Drilling Deep: The Professor of Trucking gives his measure of the market

Steve Burks was a truck driver in an earlier professional capacity. He also earned  his bachelor’s degree, his master’s degree and then his Ph.D. He’s a professor of economics at the University of Minnesota-Morris where he continues to research truck drivers and the markets where they ply their trade.

He joins the Drilling Deep podcast this week along with host John Kingston to offer his views on the state of a market whose decline, he says, is radically different than the declines of the past, many of which he dealt with firsthand. 

We also talk about a set of numbers: the price of retail diesel versus the price of wholesale diesel. It’s a spread that had been frustrating to drivers as they kept hearing about the price of crude oil falling and they weren’t seeing any benefit. The relationship was completely out of whack. But as happens in markets, it no longer is. John will discuss what happened.