Col#297- 9/18/26
FUEL FOR ANXIETY
By
Richard Davis
The Windham County Heat Fund is heading into an unprecedented year. Fuel prices are obscenely high and people are aware that prices will not go down anytime soon. We are all paying the price because of the actions of our deranged and unhinged president.
Sadly, we all feel helpless to do anything about the price of fuel. Truck drivers are giving up their jobs and farmers are struggling to get in their crops. Diesel is now over six dollars a gallon and, if that continues, the price of all commodities will continue to escalate.
I heard a recent story from a mid-west farmer who has to pay $1800 a day in diesel costs and he feels he is reaching the point where farming may become financially impossible to sustain.
Grocery prices are climbing and we have not seen a ceiling yet. It is no exaggeration to say that the average low and middle income families in this country are facing a winter of unaffordable heating fuel and unaffordable food prices. Any choice a family will have to make has the potential to be life-threatening.
I suspect there are many people who are struggling to pay over four dollars a gallon for gasoline. Anyone who has to travel a significant distance to work by car will find their paychecks dwindle significantly just because they have to travel enough to use four or five gallons a day to get to and from work.
On top of all these disastrous situations, a large number of people will lose Medicaid health insurance benefits in January. Not only will they lose access to medical care, but they will also be unable to afford medications that now only cost them two or three dollars.
I have been struggling to try to find something we can do to make things better for people and there are few, if any options. I hope the federal fuel assistance continues this year. That will provide a small bit of help. Our heat fund is now in a position of having to consider whether we should decrease individual allotments to 100 gallons instead of the usual 125.
Our payments to individuals for fuel have usually averaged about $500 over the past few years but that figure is over $700 now. We are already getting calls from people who are crying over the phone because they never asked for help before but now find themselves in an impossible situation.
Out of frustration, I have created a spreadsheet of fuel prices at the most used local fuel dealers. I did not include propane prices because they are calculated based on a number of factors such as tank size and fuel usage. Some dealers sell a blend of oil and an additive instead of kerosene and others sell only the additive and/or kerosene. I called dealers on either September 16 or 17 to get the current prices.
At $5.19 a gallon, Brattleboro-based Barrows and Fisher has the lowest price for home heating fuel. Their blend price is also $5.39 a gallon and a minimum delivery is 100 gallons. All local fuel dealers require a minimum delivery of 100 gallons for oil, blend or kerosene. The exception is Discount Oil whose minimum delivery is 150 gallons for oil and kerosene.
Suburban Oil charges $7.06 a gallon for oil. The average price of oil for the ten companies I contacted was $6.07. When considering a fuel dealer price may not be the only consideration.
Find out about the support services they offer and talk to people who have used different companies. We have posted a spreadsheet of fuel prices on our web site: www.wcheatfund.org.
The web site includes online and downloadable applications and ways to make donations. You can send a check to Windham County Heat Fund, 63 Cedar St, Brattleboro, VT 05301 or make a donation directly at Brattleboro Savings & Loan.
If you want a copy of the speadsheet email: wcheatfund@comcast.net
