Fighting Forclosure: One Woman’s Goal to Avoid Forclosure
I use Google Alerts to help monitor the web to find new websites and blog postings for the search term ”FuelClinic” in an effort to understand how marketing and other promotional efforts are going. It’s a useful tool that will email you once or twice a day if Google spots any new pages matching your search term. (It’s a good way to keep an eye on the competition also!)
Usually the Alerts tell me something I already knew - like this new blog post will probably show up later today or tomorrow as an Alert in my email. It’s nice to know that Google notices my hard work.
But my favorite Alerts are those that are not expected, like this one from earlier this week from “Fighting Forclosure” - a blog by Dawn who journals her monthly fight to save (or as she says ”find”) an extra $900 each month in order to cover her mortgage payment after a recent divorce left her with the house.
Google Alerts found Dawn’s recent post when she wrote about using FuelClinic for the past six months, and says it’s helped her understand her fuel usage better. This makes me very happy to hear, and helps inspire me to continue to struggle to build the rest of FuelClinic so that it may be even more useful to her and others.
At a time where many people are in a similar struggle with their mortgage, Dawn’s honesty, ingenuity, and advice is very inspiring. If you are in a similar situation, I recommend you read her blog. While you are there, you can click on an advertisement or two as well.
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Update: Two Million Miles!
Earlier this month FuelClinic.com members climbed past 2-million-miles of tracking and managing fuel efficiency using the tools on the website. Together we’ve stopped to refuel over 10,000 times - buying just under 90,000 gallons of fuel. Continued-usage statistics for the site are very strong, as a good number of our users return every few days to continue recording mileage. Thank you!
No More Chasing Investment (for now)
You may have noticed that development has stalled on new features like the Twitter interface and the training modules. Over the past two months we’ve been actively seeking start-up funding so that we may go full-time in continuing the development of the site. This has taken a tremendous amount of time and effort.
While we’ve received a good deal of very positive feedback, our timing was very poor. The economic downturn since September, coupled with the dramatic drop in fuel prices since November, has made it very difficult to get past the “Gee you have a good idea, come back to talk to us in six months” stage. Overall, it was a very worth-while effort, as continued business-plan development has really helped us find and focus on our core model.
We’re keeping a few investment doors open, but are no longer counting on investment until Summer 2009 at the soonest, and are not actively chasing investment. This means we’ll continue to boot-strap FuelClinic.com development for the foreseeable future, and development of new features (as opposed to seeking funding sources) will again be the focus of our limited resources.
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OPEC Promises “Significant” Cuts - Again.
OPEC is to meet again on December 17th to mandate their members turn back their production output valves, in an effort to bring the price of oil up from it’s current lows.
OPEC President Chakib Khelil, who is also Algeria’s minister for energy and mines, told the Associated Press that a consensus has emerged among OPEC producers that a “significant reduction” is warranted by the current price slide.
Khelil would not discuss specifically how deep the cut might be. But he used the word “severe,” and noted that some analysts have predicted cuts of as much as two million barrels a day.
OPEC previously announced a 1.5-million-barrel-a-day reduction in October, but the decision failed to halt the fall in prices and markets have been expecting another cut at the Dec. 17 summit.
Why not keep OPEC on the run - regardless the price of oil - conserve as much fuel as possible w/o degrading your standard of living. Use resources like FuelClinic.com ( http://www.fuelclinic.com ) to learn to conserve and track your progress.
Continue to demand alternative sources of energy for your personal transportation. Demand “future-proof” FLEX-FUEL capable cars to take advantage of ethanol and methanol mix fuels w/o expensive new equipment, demand plug-in hybrids that charge overnight using clean electricity, demand small clean diesel engines that can run on bio-diesel that can be produced from algae.
Consumers cut consumption as a result of summers painful fuel costs - and pulled the rug from under OPEC, causing oil to “crash” back down to market value. Keep it going even lower by continuing to curb consumption, and keep pressuring government and industry to bring to market ways we can _replace_ most of oil from our transportation requirements.
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“Keep Your Receipt” Reminder Magnet
One of the comments that I hear from time to time by FuelClinic.com users is “I have a problem remembering to get my receipt!” We’re working on ways you can record your transactions remotely, right from the pump; using your mobile phone and a to-be-release mobile version of FuelClinic, send a “tweet” to us via Twitter, or just a text message.
But for those users not so interested in mobile technology, we’ve developed a decidedly low-tech (albeit good-lookin’) way to help remind you to grab your receipt before you leave the pump.
About a month ago I had a local sign-shop create a short-run of these magnets for family and friends, with the intention that they will help people to remember and get their receipt before leaving the pump.
It’s been suggested that I make these available to all users, to sell them on the website so everyone can display them on their gas tank hatch and use them to help remember the receipt. So I checked in to getting a commercial run of these created, and figured the price per magnet would be about $5/ea. after manufacturing, packaging, and mailing them.
If you’d like to have a magnet like this for your vehicle(s), and think $5 is something you could part with to get one, let me know by leaving a comment on this thread.
I’m just judging interest at this point - there is no obligation (they don’t even exist yet).
Please Support FuelClinic.com on IdeaBlob.com
Today I learned about IdeaBlob.com - a start-up idea website that has a monthly contest that awards $10K for the idea voted to be the best by members of the site.
If you’d like to help support the continued development of FuelClinic, please visit IdeaBlob.com and participate by voting up my idea, making comments, providing advice, and promoting the site to your friends, social networks, etc.
While you are there, look around at some of the other great ideas that could use your support.
KillerStartups Reviews: FuelClinic.com
FuelClinic.com was recently reviewed at KillerStartups.com, a website that collects information about young web startups and publishes short reviews. People can show their support by “voting” for their favorite site - just click the “+” sign under the vote tally near the top left side of the page. Sites with more votes get more prominently displayed.
MJK Racing Prepares for National SCCA GT-1 Class Finals in Topeka
Altamonte Springs, FL — Mike Kern and crew of the MJK Racing team is celebrating their entry of the #55 Delta Connection Academy / FuelClinic.com Camaro in the 2008 SCCA National Championship Runoffs in Heartland Park, Topeka to be held October 6th thru the 12th.
Each year, drivers race in 70 events across the country to qualify for one last, winner-take-all event in October–the National Championship Runoffs. Some of the most famous American racers have won at the Runoffs, including Bobby Rahal, Boris Said, Paul Newman, Scott Sharp and Skip Barber. There is a strong possibility that the next great American racing driver may be racing at the Runoffs this year.
Now that they have secured a spot at the track, the team is busy preparing the car for the race. Working late into the night, Mike and his volunteer crew are burning the midnight oil to build the car in order to have it inspected this weekend in Daytona.
“There’s a lot to get done in a short period of time” says Mike, as sweat drips from his forehead on a cool Florida evening. “We’ve just got in the new parts for the rear-end, I’ve got that almost put together now. I’m also adding an oil cooler to it, fabricating the mounts and fittings.”
In addition to fresh safety equipment, adding new sponsorship logos like FuelClinic.com, Mike has spent every bit of his free time going over every piece of this car. And he knows what he’s looking at - as Mike has literally built this car himself.
Fuelishness! Feed
- Democrat Senate Leader Harry Reid has decided to sneak an extension of the oil shale ban through as Congress fights over the financial bailout. Oil shale in America’s West is estimated to hold be between 800 billion and 2 trillion barrels of oil — that is more than three times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia alone.
- JD Power: More People Rejecting Vehicles For Fuel Economy
- Back-to-back hurricanes, Gustav and Ike, recently swept through Texas and Louisiana resulting in lost output at the refineries and shut-in crude oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. As of Thursday, 62 percent of the Gulf crude oil production remained shut-in and most refineries have restarted their operations with limited production.
- “Now is not the time to panic and think that gas is running out,” McCrory said at his press conference, alongside Mecklenburg County Board Chairperson Jennifer Roberts.
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Fuelishness! Feed
- Crude oil prices jumped $25 a barrel on Monday – the largest one-day rise – as financial investors betting on falling oil prices were forced to cover their positions ahead of the expiry of the current benchmark futures contract.
- Washington, DC - More than 200 truckers from nearly 10 states have planned a large convoy through Capitol Hill to protest high fuel prices.
- Houston, TX - Some gasoline stations in parts of the Southeast are out of fuel and shortages could persist for days as refiners continue to recover from the one-two punch of hurricanes Ike and Gustav.
- Washington, DC - For the fourth consecutive year, EPA is reporting an increase in the average fuel efficiency for cars and light duty trucks, to a projected 20.8 miles per gallon (mpg) for 2008. This year’s projection is a 0.2 mpg up tick over last year’s value.
- The European commercial vehicle manufacturers are taking the lead in pushing fuel efficiency to new levels, with the clear goal to contribute further to sustainable mobility around the world.
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Scania Training Sveaskog Truckers in Eco-Driving
Source: Green Car Congress
Scania is now running a training course in fuel-efficient driving for trucking companies that haul timber in parts of central Sweden for the Sveaskog forest product company. Results indicate that after training, the drivers can reduce their fuel consumption by 9%. For these truckers alone, this would represent 8,000 tonnes less carbon dioxide emissions each year.
Scania’s driver training course is designed to meet the requirements of a new European Union directive on mandatory periodic training of professional drivers.
Our timber transports by truck total about 70 million kilometers a year. If their fuel consumption can be lowered by 9 percent, this will save more than 3 liters of diesel fuel and 8,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
—Olof Johansson, Senior Vice President Environment and Social Responsibility at Sveaskog
Sveaskog’s investment in driver training is one element of the State-owned company’s efforts to reduce the environmental impact of its silviculture operations. Sveaskog has signed an agreement with Scania Sweden which covers training in safe, fuel-efficient driving for about one hundred drivers employed by trucking companies responsible for hauling timber for Sveaskog in the Bergslagen and Södermanland regions of central Sweden.
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Fuelishness! Feed
- Japan’s Mazda Motor Corp said on Tuesday it had developed an advanced stop-and-go system, diesel engine and other technologies aimed at boosting its cars’ average mileage by 30 percent in seven years.
- The worst oil shock since the 1970s has put a permanent mark on the American way of life that even a drop in oil’s price below $100 a barrel won’t erase.
- “There is no fuel shortage in Florida,” Bronson said. “There’s hundreds of millions of gallons available.”
- Digital device can help steer you to better mileage
- More companies are paying fuel surcharges to independent truckers for empty miles, or the miles when a driver is not hauling cargo.
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Fuelishness! Feed
- Crude oil fell to a five-month low as the Saudi Arabian and Venezuelan oil ministers signaled that OPEC will maintain production levels when it meets today in Vienna.
- Oil prices have now been falling for two weeks consistently, despite a short-lived rally yesterday on the back of concerns over the impact of Hurricane Ike in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.
- Senate Democrats promised a series of votes next week on offshore oil drilling as Republicans agreed Monday to let the Senate proceed on a defense bill that had been bottled up because of partisan disputes over the country’s energy priorities.
- The Interior Department, the agency that handles oil-and-gas leases in U.S. waters, is preparing to lease swaths of the outer continental shelf to companies that want to erect massive wind turbines.
- Ford’s Fiesta ECOnetic gets an astonishing 65 mpg, but the carmaker can’t afford to sell it in the U.S.
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