Just where will fuel prices go in the next few weeks? That is the question being asked by Denis Greensill, one of New South Wales’ big three timber haulage operators.
Greensill runs more than 35 trucks across the state, moving between 5,000 and 10,000 cubic metres of hardwood every month — timber going into pallets, flooring, posts, piles and mine shafts that keep Australian value chains moving. Today, he spoke exclusively to Wood Central…and his answer is not reassuring.
“Prices have gone up 86 cents a lite — even after GST and rebates — in recent weeks,” he said. “Fuel prices have risen 58 per cent. We’re running behind.”
The numbers hit hard. Forty thousand dollars extra every week, two hundred thousand every month and four dollars lost on every tonne his network moves.
“I need to find $40,000 every week or $200,000 of additional money every month,” Greensill said. “Otherwise it comes out of my bank account, and I go out the door.”
He paused.“Just do the maths.”
At 43 to 45 cents per kilometre in fuel costs and 50,000 litres consumed weekly across the fleet, the gap between what Greensill earns and what he pays has become a weekly emergency. He is not absorbing it. Price rises have gone out across every contract — and he is direct about where they land. “It all goes to the end user of the product.” For the businesses buying pallet timber, flooring stock and mine timbers, that means higher input costs on top of rising interest rates and softening construction demand.
But the cost is only half the problem. Getting the fuel is now the other half.
“The biggest thing is getting the fuel,” Greensill said. “We’ve stopped using bulk tanks — we’re using the bowser price. The four major players were not supplying fuel to the independents. That’s why there is extra demand, because everyone is going to the bowsers instead.”
It is a detail that has gone largely unreported.
The withdrawal of bulk supply from independent operators has pushed the entire sector onto retail bowsers — competing for the same pump as passenger vehicles, driving regional demand higher and accelerating the price spiral they are trying to escape. Wood Central has already revealed that diesel has hit $3.39/litre in Armidale, and a single timber truck fill in the Red Gums region costs $566.25.
It comes as Forest and Wood Communities Australia Executive Chair Steve Dobbyns warned that regional communities are paying up to a dollar more per litre than city counterparkets — and that the multi-generational families running these businesses cannot keep afloat.
“Local fuel distributors on the Mid North Coast are already paying more than $3.00/litre for diesel, and we will see that reflected at the bowser as early as Monday morning,” he said late last week. “With 90 per cent of our population living on just 0.25 per cent of Australia’s land mass, regional communities are feeling the impact of surging fuel prices more acutely than their city cousins.”
Greensill’s position is not complicated. “I’m losing $4 a tonne. As it stands, I’m working for the fuel companies.” And at 50,000 litres a week and $200,000 in extra monthly costs, that is not small change. It’s s a countdown.
Please note: This is part of a special series covering the fuel crisis in regional Australia. For more information, click here for Wood Central’s exclusive coverage.
