Author: Hansen Hasenberg

Just this past week, AAA announced that the national average for a gallon of regular gas was $5.004, a record high. While the soaring prices at the pump affect everybody who drives, they especially impact the trucking industry. Truckers use diesel, which is at an average of $5.765 a gallon nationally as of June 11, according to AAA.

Diesel costs more than regular gasoline due to the differences in federal excise taxes between the two. The tax on diesel is 24.3 cents per gallon, which is six cents more per gallon than the tax on gasoline. As of January 1, 2022, the average of total state taxes and fees for on-highway diesel fuel was 32.66 cents per gallon according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

According to Alix Miller, Ph.D., the president and CEO of the Florida Trucking Association, fuel is the trucking industry’s second largest expense, only behind labor.

“These recent spikes in diesel fuel prices have a real and significant impact on our industry,” Miller said. “Record-high prices have real, direct and direct implications on trucking and the consumer.”

Diesel powers trucks that deliver consumer goods, manufacturing products, agricultural products and so much more. With supply chain issues already facing Americans, the high price of diesel threatens to exacerbate the problem.

While consumers certainly feel the aftereffects of diesel price increases, the trucking companies, 97% of which are small businesses, are hit even harder. Miller says that trucking companies do use fuel surcharges to alleviate some of the costs, but they only cover 60-70% of price increases.

The small trucking businesses have less negotiating power than bigger companies for things like freight contracts and purchasing fuel.

While not technically a company that has any truckers, Panhandle Trucking and Logistics in Crestview has been working in the industry since 2012. According to Leah Jarriel, co-owner of Panhandle Trucking and Logistics, her business is a truck broker. In other words, they help facilitate the transfer of goods by acting as a sort of go-between between truckers and customers who need something moved.

Panhandle Trucking and Logistics works with 20 or more regular customers and helps facilitate 250 loads a year. According to Jarriel, they deal with owner/operators and full-scale trucking companies.

Jarriel says that the gas prices impact both sides that she and her business deal with.

“It has been very volatile,” Jarriel said. “Carriers have to know what their costs will be so that they can give a quote to a customer.”

Without truckers and carriers being able to give a quote due to fluctuating prices, the truckers, the customers, and the brokers are all left in a sort of limbo.

“If I give a quote today for freight in six weeks,” Jarriel said, “how do I know what the rates are going to be then.”
Jarriel considers this whole inflation situation surrounding gas prices to be a “trickle down problem.” Gas prices go up, trucker fees go up, the quote for carrying a load goes up, and then those costs at the customer and later, consumer levels, also go up. This leaves everyone having to decide whether it is worth the cost, especially owner/operator truckers.

One of those truckers who is feeling the brunt of inflation at the pump is Paul Coleman. Along with his son, Coleman owns a trucking company called PM Coleman Hauling LLC out of Walnut Hill in Escambia County. PM Coleman Hauling LLC began in June 2021.

“Things are bad, some companies are shutting down,” Coleman said. “These prices have cut into our profit bad.”

According to Coleman, his company is an owner/operator hot shot trucking business, and they travel across the country. Hot Shot trucking, according to truckstop.com, is when truckers haul smaller, more time-sensitive less than truckload (LTL) loads within a specific timeframe and usually to a single customer or location.

Coleman, who has driven big trucks on and off for 25 years, drives to places across the Southeast, Northeast, Midwest, and out west, but he tries to avoid California because of the high gas prices.

When Coleman spoke with me on June 10, he was in Smithfield, North Carolina on a hauling trip. He told me that diesel cost nearly $6.00 there during our phone call. According to Gasbuddy.com, a website that tells people gas pricing information from across the United States, diesel cost $5.69 in Smithfield on June 10.

According to Coleman, he usually needs 1200 gallons a month for his business. At $6.00 a gallon, that would amount to $7200.

With the added costs of things like food, hotel stays, and other business expenses, truckers have to adjust and haul more. Coleman says that truckers are trying to haul two to three things or more with each load to turn enough of a profit.

“Right now, if you don’t get a good load, then it isn’t worth the trip,” Coleman said. “It really hurts small businesses like us.”

Coleman also says that the trucking industry is hurting due to “team drivers.” These team drivers have “swamped” the industry in recent years, according to Coleman, and do the same loads for cheaper prices than businesses like Coleman’s. They are called “team drivers” because they have a crew who swaps out who is driving, which also saves time.

“If things don’t change, I’ll have to shut down,” Coleman said. “I honestly don’t know what to do.”
Coleman hopes that all those involved in the trucking business, from truck stops to brokers to the truckers themselves, can come together and figure out better prices for all.

“Lots of people wonder why shelves at Walmart and other stores are empty, now you know,” Coleman said. “If it keeps going this way, people are going to see their shelves a lot emptier.”

The office recently identified hundreds of homeowners in Santa Rosa County who are eligible but have not filed for homestead exemptions. Gregory S. Brown II, the property appraiser for the county, wants to be proactive about informing citizens of what his office does and how homeowners can benefit from exemptions.

“There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to homestead exemptions,” Brown said. “Some people are under the impression that once you miss the first year of eligibility then that’s it.”

Brown says that you can still apply in subsequent years, but there are deadlines for exemption periods. This year, the exemption period was from Jan. 1 to March 1. If you miss those dates, then you can pre-file for next year’s exemptions starting Apr. 1. Despite the deadline, Brown says that people can still file on a case-by-case basis with his office.

Homestead exemptions are applied to homes based on the assessed value of the property by the property appraiser. In Florida, every person who has legal or equitable title to real property in the state and resides on said property, making it their primary residence, is eligible to receive a homestead exemption up to $50,000.

The exemption amount is taken out of the assessed value of the home. If your home is valued at $300,000 and the millage rate is 12.0287, as it is in Santa Rosa County, then your tax bill would equal $3,609. If you are eligible for a homestead exemption of $25,000, then your tax bill, post exemption, would be $3,155.
While the difference is only a few hundred, that is still money in your pocket.

According to Brown, there is a $25,000 homestead exemption across the board for all eligible homeowners.

To determine which homeowners were potentially eligible for exemptions, Brown and his office used a computer assisted mass appraisal system, or CAMA system.

The CAMA system is an automated system for maintaining property data, valuing property, notifying owners and ensuring tax equity through uniform valuations. In other words, CAMA helps the property appraiser make sense of the mass amounts of data that they see.

Brown says that while his office was able to use the CAMA to see the analytics for the homestead exemptions, they are not able to do the same with some of the other exemptions.

“This was just for homestead exemptions,” Brown said. “We can’t look at exemptions like the deployed military one because we don’t have enough data to determine exactly who would be eligible.”

After finding out about all those who had yet to take advantage of the homestead exemption, Brown’s Office sent letters to the homeowners with where to apply online. The letters also included the homeowner’s control number and pin number, which are important to applying online.

Brown was able to gauge the response from homeowners by crossmatching new applicants with the letters they sent out.

“We received hundreds of responses,” Brown said.

For Brown, it is all about helping people feel confident in their expectations about what their property taxes will be.

Santa Rosa County residents can find out about their own homestead exemption eligibility at www.srcpa.gov. The website has a link to an exemptions page with more information on it.

The suspect, Marcus Spanevelo, is currently in custody in Tennesse on charges of tampering with evidence, giving false information concerning a missing persons investigation and destruction of evidence. In a press conference today, Johnson said Spanevelo took Carli’s phone and got rid of it. The Sheriff’s Office was able to find the phone.

Johnson praised the Major Crimes Unit saying they had traveled more than 1500 miles and executed several search warrants in this case from locally to Panama City, in Alabama and Tennessee. Detectives went to Tennessee and met with the Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and set up surveillance on Spanevelo. They were able to pull him over and arrest him on a Santa Rosa County warrant. He was not cooperative and only said the word “lawyer,” when asked questions.

Today marks one week since the 37-year-old mother went missing at the boat ramp parking lot near Juana’s on Navarre Beach. She was scheduled to meet her ex-boyfriend and daughter’s father, Spanevelo, to pick up her 4-year-old daughter at 7 p.m. Sunday, Mar. 27. It was the last place she was seen.

Carli lived with her father in Navarre and he became concerned when she wasn’t home with Saylor, the daughter. He received suspect text messages from Carli that possibly came from Spanevelo. She was never heard from again.

Spanevelo was first located in Alabama and the Department of Children and Families in that district was able to check on Saylor and determine she was unharmed and deemed safe.

Friends, family and the Navarre community have searched daily for Carli, never giving up hope of finding her alive. The news of the recovery of Carli’s body has, according to Johnson, crushed the family. “This is not the outcome we wanted,” Johnson said. “But hopefully this will provide some closure for the family.”

An autopsy is scheduled for tomorrow in Alabama. Depending on the manner of death determined, charges against Spanevelo may be upgraded. Johnson feels there is a strong amount of evidence in the case. “He will either get life in prison, or the needle,” Johnson said. “I hope it is the needle.”

While big name soda brands dominate the United States and the world, craft soda brands are finding their niche. Craft soda is usually manufactured in smaller batches than regular soda and contain more natural ingredients like cane sugar instead of high fructose syrup.

Big Jerk Soda Company, based in Pensacola, is one local business that makes craft soda. Operating out of their location at 9 E Gregory St., Big Jerk Soda uses all-natural ingredients to create a variety of soft drinks, from seltzers to fruit-based drinks to the ever popular ginger beer.

“Ironically enough, neither of us are big soda drinkers,” Ryan Eaton said. Eaton and his wife Jennifer are the founders and owners of Big Jerk Soda.

Big Jerk Soda started out of Ryan and Jennifer Eaton’s house. The Eaton’s would make soda for parties or other events for fun. They realized that making soda could be a potentially fun side hustle and went into business. They were officially licensed as a business in 2018.

When starting out, they used their connections to the craft beer industry to help themselves out. The Eaton’s would buy brown bottles from their friends who owned bars, but later switched because the brown bottles failed to show the vibrant colors of the fruit based sodas. As time has gone on, the Eaton’s have learned more and more about how to make their product and market it.

“It feels like we were at the beginning of a wave,” Ryan Eaton said. “Craft soda is a relatively new thing; we know only a handful of others who do anything close to what we do.”
Craft soda is branded with nostalgia, as the simple ingredients call back to simpler times. In the 19th century, pharmacists and others made carbonated mineral water to help cure ailments like upset stomachs. These tonics eventually became quite popular, and people began to market them as soft drinks to consume recreationally, rather than for medical purposes.

Even Big Jerk Soda’s name is inspired by the past, when soda jerks operated soda fountains in drugstores. They were called “jerks” because of the “jerking” action the soda fountain operator would use to drive the fountain handle back and forth when adding soda.

“This area has a lot of history when it comes to soda,” Jennifer Eaton said. “We are kind of carrying on with what Coca-Cola did in Pensacola.”
Coca-Cola had a building on Palafox, north of downtown, that was used as a bottling plant. Built in 1936, the building is adorned with Coca-Cola bottles and the iconic name carved on the sides of the structure. Coca-Cola still operates a distribution facility off Davis Highway in Pensacola.
With craft soda growing in popularity, even big name brands like PepsiCo are getting in on the trend.

Pepsi unveiled Caleb’s Kola, a soft drink comprised of sparkling water, cane sugar and kola nut extract. The brand’s ethos is “honor in craft.”
There are different ways to make craft soda, but Big Jerk Soda currently makes their beverages out of a small kitchen space that they share with two other businesses.

The kitchen that they use has two 70-gallon tanks, a pasteurizing machine, and an assortment of machinery and tools used in all steps of the craft soda making process. The two tanks are a major upgrade from the humble beginnings that the Eaton’s had before. Prior to getting the tanks, Big Jerk Soda was made using five gallon kegs. In between the two tanks, sits a small black box. The box helps to regulate the temperature inside the tanks and cool them down by sending coolant into the sides of the tanks. For the carbonation to hold, the soda must be ice cold. After coolant is used to cool the soda inside the tanks, the Eaton’s wait for about two days, so the condition of the soda is better.
Then they bottle the soda. The bottles are labeled prior to the process.

Once that is done, they use their pasteurizer. Pasteurization is an important process for the creation of craft soda, as the all-natural sodas are not shelf stable without it. Shelf stability has to do with the presence of yeast in the juices. As the Eaton’s explained, the yeast in the unpasteurized bottles would expand due to the fermentation of the juices inside, resulting in exploding bottles. With the pasteurizer, the bottles of soda do not have to be refrigerated. The Eaton’s have the bottles of soda placed in the pasteurizer for five minutes at 152 degrees.

When it comes to learning about how to make craft soda, the Eaton’s say that failure and life experience are key.
“I’ve always learned best from screwing stuff up,” Ryan Eaton said.
At the end of the day, the craft soda industry is all about independent businesses and soda makers carving out their own path.
“You get to do what you want,” Ryan Eaton said. “When you are not following what everybody else does.”