Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Paul Ridzon from KeyBanc, please state your question.
Paul Ridzon - KeyBanc
One of the trends I think we have all been surprised by is the fact that industrial sales seemed to have less of an impact than people had feared, given that latter rates are set on monthly peak demand charges rather than absolute megawatt hours. Is that kind of how your rates are structured?
Gale Klappa
Paul, you are absolutely right. Particularly, with our large, commercial and industrial customers the demand component is a significant portion of their bill. And what we are seeing, anecdotally, with the pretty significant decline in kilowatt hour sales to major manufacturing firms. We are seeing them reduce weekend production. We are seeing them reduce second and third shift production. When they do run, they are running pretty much at full capacity. So you are absolutely right, in that. We haven't seen a significant margin erosion as one might expect if you just looked at an 18% decline in sales.
Paul Ridzon - KeyBanc
I guess the biggest risk is that they actually shutdown and what do you see as far as that trend?
Gale Klappa
We stay in pretty good close touch with our customers at the moment and we did see this happen obviously late last week. We have one major additional shutdown and that's the engine plant that has been a long time Chrysler engine manufacturing plant near Kenosha. That's one of our 20 largest customers. Obviously, Chrysler went into bankruptcy. That plant will not operate, nor will any other Chrysler plant until Chrysler emerges from bankruptcy.
And then the current thinking is that that plant will shutdown permanently at the end of 2010. Although, the state is making a major effort to try to extend the life of the plant, but the only major customer that I see at risk in terms of complete shutdown at the moment would be the one we saw announced last week and that's Chrysler.
Paul Ridzon - KeyBanc
And what are the wholesale markets currently offering as far as margins relative to kind of the special rates that these large industrials get?
Gale Klappa
Well, really that's not a very big impact if any impact on our earnings, because if you think about where our earnings come from, probably 90% to 92% of our earnings are coming from our retail regulated operations. We have formulary tariffs for our wholesale power business. And so, the month-to-month or day-to-day gyrations in the wholesale market are not having a major impact on us. But I will say and I'm looking at Rick to see if he has any additional information.
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