Thank you for boring us no more. As some one who sits in a corporate boardroom I completely understand than 99.9% of America have no idea what it takes to manage a company. And that is fine. I won't dispute any of the comments above because I have no basis to do so.

However if it isn't the people in the corporate board rooms that are supposed to dictate prices and profits, then who should? Isn't greed the foundation of our capitalistic mindset?

Also to understand how a company can change absolutely nothing about the way they do business and increase profits here is an example.

Oil costs $50 per barrel
The set margin is 25%
This means the selling price per barrel would be $66.67.
This nets a profit of $16.67 per barrel.

Oil costs $100 per barrel.
The set margin remains 25%.
The selling price per barrel is 133.33.
The profit per barrel is now $33.33.

Nothing changed in the company's business plan and yet in theory the company would double the profits.

This is one of the main reasons oil companies are having record profits. They certainly are not increasing profits by lowering costs.

I don't like it but I also know that if I want to spend less on fuel I will need to do so through conservation.

Sorry for the unpopular post but sometimes the rest of the truth needs to be voiced.

Jeff

Location: Pennsylvania

Hey... I don't think your post is "unpopular", on the contray, I for one appreciate it. You have provided information that is both helpful and enlightening.

I am sorry that you feel 99.9% of America fails to understand you (your occupation) but understand that you are not alone. There are many other occupations out there experiencing the same "misunderstanding" as you.

My own take on this is that we have really put this on ourselves. Yes the demand is up but not to the extent that the costs would dictate. We have not built new refineries in years and are prohibited from drilling for new sources even though we have the safe technology to do so. We can look for alternative fues all we want but in the meantime we have millions of gasolene dependent vehicles that will be around for a long time. I'm all for substitute fuels but what about all of the other demands for oil? And at the cost of reducing the acreage that we used to plant into crops for food? Kinda dumb, I think.

Location: Wareham, MA

Well, this post may have had absolutely nothing to do with diecast fire apparatus (despite the stretch made in the initial post to link it somehow), but at least it allowed Chuck to get in another of his populist rants about "Dubya" and his evil friends...

Location: Woodbridge, VA

and we won't even start on the idiot bankers whose irresponsibility created the sub prime crisis....sorry Jeff but this is one area that has been created by the decisions of boardrooms, and has affected the whole world because of incompetent corporate decisions....they should be held accountable. Lending huge amounts of money to people who could not even begin to meet repayments is totally irresponsible.

If we dig deep enough, I'm sure we'll find that Code 3 Collectibles (along with Dub'ya) is responsible for this mess.