Some gas stations are having trouble getting their normal supply of fuel going into the holiday weekend.
FUEL IOWA spokesman John Maynes says there is enough gas — it’s a matter of getting it delivered. “The issue isn’t the supply of gasoline or diesel fuel coming into the state of Iowa, it really is the issue of logistics and driver availability to shuttle the product to retail locations across the state,” Maynes says.
He says some outages happen as the demand picks up from holiday travel. Maynes says distributors will be doing what the industry calls a “milk run” and dropping a partial load of gas at stations just to ensure they have some on hand. He says those partial loads of gas can be enough in some cases and in others they aren’t.
“You do run into situations — especially coming into a holiday weekend where demand is up — those smaller loads may not be sufficient until they can get a tanker back again,” according to Maynes. Maynes says the gas shortage will most likely be the most visible during times of higher demand, but the actual shortage of truck drivers could be ongoing for some time as the industry looks to get younger workers learning the skill.
(By Cory Harguth, KICD, Spencer)