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December 10, 1999 10:44 AM, EST

Mild fall weather, rising inventories and a dip in the price of crude oil contributed to a 1-cent drop in the price of diesel fuel last week, after six consecutive weeks of increases.

	Fuel Prices
	Week of Dec. 6:
	source	price	change
	DOE	129.4	-1.0
	Comdata	128.4	+1.0
	OPIS self-serve	129.6	+0.7
	OPIS wholesale	73.0	-2.4

The national average price stood at $1.294 a gallon on Dec. 6, compared with $1.304 on Nov. 29, according to the Energy Information Administration. Fuel costs have increased — with only occasional pauses — since hitting a historic low of 95.3 cents a gallon on Feb. 22.

Price increases have triggered fuel surcharges in the truckload and less-than-truckload sectors for moving freight and have led a number of trucking companies to revise 1999 earnings predictions downward.

However, trucking company stocks have not been greatly affected, and market analysts suspect that investors have taken reduced earnings into account.

For the full story, see the Dec. 13 print edition of Transport Topics. .