Cowboys Cope With Rising Fuel Prices

When saddle bronc rider Cody Wright of Milford, Utah, began traveling extensively in professional rodeo in 2002, he recalls paying $1.05 a gallon for diesel in Fort Worth, Texas.

Team roper Matt Funk of Hermiston, Ore., remembers paying 99 cents a gallon for farm fuel when he was in college.

Yes, the times they are a changing.

Fuel prices are expected to hit a record high this summer, and prices are already climbing this spring.

At press time, gasoline ranged in price from $3 to $3.60 a gallon, depending on the state. Diesel ranged from $3.80 to $4.30.

Gasoline could reach $4 a gallon this summer or earlier, depending on the state. Cowboys, especially those in the timed events who haul their own horses, are among the Americans bracing themselves for a sharp pain in the pocketbook.

But there is some good news.

Cowboys are finding ways to travel more efficiently – even if quarters are a little cramped.

“About the only thing you can do (to offset rising fuel costs) is to get another guy or two to jump in with you,” said Jess Martin of Dillon, Mont., a saddle bronc rider and four-time Wrangler National Finals Rodeo qualifier.

Funk – who ropes with Bucky Campbell of Benton City, Wash., – will travel with another team this summer to offset rising fuel costs and other expenses.

Along with increasing the number of cowboys per travel group, contestants keep up with vehicle maintenance, fly instead of drive at times and stay with friends more often while on the road.

Rodeo committees are also responding. Committees aware of rising expenses for cowboys are trying to help by increasing prize money, providing complementary meals, and in the case of the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo committee, paying contestants’ entry fees.

“At a rodeo with that kind of prize money, you would usually walk in and pay $520 in entry fees,” Martin said. “This year, you walked in the office and they gave you your back number.

“That rodeo is doing an unbelievable job of trying to make it better for contestants.”

Committees with multiple-round rodeos are trying to help contestants by allowing them to compete in consecutive performances to eliminate the need for contestants to return to the rodeos several times.

“Back-to-back (round) rodeos help tremendously,” Funk said.

“You really try not to backtrack or double-track,” added team roper Shane Schwenke of Harlem, Mont.

Plan, plan, plan

Cowboys starting out in professional rodeo often seek advice from veterans to help them make the jump to elite competition. And while most of that advice is about rodeoing, experienced hands can also be helpful to newer cowboys facing rising costs at the pump.

Eighteen-time Wrangler NFR qualifier and saddle bronc rider Rod Hay of Wildwood, Alberta, probably understands the hardship of travel better than most. Hay’s Canadian ranch is more than 2,300 miles from Houston, Texas, the site of one of the winter’s premier rodeos.

His advice, along with traveling four cowboys per truck, is for the contestant to carefully plot out his travel schedule.

“If you can work 10 rodeos (consecutively) in a trip, your per-rodeo cost goes way down,” said Hay, the 2007 Wrangler NFR average winner.

Hay tries to string rodeos together as often as he can. It is easiest for him to do that in the summer, so he competes more from June through September and less in the winter and spring.

Hay also suggests working the cell phone. Cowboys behind the chutes at a rodeo can arrange rides for those going on to the next rodeo and can leave a vehicle behind for those qualified for the finals. Travel groups will separate and re-form, depending on a cowboy’s schedule.

“You can find out where everybody is at and where everybody is going, and you can fill a vehicle up a lot quicker than you could in the old days,” Hay said.

How many cowboys fit in a truck?

It may sound like the first line of a joke, or invoke images of people cramming into a clown car, but knowing how many cowboys can safely be squeezed into a pickup is a key way to save money on gas. With extended cabs and truck campers, cowboys have been able to increase the numbers in their traveling groups as fuel prices rise.

Cowboys often take turns buying tanks of diesel or gas while on the road, and a turn every fourth or fifth time at the pump is a lot cheaper than buying gas every other time. Just ask the cowboys living in Canada, Washington, Oregon and Montana. In the winter and spring, several key rodeos are in the south, and Northwest travel groups put a lot of miles on a truck with a camper.

“Yeah, we do a milk run,” Hay said, laughing. “We pick everybody up along the way.”

That particular Northwest group, which includes Hay and Martin, varies in size from four to six people, which can be a little uncomfortable. But it is unlikely that they’ll consider buying a small hybrid car or a Mini Cooper.

“You can’t fit four guys in one of those, drive 24 hours straight and then get out and get on a bucking horse,” Hay said. “That’s probably not going to happen.”

“Being crunched in a car, I don’t know if you want to do things that are going to affect how you perform,” Wright added.

Cowboys in tie-down roping, steer wrestling and team roping, also don’t have the option of driving a smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicle because they are often hauling horses in a trailer.

However, those timed-event cowboys are trying to cut fuel expenses by staying with friends on the road more often, rather than driving home after each rodeo.

It pays to have friends

Funk is among the timed-event cowboys dealing with high fuel prices without a lot of options. He has to haul horses, so one solution he has come up with is to stay on the road between rodeos and not drive back to Hermiston, Ore., as often. Charly Crawford of Llano, Texas, is among the friends Funk has stayed with while on the road.

“People from the Northwest, being in one corner of the United States, you don’t go home very often,” Funk said. “Once you get to Texas, you stay in Texas until Houston is over, basically.”

Cowboys like Funk find that having a friend to stay with in each region of the country allows the contestant to make fewer trips home. For example, having a friend in Texas to stay with during the winter rodeos and a friend to stay with in California for the spring rodeos cuts back considerably on driving, and therefore fuel use.

“(Saddle bronc riders) Ryan Mapston, Shaun Stroh and I, we’ve been around long enough that we have lots of friends down (in Texas), and we can stay at their places,” Martin said. “Later in the year, they come up and stay with us, so it all works out.”

However, staying on the road for long periods of time does not work for all contestants. Some have to return home frequently to help care for their children and ranches or to work at a business.

Those contestants and others, like Wright, do their best to keep up the maintenance on their vehicles.

“Those things do help a little bit,” Wright said. “You may not notice it right away, but they do.”

Check the air in the tires

Numerous books, Web sites and brochures offer tips on ways to make your vehicle more fuel efficient. Rodeo contestants will be among those refreshing their memories on those tips as gas prices are expected to reach record highs this summer.

Replacing clogged air filters, using the oil recommended for your vehicle, having tires properly inflated, keeping your engine tuned, keeping the tank at least one-third full and going easy on the air-conditioning are among the tips recommended for fuel efficiency.

It’s a safe bet those in the rodeo industry will be trying some of those tips and others during the “Cowboy Christmas” run come June and July.

“(Routine maintenance) sure doesn’t hurt,” Funk said. “If your truck isn’t running very well, it is just going to cost you more.”

Fly and drive

Several contestants said they would be looking at many options to combat the rising fuel costs, such as mixing in airline flights along with driving.

In order to get reasonable or cheap airfares, contestants stated they often had to purchase two-week advance tickets or go through a major airport. For example, Wright has found an affordable flight back to Utah by flying through Las Vegas to St. George and having his wife pick him up.

“If we want to go home (separating from the travel group), we have been flying, and it has definitely been cheaper than trying to drive,” Wright said.

Travel Web sites offer comparative pricing, and talking with veteran cowboys also can be helpful in making travel arrangements.

Contestants will continue to share information in hopes of reducing fuel costs, but it’s likely to be expensive to drive this summer for all Americans, especially those who drive as part of their employment.

Schwenke, a veteran roper who got his PRCA card in 1989, offers this bit of parting advice to his fellow cowboys.

“The cheapest place ever to fuel up is Cheyenne, (Wyo.),” Schwenke said. “It always is. I think it was $3.40, and it was $3.65 (on March 11) pretty much everywhere else.” 

Source: www.prorodeo.com