in and renegotiate these contracts. So a lot of these contracts were on hold and people had not had some of the workers had not had

a pay increase since twenty nineteen. So when you factor that into that twenty twenty three contract, of course that number has got to be made up. You've got to try to increase that a little bit because they have been basically losing money because if your price is fixed, if your hourly rate is fixed, and the inflation that was during the Biden administration was going up and up and up, you're actually losing money on a daily basis.

So catching that up. But once that contract is in there, and that is part of what it costs to either move these goods, manufacture these goods, sell these goods, import these goods, export these goods, that's all going to factor in and that price is not going to come down.

So if that's and that is in the inflation number now, and rather than trying to blame it off on tariffs or blame it off on other things, be specific about where these increases are coming from and be straight with the American.

with the Great Basin and the Rockies. Moderate to heavy rain emerging along the western to central Gulf Coast.

in here. Again getting back to the original paragraph, US factory activity shrank in November, is most of the most and four months as orders weekend, indicating manufacture are struggling to break free from the extended period of Melee's Institute for Supply Management Index eased point five percent basically, well, actually a half a percentage point to forty eight point two according to the data release December first, the measure

has been below fifty, which indicates contraction for nine straight months. Again, even at forty eight percent, going down, going, let me see, going to fifty forty eight point seven percent, down to forty eight point two.

year year ago. Now again based into that could possibly be terrorists also could be baked into those numbers, is the cost or the salary increases from the employees that actually make up those raw materials, mine those raw materials, gather those raw materials, or ship those those raw materials. So again, there's all kinds of factors that go into that.

It's not straight terriffs as far as that's concerned. And if it were teriffs, based on the numbers that they've been telling us, that eight percent, that eight points higher, is a lot lower than what they were predicting. Customer demand has largely been uninspiring as well. Orders contracted in November as the fastt paced since July, while backloads shrank for the most in seven months. Well that's with the

backlogs shrinking, that's not so bad. I mean, that's good on the one hand, because if you've got a bunch of orders that you're not getting to, then those people get a little frustrated because they're not getting what they're wanting, getting what they were requesting, and if they're not getting that, it's possible that they may choose to go someplace else and you wind up losing that customer. So if you're working off the backlogs and getting those down to the

point where they're more manageable. Then you don't have as much in the pipeline. The problem is to get down too low, then you don't have anything coming in that pipeline, so that pipeline draws down, you wind up with zero, and then you wind up having the lay people off

because you just don't have the business. Susan Spence, chair of the ISM Manufacturing Business Survey Committee, said uncertainly about tariffs is driving the pullback because customers are holding off on orders until there's more clarity as to the cost

on the cost of goods. Well, you know, if the demand is there, if your customer base is looking for those items, and if they need those items, then based on the law of supply and demand, if the prices go up a little bit, they're still going to pay for that. But again, if the customers are holding off because they're expecting to see interest rates go down so that the cost of them buying those goods come down, that's a whole nother story and something that not a

lot of people. People are just not talking about it as much as I would like them to talk about it, because every time we talk about every time I pick up the news on oil prices. They'll talk about, you know, leading up to the Federal Reserve, as to whether or

not they're going to cut interest rates. They'll say that, well, with interest rates high, that lower interest rates spurs the economy, builds the economy, and that thus makes more demand for oil, and that would boost the price of oil because against are more demand based on the supply. But they recognize and then and all these other stories that I read, they always refer to lower interest rate increases business activity, puts more money in the pockets of the people that

are looking to buy these things. They have more disposable end come to spend, and therefore they spend more, they buy more, which then boosts the economy. So again, the interest rates are a factor here, and you know, only rarely are people focusing on it except here on america'struck a network looking at some of the other things in here. The soft demand conditions help explain a deeper contraction in factory employment. Last month, Roughly twenty five percent of respondents

reported lower employment, the largest share since mid twenty twenty. Meanwhile, the group's production index rebounded in November, expanding at the fastest clip in four months. Despite the advanced output this year has been uneven. Again the term uneven. It hasn't been that the numbers that the fastest clip, that the production numbers have fallen dramatically. It's that they have been uneven throughout the year. They're not saying that they're down,

they're not saying that they're up. They're not saying that there's been these large peaks or large valley It's just been uneven during the year, which bottom line, isn't all that bad given the dire predictions that we're receiving back on Independence Day, a liberation day, i should say, back in April, when these terraffs were put into place. Eleven manufacturing industry contracted in November, led by apparel, wood and

paper products, and textiles. Four industries, including computer and electronic products, reported growth, the fewest in a year. Survey also showed the supplier delivery times of materials for manufacturers quickened for the first time in four months. So the ability to get the goods to manufacture the raw materials in has picked up considerably, so that end of the supply chain

has improved. If the activity getting that in there has been building up and is available, then you not having to pay higher prices because that truck or whatever delivering those goods isn't busy someplace else. So if you're having the opportunity to get those goods in the door, that's a good thing.

getting loaded onto the shelf, and so you keep that supply chain going. And then what we experienced during the pandemic and there shortly after, because you had this interruption and because you had a break there, you had some of the shelves that were empty. But then gearing up and then restocking those shells became an issue. And also because of people being available to stock those shelves, people being able to transport those goods, all of that stuff

was backed up, getting people back into the workforce. People were being available to come back to work. Companies hiring, whether or not they were hiring back to the same number of employees, trying to take a look at what their orders were, to see what their business was and adjust it accordingly, because you don't want to bring everybody back at one time. You had to layer that in otherwise you would have your employee costs way high and

you don't have a whole lot at revenue. And on top of being shut down and not having any revenue during that period of time and barely getting by now, suddenly you throw into that more losses and that would push a couple of companies, would push companies under into bankruptcy.

So again, with all that in mind, the fact that people are having inventories not only at the wholesale but at the retail level, that those inventory levels are shrinking, that to a certain extent to a you know, at some point is good when it gets down to the level of where that can be replenished on a regular basis, you don't run out of anything. But it's not they're not talking about that being in a dangerous level at

this point. So some good news, bad news in the report and hopefully we can see again.

the track record was. They knew what the track record was back in twenty seventeen when he took office, what the economy was humming along in twenty twenty, and the disaster that we had during the Biden administration. You would think that for the basis of their customers and because they concern about the American public in general, that they would be rooting for the economy to be strong. But again, you'd have to have a group of people that actually

liked this country. I'm Kevin Gordon, America's truck a Network seven hundred w from the spoon Fed regurgitators. In the mainstream media, we hear about all the dire predictions and the unrealistic predictions that they make, even though we have kept seeing you unexpectedly low employment, unemployment unemployment claims, we've seen unexpected job increases, we've seen unexpected retail sales, we've seen unexpected generally on the good side, and yet we

don't hear. All we hear from the spoon feeder regurgitators is bad news. They keep talking about how the trade policies with the terriffts, that is, that is hurting the

American public, that is hurting our businesses. When you take into consideration the purpose of the terriffs that they were retaliatory against countries that have been taking advantage of US dumping their cheaper goods into our economy because they either subsidize those or there are lower terraffs on their products coming in here, and there are barriers to our products going into their countries, so that they have the best

of both worlds. They have cheaper products coming into this country, which is better competitive with our goods, then they are blocking their entry of our goods into their country. So all they have is what's produced by their manufacturers, so there are a tremendous advantage. Trump tried to lower that, lower that playing field and make sure that we had

fair trade, not necessarily free trade. And what is happening is that you know, any of these countries that started talking about having economic problems or that it was affecting their economy because of the tariffs, it's a very simple fix.

Come to negotiating table, Negotiate with the president, negotiate with his team, get the prices down, get the tariffs down so that we have a better flow of goods and so that there's more competition out there, and that your people are not standing by the sidelines not working because the tariffs coming into the United States.

stem losses resulting from US teriffs. Now, if they're manufacturing steel there, and they're manufacturing steel at a cheaper price and bringing that into our country, which an and then they have an unfair trade or a balance of trade or unfair cost of their steel to our steel in the United States, then of course they're going to have more sales here. But if we level that playing field, then that puts them on part with our steel manufacturers in this country, and so people are inclined to buy

more American steel. And which has happened, and the fact that Algoma Steel is now laying off one thousand employees because they're not selling as much into the United States. I mean, if you're selling something, if you're selling the same item, the same exact item, into a particular country and you can produce it cheaper because you're paying your employees less us you're subsidizing those country companies and propping them up, then their prices coming into our country are

going to be cheaper. And so if you've got the same item, the same quality, you're going to choose the item that's the cheapest. But now if you've now put restrictions, and then on top of that, you know it's cheaper coming into this country, but then our goods are being prevented from going into their country, so they're definitely in

an unfair advantage. So if you then put up the barriers and prevent their items coming in here or the items that do are now on par with ours, people are going to pick and choose which ones are going to buy, and a lot of times don't wind up buying whichever one is manufacturing in the United States.

twenty six, a year ahead of schedule. Al Gooma said December first in an email statement, they don't say in here, but I'm wondering if the coke making operation, if there are these coke fired plants, that if those are more labor intensive as opposed to these electric plants, could that be part of the reason that they're laying off employees. They want to blame it on tariffs, They want to blame it on the United States. But is it true?

And I guess we'll have to see coming in the next few days, or at least maybe I have to dig into it and find out for myself. Spokesperson for the company, Devone, the Trump administration's fifty percent tariffs on foreign steel have fundamentally altered the competitive landscape and sharply limited our ability to access the US market. So again, raising the barriers on par with their barriers on our goods are leveling the playing field and they are finding

it difficult to compete. Well, you know, if you've had an advantage all these years and now suddenly you don't have that advantage, yes, it does make it difficult free to compete. Algoma sales dropped thirteen percent in the third quarter and it's reported a direct tariff expense and they it was like eight eighty nine point seven million Canadian dollars, saying the US steel market had become largely closed to US.

The company, which currently has about twenty five hundred employees, was given a five hundred million Canadian subsidy in emergency loans from the governments of Canada onto. So again they're subsidizing their companies up there, whereas you know, our country companies are having to compete with that. Let's see the

layoffs come into effect on March twenty third. Also in the statement, they said transition is necessary to protect Algama's future in the face of these extraordinary and external marketing forces, and we will continue to advocate for competitive and fair trading environment for Canadian steel. Well, talk to your government, talk to the people that are in charge of negotiating

up there. Make sure that they're doing the things that make you more competitive with what's going on as far as the United States is concerned, and that you're not charging less as far as teriffs, or that you're charging more on tariffs on our goods coming in there and not so much on your goods coming in here, so that we are now on a more competitive basis.

for has moved. FedEx Corporation plans to cut hundreds of jobs in Texas after a third party logistics customer opted to move its operations to a new location in a different company. Memphis, Tennessee based courier will discontinue operations.

continues a broader restructure of its shipping operations. Now, the interesting thing with us is the fact that a company moved away and moved their operations and chose a different carrier in a different location. So this isn't necessarily something that's bad as far as FedEx is concerned, or the products that they're doing or how they're moving things. FedEx said, notify the employees at the site will move in advance,

and that some workers are eligible to other positions. Let me see they talk, and again they have to throw this in here just I guess as a dig. The move comes towards the end of the turbulent leayer with a logistics company which has been jolted by President Donald Trump's trade policies and have strained key shipping lanes, especially

between US and China. Again, how can you squawk at a country that we're basically are, that is not a friend of the country and is an enemy of ours, that is trying to unfairly compete with us on the world stage, and for some of the disruptions that they're causing around the world. I mean, are you so concerned about your bottom line that you're willing to deal that you care more about dealing with an enemy of the country rather than cheering for our country to be on

a competitive basis with them. Again, the way people look at these trade policies and the way they look at these teriffs is just mind boggling to me. Well, folks, does it for us? Stay tuned for Red Eye Radio at the Top the Hour, I'm Kevin Gordon, America's Trucking Network seven hundred WLW