as

In addition to shrinking hours and rising food costs, gas prices are burning up his paycheck as he drives his truck to jobs spread out over hundreds of miles in Southern California.

I sense some exaggeration by the choice of conjunction,as, which makes the sentence sound as if, as he drives his truck the gas prices increase simultaneously. Do you sense it and totally accept this mild exaggeration as it's common?

Thanks in advance!

I see your point, but I don't think that's the intention.  The price of gas may not have risen since his last paycheck, but since his job requires him to drive to many distant job sites, as he drives from one site to another, the money left over from his paycheck rapidly dwindles.

N2g, I thought you knew my bad habits.  I was counting on you to give me time to edit, and not cut me off at the knees.  I was typing as fast as I could, but you got me.

I think there's an error in the sentence, but not quite the one you specified.

"Gas prices" is the subject of the sentence, and "as he drives etc." modifies the verb "are burning up."  The introductory prepositional phrase "In addition etc." purports to modify the subject, "gas prices," and is therefore stating that shrinking hours and rising food costs are also burning up his paycheck as he drives, which is certainly not the case and shouldn't be the author's intention.

The shrinking hours burn up his figurative paycheck, in the sense that "paycheck" is often used to mean "how much you make per week on average."  Business is bad.  He gets paid by the hour, and he's been working fewer and fewer hours each week.  This has nothing to do with his driving expenses.  Neither does the cost of food.

But the three factors work together to put him in a financial bind.

A.

You write clearly enough when you're expressing your own thoughts. I believe clear thoughts lead to clear writing.  What's the impetus behind these ungodly long sentences?  Is it some sort of compulsion?  Or is someone giving assignments to write the longest possible sentence, using as many phrases and clauses as possible and expressing as many different ideas as possible?  Or are these sentences presented in this form as an exercise to be analyzed?

Many of the confused, compound complex, etc., etc. sentences I see could be cleared up and improved if it were allowed to break them into two or three sentences, but I never know if that's permitted.

  - A.