Since the summer, the price of oil has plummeted 50 percent, hitting its lowest level in more than five years about a week before Christmas. Riding along has been a drop in fuel costs, with diesel falling from the high of the year at $4.021 in March to $3.419 in mid-December, according to U.S. Energy Department figures.

The result has been billions of dollars in savings -- not just for the trucking industry ($350 million to $375 million annually for each one-cent decline, according to the American Trucking Associations), but also for consumers. They have seen gasoline prices fall by an even greater margin, translating into a “consumer windfall” totaling $125 billion, according to research from investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, which called the drop a “middle class tax cut.”