Third diesel purchase in four days prompts the offer
VERNON, Texas — After his third diesel purchase in four days, a rancher hauling water to cattle asked his fuel supplier to pick a child whose college education he would like the ranch to finance.
The supplier said his youngest was interested in engineering.
“Good,” the rancher said. “Send him out here when he graduates. I’d like him to design a water tank that gets lighter going uphill.”
The rancher has a pasture with a stock pond low enough to reveal a fence post he lost the last time it rained. Until the pond comes back, the cattle depend on a tank in the bed of his truck, a standpipe and his ability to remember where he put the cap.
He can fill the trough and see the fuel gauge drop on the same trip. He considers this efficient because it saves him the trouble of being disappointed at two separate locations.
Hauling Water to Cattle: The Cost of Everybody’s Delivery Fee
His wife, who keeps the books, put the trips on a spreadsheet. The first line showed diesel. The second showed wear on the truck. The third was his time, which he suggested she leave blank.
The sheet, which she turned toward a reporter at the kitchen table, runs eleven rows. Diesel appears in four of them. A row labeled “tires” carries a figure the rancher asked her not to read aloud. The bottom line is headed “Water, per gallon, delivered,” and the number beside it is higher than the number beside “Milk, per gallon, delivered” in the grocery receipt clipped next to it.
“You want me to tell the bank you volunteered?” she asked.
He said plenty of people volunteer to bring water to those in need. She said most of them get a T-shirt.
A neighbor offered to help work out a hauling schedule. Between them, they figured they could combine some trips if they used the larger trailer and arranged their stops carefully. They abandoned one proposed shortcut after remembering that the county road’s washboard could turn a full water tank into a mechanical bull.
The neighbor’s son asked why the rancher didn’t simply move the cows to the water.
“I can move the cows,” he said. “I’m waiting on a quote for moving the lease.”
The supplier, for his part, said he sympathized. He had two kids, a delivery route and a truck that burned about as much diesel as it hauled. He offered the rancher a volume discount, which the rancher said he would accept in the form of a scholarship.
Farm Diesel Prices and Drought: The Fuel Truck Has Excellent Timing
USDA’s latest outlook projects higher sector spending on fuel and oils; the Economic Research Service farm income forecast and a Farm Policy News summary of the expense numbers show fuel and oil among the steepest increases. For an outfit hauling water, the number that matters is the cost of getting a usable gallon to a trough, including the return trip with an empty tank. The truck burns diesel going both ways out of a commitment to symmetry.
A county extension agent who has helped several ranches in the area price their hauling said the math rarely favors the long trip. “You’re paying to move eight pounds of water a gallon,” he said, “and you pay on the way back for moving nothing.” He recommended ranchers log every load for two weeks before deciding whether to keep hauling or sell down. Most, he said, stop logging after four days.
The rancher’s neighbor recalled that his grandfather had hauled water to the same pasture in a wagon behind two mules. The mules ate grass along the way, the neighbor said, and nobody sent the family a surcharge for the road.
At the next fill-up, the supplier pointed out that his own delivery truck used diesel too. The rancher said he understood and invited him to join the college fund. Together, they ought to have enough by Christmas to buy the boy a used engineering textbook.
Back at the ranch, a cow stuck her head in the freshly filled trough, took one drink and walked off to investigate a muddy puddle left by a leaking hose.
The rancher watched her go. “There,” he said. “That one can major in economics.”
Five Humorous Observations
- He’s paying a man to fill a truck so he can pay the truck to drive water to a cow. At what point does the cow start paying rent?
- The wife left his time blank on the spreadsheet. That’s the most accurate line in the whole farm economy.
- Most people volunteer to haul water and they get a T-shirt. He gets a tire bill and a cow that walks off for a muddy puddle.
- The grandfather had mules. Mules eat grass, they don’t charge fuel, and nobody ever got an alert that said “your mule is low on diesel.”
- Offering the fuel guy a college fund. That’s not a joke. That’s a mortgage with better manners.
Three diesel runs in four days and he’s only payin’ for one kid’s college? Fella’s gettin’ off cheap. My water tank’s been haulin’ so much this fall the fuel man asked if I wanted to be a groomsman at his daughter’s wedding. A tank that gets lighter goin’ uphill is the only engineering degree worth havin’ out here.