Road Trip Report, Day Nine
CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod hit the road to chart pain at the pump. Here's his Web-exclusive daily road diary.
Good morning from Salt Lake City on Day Nine of the CBS News Cross-Country Price Patrol. Utah is the home of extreme carpooling. Members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir travel great distances to attend practice. Chris Green does the 180-mile round trip a couple times a week with a vanload of others. A frugal woman who does her own sewing and canning, she recently was hit with a $5 monthly increase to cover the increased price of gas. She's not happy about it, but considers paying it part of her service to her fellow man, and the Lord.
The state organizes carpools, providing cheap leases on vans. Calls for those are up 111 percent. Light rail ridership is up 12 percent. Bus ridership is up 6 percent. The only guys taking it on the chin are the cabbies. They recently got their first fare increase in eight years — 20-cents a mile more. That's all been wiped out by the rise in gas prices. As a cabbie told us about his job, "I don't get bored, just broke."
I had a chance to do a little car pooling myself. I gave a couple moms the morning off and drove their boys to school. Kids are such great conversation partners because they don't filter. They just tell it like it is. We talked about favorite sports (soccer and skiing), favorite pizza (sausage), and favorite Star Wars character. (Man, am I out of it — I didn't even recognize the name of the guy. What happened to Obi-Wan Kenobi?) Then I asked them what their folks were talking about these days. The 8-year-old said, "gas prices."
He told me his folks have a $5-off coupon for the local gas station, but that every time they pull in, they can't seem to find it.
We are off to Reno, Nev., now to report on the effects of the gas-price hikes on truckers. It's a 550-mile drive, which will put us up somewhere near 3,500 miles for the trip. Nevada is also home to gas some 20 cents-a-gallon more expensive than here in Utah. But that's nothing compared to California, our final stop. The highest average price in the nation is unleaded premium in California — $3.04.
Eight days and nine states down. Four days and three states left. I'm down to three cans of Red Bull. Talk about an empty tank. I need to fill up. And for the first time in this diary, I'm not talking gasoline.