Much of the world depends on diesel power. The food in your refrigerator, your overnight packages from Amazon, and even your furniture have likely ridden in some sort of diesel-powered vehicle in their life. Trucking, farming, construction, and railroading keep the world turning, and they all require diesel. So does your diesel pickup truck or passenger car, if you have one. The price of diesel hit a nationwide average of $5.62 per gallon, and there’s a chance it could even break the all-time diesel price record of $5.82 per gallon, set in May 2022. This hurts everyone from truckers and farmers to you. Here’s why it’s happening, and why the price of diesel soars higher than gasoline in times like these.
On Tuesday, the American Automobile Association (AAA) reported some dismal news. Regular gasoline is at a nationwide average of $4.10 per gallon, while diesel is averaging $5.62 per gallon after months of creeping higher in price. A year ago, diesel fuel was an average of just $3.70 per gallon, or only 52 cents more expensive per gallon than regular gasoline at the time.
On the surface, the cost of diesel might not matter much to car owners. Their cars are largely fueled by gasoline or electricity, so what the green part of the gas station sign says does not matter to them. But it matters a whole lot to the businesses, truckers, and farmers who now each have to spend tens of thousands of dollars more on fuel. A price that can be passed down to you as a consumer.
But why is this happening? Why is diesel so crazy expensive and, perhaps to answer a curiosity that car drivers have, why is the price of gasoline not as crazy at the moment?
War, War Never Changes
The simple answer to the question of higher fuel prices, be it gasoline, diesel, or even the 100LL that’s burned in my trainer Cessna, is that it’s one of the consequences of war. The ongoing war that started after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 is partly responsible for higher prices. Only adding fuel to the fire is Israel’s and America’s campaign against Iran. The New York Times explains the mechanisms at work here:
To understand why diesel prices are rising, it’s important to understand the big picture. There is simply not enough diesel available to meet the world’s needs.
Refineries produce diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, and other fuels by “cracking,” or heating, crude oil. The United States and China have most of the world’s refining capacity, followed by countries like Russia and India. But Russia’s ability to make diesel has been severely hamstrung because Ukraine has damaged many of its refineries. In July, Bank of America analysts said Russian refineries were processing around 3.9 million barrels per day, down from 5.3 million barrels a year ago. That has forced Russia to suspend diesel exports. “We estimate that now 40 percent of Russian refining capacity has been impacted by drone strikes,” said Debnil Chowdhury, who tracks the refining business for S&P Global. “And the reason that that’s important is it’s a global market.”
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which about a fifth of the world’s crude oil is shipped, has also limited the flow of crude oil, diesel and other petroleum products. As a result, the global oil price has climbed around 20 percent, to about $86 a barrel. The volume of crude oil refined in the Middle East has dropped to about eight million barrels a day in 2026, down 1.6 million barrels a day from 2025 levels, S&P Global analysts said in an Aug. 1 report. U.S. refineries have made up for some of that shortfall by operating at around 97 percent of their capacity, according to the Energy Information Administration. Exports of diesel and related fuels are up by around 28 percent compared with last year and U.S. inventories of those fuels have fallen sharply.
The New York Times further notes that fuel refineries are making a killing right now. When oil trades at $70 a barrel, the New York Times reports, refineries make $20 to $30. But in a crisis like right now, refineries are making closer to $90. As a result, the profit margins at producers like Valero Energy and Marathon Petroleum have doubled. In other words, if you’re the one providing the gas and have gas to sell, money is practically raining down from the sky right now.
It’s the opposite for the businesses, farmers, truckers, and drivers who are on the receiving end of the higher prices. The New York Times talked about Randy Madden, a farmer who delayed buying diesel for his 3,000-acre farm in Iowa when prices spiked in April. Unfortunately, the continued rise in pricing means that he’s expecting to spend over $40,000 on diesel this harvest season, or nearly double what he normally pays.
Some farmers can’t just take a hit like that. Farmers take out loans each year to cover their operating expenses. Many farmers didn’t budget for having to pay twice as much for fuel in the budgets they used to get their loans. The farmers that don’t have the liquidity to cover the higher cost of diesel may go out of business.
Then there’s the trucking industry. A single semi-tractor may easily burn more than 14,000 gallons of fuel per year, and according to the American Trucking Associations, the industry as a whole burns some 36.5 billion gallons of diesel per year. The math here is staggering.
Remember how I said that diesel averaged about $3.70 per gallon last year? A truck that burns 14,000 gallons of diesel at that price will cost $51,800 in just diesel fuel alone. At the current national average of $5.62 per gallon, that’s now $78,680 in diesel fuel alone. The price even hurts on a per-tank basis. A trucker topping up a pair of 100-gallon tanks now has to pay, on average, $388 more per fill-up.
To make matters worse, there isn’t a lot of relief in sight in the short term. According to the Energy Information Administration, the last refinery in America was built in 1977, and it takes years and billions of dollars to build new ones. China is limiting its fuel exports to make sure it has enough fuel for its own use. Other fuel producers in the world are ramping up their exports, but prices are still climbing anyway. Meanwhile, only single-digit numbers of ships continue to pass through the Strait of Hormuz per day, when it used to handle around 100 vessels per day.
If not much changes, the fear is that the price of diesel will exceed the all-time record of $5.82 per gallon. Now, technically, if you account for inflation, that $5.82 per gallon in 2022 would be worth $6.65 per gallon in 2026. So, if diesel does break the record, it will be largely on paper. Still, such a technicality is meaningless for the people paying tens of thousands more for fuel.
It’s not just truckers and farmers, either. A lot of people own heavy-duty pickup trucks that burn diesel. RV owners have motorhomes that burn diesel. Then there are the handful of holdouts still driving their diesel Volkswagens, Chevrolets, BMWs, and more. My wife and I both felt the crunch this summer as we continue to drive diesel vehicles.
The ripple effect is more than just higher prices for fuel. It now costs more to transport goods, more to produce food, and more to build things. That cost can be passed down to you in the grocery aisle and more. Remember, trucks move around 70 percent of the freight in America, and nearly all of them burn diesel.
Why The Price Of Diesel Rises Faster Than Gasoline
Alright, so, the big question. You know why diesel costs more. But why is diesel soaring so high compared to gasoline? Robert Rapier, a career chemical engineer writing for OilPrice.com, explains why diesel is hit worse by the same wars:
Diesel Starts With a Tighter Supply Cushion
One of the most overlooked realities is that diesel usually has less margin for error. Inventories of distillate fuels—which include diesel and heating oil—tend to run tighter than gasoline stocks. In both early 2022 and more recent market disruptions, distillate inventories were already below typical seasonal levels before the geopolitical shock hit. That leaves little buffer when supply is disrupted. Gasoline, by contrast, benefits from more storage, more localized production, and clearer seasonal demand patterns. Diesel doesn’t have that luxury. When supply tightens, it is usually diesel that feels it first—and fastest.Diesel Is a Global Fuel; Gasoline Is Not
Gasoline is primarily a regional product. It is refined and consumed largely within the same geographic market. Diesel is different. It is the fuel of global commerce. It powers ships, trucks, trains, and heavy equipment that move goods across borders. As a result, diesel prices are tightly linked to global trade flows. When a critical chokepoint like the Strait of Hormuz is disrupted, the impact ripples through diesel markets worldwide. Even countries that import little crude from the Middle East still feel the effects, because diesel is widely traded and priced in global markets. A disruption anywhere can tighten supply everywhere.
Rapier further notes that the demand for diesel is not flexible, unlike gasoline. When the price of gas gets high, car owners reduce their mileage and demand falls. Some people don’t burn gas at all as they own EVs. The same cannot be said for the consumers of diesel. The trucks, trains, ships, tractors, and construction equipment still have to do the same jobs they’ve always done, regardless of the cost of fuel.
Rapier continues:
Refineries Can’t Just “Make More Diesel.”
In theory, higher prices should encourage more production. In practice, refining doesn’t work that way—at least not quickly. Diesel and gasoline come from different portions of the crude oil barrel, and shifting output isn’t simple. Diesel production depends on factors like crude quality, hydroprocessing capacity, and stringent ultra-low sulfur requirements.Refineries are also often running near capacity, especially during periods of strong demand. Seasonal maintenance schedules can further limit flexibility. In the U.S., refiners are currently ramping up gasoline production ahead of the high-demand summer driving season. They can’t substantially shift production to diesel. The result is that when diesel demand surges or supply is disrupted, refiners can’t rapidly increase output to stabilize the market. That rigidity amplifies price spikes.
The short version, Rapier says, is that diesel prices rise faster than gasoline because the market for diesel is “structurally tighter, more globally integrated, and less flexible. It is the fuel that powers freight, industry, and agriculture. It operates with thinner inventories, faces more inelastic demand, and cannot be easily ramped up when supply is disrupted. Gasoline is a consumer fuel. Diesel is an economic fuel.”
There you have it, that’s why diesel is so expensive right now and why it’s so much more expensive than gasoline. Conflicts around the globe are hitting the gas pump, and the market for diesel is different than the one for gasoline. Either way, this gas crunch is something we’re all feeling right now, and the worst may be yet to come. Hopefully, that’s not the case. It doesn’t have to be the case.
If you’re a diesel user, how are you handling the rise in prices? Do you see an end in sight?
Top graphic image: Peterbilt
Basic economics – price elasticity.
If you raise the price of gas, people take less vacations or skip taking out the boat.
If you raise the price of your least refined, least cost to produce, most profitable product you make more! If it is less public facing as businesses are the biggest consumer it is a huge win. Diesel used to be far cheaper than gas until the game was rigged with legal price gouging.
If you’re a diesel user, how are you handling the rise in prices? Do you see an end in sight?
My wife and I have a VW TDI as our primary car, so current prices sting a bit. Thankfully our annual mileage is pretty low, usually around 9K miles. To help manage this I find myself riding my Honda Super Cub (purchased after Mercedes’ excellent article earlier this year), which gets about 100mpg, for trips I used to drive to. I use it for my appointments, small grocery runs, going to the gym, etc. I think it has helped. Will see if that continues as winter arrives.
I do not see an end in sight, so I’ll be purchasing some winter riding gloves…
You sound like one of the nicest people!
I actually have that old slogan on the side of my top box 🙂 If I could post a photo I would.
I love that ad as my mother was one of the original “nicest people” in the early 60s.
People seem to love the Super Cub. I get more questions about it around town than I do in my Supra. A lot of older riders had them at some point and want to talk about it, and some riders thinking about downsizing.
Daily a V6 diesel Amarok – with price here about $US6.70/gal. Upside is average 24mpg. I’m OK for now…
Remember the Strait eas open before…
TACO NACHO’s
Not A Chance Hormuz Opens
I do find it funny that this affects the coal-rolling douchebrodozers that are 30 feet tall and have exhaust pipes the size of sewer drains. Seriously, screw those guys.
I’ve told this story here before but I think it’s time again:
At the start of this nonsense I was behind such a 30 feet tall douchebrodozer truck but gas powered. In its back window was a large handwritten sign that said something along the lines of: Lower gas prices! I’m not an only fans star!
Which I think said everything needed to know about who was driving that truck.
I’ve got a Sportwagen TDI, and while diesel is high, at least the thing is fuel efficient. I average around 40mpg per tank. I’m probably still saving money compared to anything that gets less than 25mpg on regular gas though. And it’s better than my previous two cars, which took premium and usually averaged about 25mpg. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.
I have a Touareg TDI and have used this same reasoning to not feel bad about fuel prices the lasts few years. Our car gets about 30% better mileage than the gas version of the same Touareg. However that 30% isn’t covering the price difference today 🙁
Looks like no road trips in the near future.
Adding insult to injury, my DPF failed on Sunday. Looks like I’ll be buying a new exhaust system in the future. New DPFs are so expensive ($2,700 or so) that replacing the whole exhaust won’t cost much more.
I’m sorry to hear that. How many miles do you have on yours?
Our emissions warranty expires in Spring 2028 and for that exact reason we will be replacing it as the warranty expires.
I’ve already had that “talk” with my wife (she absolutely loves the car). We only have 70K miles on it, but I’m unwilling to deal with costly repairs like that. I also hear it can take quite some time to get parts.
Only 74k, I bought it in April 2020 with 34k on it. I bought it thinking that the world would return to normal and I’d be commuting to work again. That never happened, I work from home full time, and for the five years we lived in town it saw a lot of short trips. I think that’s what did it in. Now we live in the country I have to drive 10 miles from our house just to get to town, but I guess that was too little too late.
It looks like the DPF for my car is available from a few places, but it’s well over $2k. I can buy a whole Rawtek exhaust for nearly the same price. Just waiting to hear when the shop can get it in. I DIY a lot, but I won’t touch exhaust systems. We don’t have inspections or emissions testing here, so I can just delete the damn DPF.
Yeah, the short trips will do it. We are in the same boat, we both work from home since the pandemic and most of our use is short trips around town. We sometimes have to make up a reason to take a longer drive to give it some regen time. We have a mostly-highway 40-minute drive to the Denver airport and go out there frequently enough it seems to be doing the trick.
We’ve had the car since new, and only once have I gotten a DPF warning, and it happened to be a few months after I had somebody else change the oil. Thankfully it self-resolved after I did a 90-minute highway loop around the Denver metro.
I normally do my own oil/filter changes and make sure I use a VW 502.00 compliant oil, which helps minimize buildup in the DPF, but that year I had some other maintenance done at a local independent shop that I couldn’t do in my own garage and had the shop do the oil as well, so who knows what they used… Or maybe it was just time 🙂
Yeah, my highway trips weren’t frequent enough or long enough to do the trick, it seems. Every few months I would do 300+ miles in a day when visiting relatives, but clearly that wasn’t enough. Mine’s definitely fucked though, there’s soot on the tailpipes and from what I understand that only happens when the DPF cracks. I even used VW spec oil!
Since I have to spend the money I’m definitely going aftermarket. I’ve already got a Malone Stage 2 tune and from what I’ve read, deleting the DPF will help me get more out of that. And it will pave the way for more mods in the future.
Since you live somewhere that you can get away with the delete, that is definitely your best path forward to remove failure points (provided you plan to keep the vehicle for a while and don’t mind being limited on where you can sell it later)
I think you can also delete the need for the AdBlue system which can also be a failure point.
I have to do annual emissions testing here in the Denver metro, so that is not my future 🙁
The good news is that, by-and-large, gas cars have caught up in terms of fuel economy, so whatever we replace it with should get similar or better. Top contender right now is the BMW X3 which is nearly identical size-wise (the Touareg size works really well for us) and gets the same or better fuel economy depending on engine. Maybe something even more compelling will appear before we have to make a decision.
I bought a “fixed” dieselgate 2012 TDI Passat in 2018. I seem to recall that, as a result of that lawsuit, the entire diesel treatment system (among other things) was covered by VW for life.
Unfortunately it’s not for life, mine expired last year.
At least for the Touareg TDI’s it was 10-years or 120K miles for the emissions system. We’ll be hitting 10-years in Spring 2028 (Ours was a new 2016 model we purchased “fixed” in 2018)
I watched a video recently about how the reason things aren’t REALLY bad is because China has massively cut their import of oil. They may be sitting on reserves larger than anyone ever anticipated, and they’re flexing their influence and ability to affect global energy prices. They’ve absorbed like 2/3rds of the crude oil shortage by using what they have in reserve.
By a lot, and I mean A LOT:
https://www.api.org/energy-insights/charts-analysis/china-crude-imports-have-declined
from 12M / day to 7M. What’s shocking is the US uses 20M barrels / day, which coincidentally is how much comes out of the strait of Hormuz.
They did. They increased their reserves to never seen levels, likely anticipating Trump was going to do something stupid in the Middle East. It’s also kept the overall global price down, since they’re now dipping into that reserve, instead of competing with others and buying on the open market, forcing the price up.
Also buying from Russia who was selling cheap.
I calculate yearly fuel costs at various prices before buying any vehicle. When I bought my truck, I assumed diesel would cost up to about $6.00 per gallon, even if it was well under $4.00 at the time (I think? I might be remembering wrong). I didn’t expect diesel to go up to $6.00 per gallon, but I knew I could afford it if it happened. So far, my “worst case scenario” assumptions haven’t been exceeded so I haven’t made any changes in how I use my truck. I’m fortunate to be annoyed by rather than truly impacted by rising fuel prices – I know this is not the case for everyone.
At this point, I’m mostly bothered by the decision making that led to fuel prices rising. Starting a war with minimal/shifting rationales, nebulous goals, zero input from allies (and outright antagonizing many of them), and zero thought about potential consequences is just about the stupidest political decision every made. I’m not sure how Donny didn’t think about the Strait of Hormuz – I think Sun Tzu wrote about using geography to your advantage in The Art of War so this isn’t a brilliant new tactic on Iran’s part. I would be okay with fuel prices going up for a good reason, but it is frustrating prices went up because Trump thought he was so brilliant and tough that Iran would surrender the second he sent a mean tweet.
(sorry for the political rant – the utter stupidity of the Iran war frustrates me greatly)
No need to apologize –
Politics affects everything in our lives.
I remember being taught 20+ yrs ago in politics of the Mideast 101 that you don’t mess with Iran bc they control Hormuz.
For anyone to not have seen this coming…
I recall reading that every single war game in the last 40 years had this result. They knew, they just didn’t care.
I’m sure 99% of the subject experts knew and cared. But if the 1% at the tippy top don’t, doesn’t much matter.
They knew, and this was the desired result.
Creating an existential enemy that is a threat to the American Oil Addiction.
Now they have their bogeyman.
AND… it’s all a distraction, for the Epsteinth time.
There was some debate when oil prices were high previously that switching a large portion of the light-duty fleet (i.e. cars, crossovers, light trucks) to diesel power would be a solution, as was common in Europe at the time.
To which I said: Balderdash!
You don’t want your light-duty transportation fuel market competing with your industrial fuel supply. The squeeze on diesel right now vindicates the thinking in North America that gasoline powered vehicles were the superior choice, even notwithstanding the emissions concerns of diesel engines.
So, uh, thanks VW? Inadvertently saved us from going down a bad road.
“To which I said: Balderdash!”
I thought you actually said ‘Poppycock’.
I could have. It was a heated post.
One could argue the other side of this point – That both industrial and private use of a single fuel would require greater production and storage facilities, etc – giving us more flexibility for production and distribution.
Because it’s rather stupid to prioritize a fuel for personal use and lower prices at the expense of the fuel for industrial use, but which serves the greater good.
In the end – more people could work from home if necessary due to fuel shortages than we can get to the farm/port/factory for our food, medicines, etc.
Given that a barrel of oil produces both diesel and gasoline (fractions vary depending on refining technique), pushing more demand to the lower-utility fuel (gasoline – basically only usable for small engines) while leaving the more industrial fuel (diesel) would seem the best way to allocate a barrel of oil in large quantities. The lower price of gasoline is a function of its more limited use case.
Gasoline is rather touchy and high-strung for many industrial uses as Sherman tank operators found out during WWII. Diesel is much more stable and can be adapted to a wider variety of heavy-duty uses more safely.
The savings from ‘simplifying’ one stream of fuel for everything in an industrial society would likely result in larger downsides from not optimizing fuels for their best use case.
It’s one thing in military where the advantage of having one type of fuel in a combat zone hugely simplifies logistics, but in a massive civilian economy (on the order of millions of bbl of consumption daily), the cost of parallel distribution streams would be near negligible.
My understanding of one of the reasons that diesel is more expensive in the US is that US refineries use Fluid Catalytic Cracking which maximizes gasoline production and EU refineries use hydrocracking which maximizes diesel and jet fuel production.
Thanks, I was trying to ask that question as that’s what I believed too, but I just didn’t know what words to use.
Here in the EU diesel usually is cheaper, but at least in the Netherlands it is now more expensive than gasoline because of the political events playing out in the world around us.
I, unfortunately, see this every time I fill-up my TDI Audi.
I handle the higher fuel cost by charging my customers the IRS mileage rate for my commute to the airport (480 miles round trip). For over 15 years, I ate that cost, but that changed this spring.
We also built a greenhouse and indoor hydroponic gardens. Our grocery store is 25 miles away, and the gardening has cut our trips by at least 75%. When we do go, we take our gasoline powered Miata.
“Our grocery store is 25 miles away, and the gardening has cut our trips by at least 75%.”
I planted zucchini this year for the first time ever. One plant. Only one plant.
Turns out even one plant of zucchini is a bit too much zucchini.
You know, it’s easy to blame the hellscape that is 2025-2026 on Trump and his cronies. But the blame rests squarely with those who voted for this or didn’t vote at all. You deserve it. It’s just too bad the rest of us have to suffer as well.
I would say there is real blame on all sides. We have, collectively, accepted the conditions that make Trump possible, including settling for power structures and alternative candidates who are unelectable, and failing to solve deep problems for so many. As a country, we are receiving what we deserve, as much as it personally saddens me.
Explain why Harris was unelectable.
Because of her previous boss really. For one “he” made her the border czar” setting her up for failure. Then there was the way he was propped up as “sharp as a tack” and then suddenly was unfit to run, leading to a rushed campaign and no primary.
Given more time to campaign and flood the internet with positive content Harris would have done better.
I wish those were the reasons. I really do.
Yes there are other reasons (her VP pick, 80/20 policy issued etc) but It’s hard to argue they didn’t have any effect. In fact if there was a standard primary we may have had an even better candidate that would have beaten Turnip.
2028 should bring an interesting crop of new democrats to pick from.
You know the reasons. Look at what crawled out from under rocks in the last two years. They would never elect a woman of mixed heritage.
Bingo!
It really is just this, sadly. Nailed it.
Don’t both sides this.
Although it does require introspection and humility, I’ve never been in a conflict that doesn’t have two sides. A people intent on saving this republic, and I do believe those are the stakes, will work intently to understand and where possible and not in violation of principles, compromise.
Are we on the same planet living in the same timeline? There is no current room for compromise. There’s one side moving ahead rapidly, ignoring established principles and laws, breaking as much stuff as possible. There’s no room for compromise when your principles involve and center around malicious behavior.
I have consistently asked myself if this is real life over the past couple of years, so maybe not. Trump is a symptom and either incapacitated from ill health or term limits. In the rebuilding after he vanishes, we should pay attention to the conditions that led to his rise and treat that disease.
Joni Mitchell
No, the blame is not in fact on all sides. It is squarely with Trump and the people that voted for him. What a weak take. Educate yourself.
Your position is civil war, yet I sense way too much apathy and compliance for that to be possible.
The other thing to remember is that a barrel oil produces less diesel than gasoline.
Refining one standard 42-gallon barrel of crude oil yields about 19 to 20 gallons of gasoline and 11 to 13 gallons of distillate fuel oil.
How much of this is simply due to what’s in the crude and crude not being created equal in different regions, and how much of that is due to the refineries being designed to favor gasoline? In my naive understanding of how cracking and distillation works it seems like it should be easier to refine diesel than gas, but we have some of the most advanced refineries in the world.
It’s a moot point anyways as I doubt too many new refineries are going to be built going forward. After 15 years working at a trading firm that had a petroleum futures trading desk I know far more than a normal person should about the economics, but barely anything about how the sausage gets made.
Traditionally, it was cheaper to refine Diesel than gasoline, which is why it was cheaper at the pump for decades. But low sulfur requirements in 2007 dramatically increased the cost of refining Diesel
Exactly.
Not true at all. The reason US refiners output 2:1 gasoline to fuel oil is because they were designed to do so when gasoline demand drastically exceeded Diesel. They can crack heavy molecules to make lighter ones, and add small molecules together to make longer ones, which is, in fact, how they get so much more gasoline and Diesel from one barrel of oil than they otherwise would through simple distillation.
https://share.google/aimode/DeenRp2z9fG9rgYPc
“When crude oil is processed strictly by fractional distillation (excluding catalytic cracking, alkylation, or other secondary molecular alterations), the resulting components are known as straight-run fractions.
The Direct Answer
By weight, straight-run gasoline (light naphtha) typically accounts for about 10% to 15% of a barrel of crude oil, while straight-run diesel (light gas oil) typically accounts for about 20% to 25%.
(Note: While fully configured modern refineries use cracking to force up to 45% of a barrel into finished gasoline, a simple atmospheric distillation column yields much less)”
Refineries COULD be reconfigured to produce more gasoline and less Diesel, but that would take expensive capital expenditure and the industry is loath to spend Capital when their very existence is threatened by regulations attempting to eliminate all fossil fuels. Plus, they benefit from the shortages through these high profit margins. Why would they invest hundreds of billions of dollars so their profit margins go down in the context of a shrinking market? The refiners are acting completely rationally to the current environment. As more refineries inevitably close in the US, US crude will get shipped across the globe to countries with excess refining capacity and the Diesel fuel will get shipped back for US use – at a nice markup / profit. Fuel prices are going higher and higher. Even if fuel demand drops due to electrification, refiners will drop capacity and increase prices. Most refineries are old and need extensive capital upgrades. Most refineries will close rather than spend the capital upgrades – unless somehow fossil fuels stop being a pariah.
I think you meant to say more diesel and less gasoline in your last paragraph, but this MAX FRESH OFF’s comment above is exactly what was wanting to ask without knowing the right words to use. As I understand it the US has the best and most advanced refineries in the world that can turn even the lowest quality crude into usable products, but we also have some of the highest quality crude reserves in the world too that need the least refining. The end result is that most of our WTI crude gets exported to refineries in the rest of the world, and most of our refineries run on Brent and Canadian crude that we import.
Reading this article and thinking about how expensive it is to fill my diesel VW and how insignificant that personal impact is in scale of the horrible multiple global conflicts occuring
:((
Mercedes putting a cool truck photo every couple paragraphs to balance it out
😀
I’ve seen people in a different place insisting that shortages of a niche food couldn’t possibly be related in any way whatsoever to diesel prices and trucking costs.
The truth is that as prices rise, different products will be affected differently. Locally produced and distributed goods like bread will be hit less hard than something like olive oil, which is largely imported and involves diesel trucks in the harvesting and shipment to processing plants, and then exporting to the US.
But everything is hit, and once prices reach a certain point they can warp what local retailers and delivery companies do to respond. The first response is usually to raise retail prices, but the point comes where shrinking supply becomes a major choice.
Some people love to argue from basic first principles, but retail markets are complicated and you can definitely see some goods as bellwethers of ehat could be in store for others.
It’s a price worth paying because it also screws over coal-rolling bro trucks.
And I hope this helps encourage commercial truck and bus buyers to accellerate their evaluation and migration to electric trucks and buses.
Case in point… the Toronto Transit Commission now has over 340 electric buses out of a fleet of a little over 2500 buses.
And they have plans to buy more electric buses in the future.
The electric buses cost a lot more up front, but with recent high fuel prices, they must be saving the TTC massive amounts in fuel.
In Edinburgh about half of the buses are electric. The air is subjectively less smelly – result, due to what some in the US appear to regard as communism. Stalin would’ve taken an ice axe to Trump had the disgusting pair been contemporaneous.
Yeah, there are certainly alternatives to diesel in most applications, so a good part of the crunch is just society generally being stuck in its ways and refusing to change.
California is something like 2/3 to 3/4 renewable diesel now (and probably using all the used cooking oil in Asia to do it), so I wonder if there will be articles soon about how diesel in Cali is cheaper than other parts of the country, since it is less reliant on fossil diesel.
Natural gas HD engines are available, although the fueling infrastructure isn’t as built out.
I think China is up to 40% market share for electric HD trucks. And transit buses are close to 100%. From what you say, sounds like Canada is following suit. Might make sense for Canada to more closely align with China than the US if it gets them closer to their goals.
And indeed if it takes $10/gallon diesel to get the coal rollers off the road, so be it.
Less pollution and carbon emissions does sound like a good thing.
If only someone had created an agreement with Iran to constrain their nuclear ambitions, oh wait President Obama did. To bad Agent Orange tossed it out because Obama roasted him and Trumplethinskin couldn’t take it.
Now here we are with the “Peace President” mired in a conflict he will never be able to extricate himself from. At least nobody is talking about the Epstein files anymore; mission accomplished.
Ooh, Superman, where are you now
When everything’s gone wrong somehow?
The men of steel, the men of power
Are losing control by the hour
This is the time, this is the place
So we look for the future
But there’s not much love to go round
Tell me why this is a land of confusion
Trumplethinskin is hilarious, will be using that
My 3.0 Duramax is costing me at the tank… but my love for it has not waned.
Farmers voted for the richest guy born on 5th avenue. Diesel fuel prices are up, diminished soybean sales, and lately the import of foreign beef is how he is repaying them. They voted for this.
they dont deserve subsidies if they want to vote like this
That is why I want a third party. I get screwed by both
We definitely need a third party for the majority of the country in the middle. I will tentatively refer to it as the Purple Party. I’ll start it with you.
Honestly I think we need Soviet communism most. Nationalize farming, trucking, and railroads. Then EVERYONE should be reqired to put in time working on said projects. Great Patriotic Harvests and Railways! But as soon as you say that, no one wants to be a communist. So maybe a nice populist party?
20 acres and a mule? A chicken in every pot?
You got to realize my sympathies rest with the blue collar worker. So I want what is best for them. The 2 current parties chase the big money. Small farmers are struggling. Truckers are being replaced by cheap immigrants who are being treated like slaves. Its horrible. So horrible im ready for hard core soviet era communism. Fuck everything and no private ownership and everyone makes the same check. Yeah, the family farm will be nationalized, but at least we will all be making the same money. The two party system is a broken echo chamber. At this point id rather have authoritarianism. Yes, a third party would be better, but that ain’t happening. Everyone blindly follows 2 parties, and just yell. So eff it, no parties, just the workers paradise
The family farm hasn’t been a (significant) thing for decades…
Unfortunately true.
Except for the families.
Don’t disagree completely. But the USSR in theory vs in practice were two way different things. Purges, gulags and starvation. ChiCom isn’t exactly showing us what a “worker’s paradise” is either, given there seem to be a lot of people getting rich and a lot of cheap slave labor. DPRK has starvation, camps, and military, not much else.
The nordic countries seem to have figured it out, but can that work in a diverse and large population like the USA?
We’ve got 50 years of bad policy to undo and need to get it done quick. Deregulation and the notion that trickle down economics work and that’s why we need more tax cuts for the wealthy are the big parts of the problem, as is the propaganda from those same interests who know they keep taking billions by starting and maintaining culture war crap.
When marginal tax rates were 91% over a few million dollars, companies invested in their workers, which is why our grandparents and (some) of our parents have old school pensions instead of 401ks. Which is why they could afford a house and keep the spouse at home. We live now in a time that would make Rockefeller and Carnegie and all the old school robber barons blush. Elmo and his lot know they’re getting close to a “let them eat cake” moment because they’re getting their bug out holes in various places, but still trying to use the useful tool at 1600 Penn to loot the treasury some more.
At least utility companies.
I’ll respectfully diverge with you there. I think communism/socialism is a nice idea, but has not been so successful in practice. Centralized planning really sucks in a country as large and diverse as ours. Hard facts about the Soviet economy are difficult to come by, but by all accounts was a fraction of the US Economy for similarly sized populations. They faked it real good as long as they could, until they couldn’t, then failed spectacularly. China pivoted to a hybrid model decades ago that seems to be working okay (though I have issues with the level of personal freedoms for their populace).
I don’t know the best answer, but it seems like a combination of Capitalism, with some social services for “universal” protections, and strong law enforcement to prevent abuse (not simply police, but things like the FTC). I don’t think government is good at “doing” things, it is better at ensuring laws are followed and the little people not taken advantage of.
I would be okay with universal healthcare, which may be considered socialist. 20 years ago healthcare costs were exploding. The ACA helped a bit with that, but now we are seeing the same thing again. Clearly something more drastic is needed. I’m still 12-17 years away from retirement, and a big sore point for me is the cost of healthcare in the gap years between retirement and qualifying for Medicare. I don’t want to work until 65, but I might have to for healthcare alone.
I also agree with helping those less fortunate, but I don’t believe in handouts. So I would like to see programs designed to help those in need, with reasonable rules to prevent abuse.
In my state, Colorado, they recently have tried to pass free school lunches for all children. I’m not a fan. There are plenty of families that can afford to feed their children, I don’t need to feed their children. I’m okay with my taxes helping feed the kids whose families are struggling. I’d much rather my taxes went to providing a quality education than to feeding the children of families that don’t need assistance. NOTE: If your argument is you don’t want those getting aid to “feel bad” or “feel different”, get over it. They use a debit card that is unrecognizable from any other.
This.
He wasn’t even born on 5th Ave. He’s Bridge and Tunnel.
Exactly – Queens.
It’s been a lifelong issue for him.
Because he’s never been accepted by Manhattan.
The same dipshits that cry “communism bad!” and vote for Trump will gladly accept their farm subsidy check.
…and root for Putin, because Trump’s in bed with him.
Currently my 3500 only moves if needed to haul or tow something. But, that has been mostly true since purchase. I’m not going to daily drive a 1 ton truck. All our vehicles have a purpose. The truck’s is to haul heavy stuff and tow heavy stuff.
(And, fun is a purpose…..see Miatas and Vettes)
The US was so short sighted. Rail investment years ago would have paid off huge.
Last mile for electric or diesel trucks. But no, we wanted “just in time” everything. There should be no need for goods like toilet paper, diapers, etc to be shipped thousands of miles by semi truck. Yet here we are……
I think it’s too late for rail or any serious civil infrastructure on a national scale, the interstate highway system was built decades ago but something like that could never be built today. There is too much red tape and special interests.
Electric for local delivery is definitely possible as battery prices fall and diesel prices are high.
If you’re a diesel user, how are you handling the rise in prices? Do you see an end in sight?
Just dealing with it for now. I should be riding the motorcycle more often, but the needs of my job have made that a bit tough lately.
Hopefully the midterms are the beginning of the end..
The US uses diesel trucks to move 70% of freight because it has historically been cheap and fast. High prices due to market changes will, and should, drive alternatives.
Trains are the most efficient way to move goods over land. Yes, it’s a bit slower, and there is the last-mile problem, but a truck driving a mile uses less fuel than a truck driving 1000 miles.
As a trucker, I agree. More trains. But the big problem with trains is we need more tracks. And everyone says not in my back yard
Good point.
Seeing as how a lack of oversight and regulation, combined with full corporate value-extraction from rail infrastructure, has led to trains full of toxic chemicals blowing up in the middle of cities, NIMBY is a bit understandable.
It’s almost like we need some adults in the room to help craft a long-term healthy transportation policy, investments, and oversight.
Deregulation sure screwed everything up. Worst part, that was a bipartisan effort
Funny how people saying “not in my backyard” doesn’t seem to affect the construction of data centers very much, but when it’s something that will actually be of at least some actual, tangible benefit, suddenly they want to listen to the people’s wishes
As someone who lives in an area that they’re proposing for a high speed rail network, I can confirm that’s what the neighbours are saying.
Personally, IDGAF. Give me market value for my house and save me the sales process, I’ll move. I want that high speed rail!
Rail is running close to capacity right now.
Lay more track maybe?
That’s really hard, between buying land, environmental studies and newer construction requirements laying new track in new areas is borderline impossible.
Man, with Russia and the Middle East down as sources of fuel, it’s a good thing the US administration isn’t picking another fight with a local country that supplies them with a large amount of crude oil!
Chaos is the point.
You mean the country that also supplies most of our canola oil, in case we wanted to substitute biodiesel for fossil?
No, I mean the country that supplies Potash to make fertilizer for those farmers whose fuel bill doubled this season.
Oh good, at least it’s not the country on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz that supplies a lot of the world’s ammonia, or the country that used to buy a bunch of our soy and meat, or the country that used to help us keep screwworm south of the border, or the country that…
The US administration is heavily invested in oil and gas companies. This is ALL by design. Nobody in the administration really personally cares or cared about Iran and their supposed nuclear ambitions. It’s all about their own personal investments.
Perhaps Canada can put 100% export tariffs on oil to the US, as a fun twist to the trade war?
For those who can see that this Administration has only two-and-a-half years left, it would be extremely foolish to torch the bridge with our rather more permanent geographic neighbour in such a fashion.
Unfortunately, this country is filled with such spiteful short-term thinking, but at least the PM has a somewhat greater sense of vision.
Though probably also a quick way to destroy Alberta’s economy and supercharge their secession debate, which would be a likely undesired side effect
I went back in time and sold my diesel truck two years ago. 😉
Depends what happens in November.
If adults are back in charge, then eventually (this won’t be resolved overnight though, regardless of what happens).
If not, then no.
Let me guess who those two groups largely voted for… hmmm, who could it be?
Sad truth is farmers and truckers have no representation. Both parties cou I ld care less about us. But the big business breaks republicans give also profit us. As for the democrats? One name Jimmy Carter. We still feel his impact
I’ll believe this is true when ethanol mandates are phased out.
That was life support to keep farmers farming. A strategic reserve so to speak. Or should we import all our food from South America and hope some fool doesn’t piss them off?
The US has some of the richest farmland in the world and a large domestic market for crops.
Are you suggesting that without “life support” in the form of mandates to burn our food in our gas tanks, no crops would be grown on this land?
Lol rich farmland. Ya wanna know why our farmland survives? Alfalfa. Without it, our soil would be dead
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I live in rural Indiana. I’m surrounded by farmers. We have record corn and soybean yields and alfalfa is non-existent.
There. But that is the breadbasket. A small percentage of the farmland. And soybeans can grow there exelent, and fixes nitrogen. So no need for alfalfa. But out west, it is different. Look up where all your fresh winter veggies come from
OK, so if this is a breadbasket, how is that different from “rich soil”?
Also, where is the vast majority of the corn for ethanol production grown? Inside or outside of the “bread basket”?
I haven’t brought up vegetables, alfalfa, or the Western US. Those are irrelevant to the point I’m making and that you are arguing against.
It’s all interconnected. One region supports the other. Corn is profitable to make up for the smaller profit margins of rotatiin crops. Veggies are grown down south to allow cow feed up north. And soil varies dramatically everywhere. Not to mention growing seasons.
Not relevant to ethanol production, but I think the point about alfalfa is that the corn yields we have today require large amounts of nitrogen fertilizers.
Those are made using large amounts of natural gas both as an energy source and source of hydrogen to make ammonia (NH_3). Alfalfa and soybeans are nitrogen fixing so can reduce (but not eliminate) the need for fertilizers.
Twain
Now now. Everyone else is using facts and numbers to refute my statements, but not you. Instead you use a vulgar euphemism for a woman’s vagina to insult me. Unfortunately for you, being compared to a woman’s vagina isn’t an insult. Vaginas are incredibly tough and a vital part of giving birth. However, the way you use it sounds like something a misogynistic pig says.
67% of US crops are fed to animals. Ethanol mandates didn’t get farmers growing crops for food. It expanded farming into marginal areas and converted more acres to corn from other crops.
Yup. To make money.
Yes, to make money, not feed people and the crop they are making money growing is not economically viable without mandates and subsidies.
The simple fact is that much of the farm land out here in the west should not be farmed and could not be farmed without handouts from the US taxpayer.
Remind me how much California agriculture contributes to the US food table, and for export? A pretty big percentage of the total.
If they keep adding ethanol, eventually we’re gonna need fuel/water separators on the gas engines too!
Highly subsidized crop insurance, commodity support programs, targeted disaster relief, government backed loans…
Yeah, groups with no representation totally get all of these benefits. /s
And yet, small family farms fail right and left, gobbled up by giant foreign landfunia. Those programs are severely out of date, and only get granted to said landfundia. And those programs were put in place by Republicans, back when the old men still farming were young. So yes, they are loyal, even when the party abandoned them
The median household income of a farmer is roughly $108k, which is significantly higher than the national median of roughly $82k.
Sure, some farmers are struggling. But the idea that the segment as a whole is a bunch of poor old down-on-their-luck versions of Paul Harvey’s God Made a Farmer is just a load of bologna.
The average is screwed up. Most are hand to mouth. Reality is, a few landfundia billionaires hold all the wealth
Median.
So a full half are under that. That is a lot of farmers
And are still better off than most American families.
Farms are full of shit.
https://youtu.be/CwogYy7LFoE?si=WhG-NS-Rd6arbp9v
Only $108k for 70hrs a week, 52 weeks a year? Damn. No wonder no one wants to be a farmer
Some farmers are making tens of millions a year. It’s not too many of them. The statistics don’t include the farmers that were forced out, or have some other real job so they can keep their farm.
I was tempted to take over the farm, it’s a great life, albeit different than working in NYC nightclubs and the art biz broadly speaking. The art biz has remarkably similar economics to the farm biz. Most farmers and artists are choosing essentially lifestyle careers.
Scott Bessent, soybean farmer
It is perhaps not that efficient, but efficient is the opposite of safe. Maintaining excess capacity is a good thing. There are numerous examples of single years that doom societies.
The ethanol thing is flat out stupid, Also, a cheap food policy has all sorts of negative consequences. It pretty much forces economies of scale, monocultures, waste, and an end to farming as a culture. The USA has a cheap food policy but most of the cost is in distribution.
I once st in on a conversation with an executive at Heinz who said that the glass bottle (this was in the 1970s) cost about 5 times as much as the ketchup,, the paper label cost about five times as much as the bottle, all of which was dwarfed by the cost of shipping. The cost of tomatoes, ie the farmers share was less than one percent, and of course the farmers were barely making a profit. We got out of tomato farming when the cost of a UC-Blackwelder tomato harvester was 25,000 but you needed at least three, plus a shop and staff to maintain them, something to keep the mechanics busy the other 45 week a year. It goes on and on.
Anyway, policies that favor capital intensive farming need subsidies because otherwise it’s too risky. Allowing ag companies to use copyright law to cost farmers money is icing on the cake.
The crazy thing is that the current administration does everything it can to screw farmers, and they love him.
But…the caucuses!
Do you think that if Jimmy hadn’t cut off agricultural exports to Russia, that we’d be in better shape now?
Follow up: Do you think that the current administration would HELP that situation, seeing as they’ve pretty much made every part of it worse (higher fuel costs, out of control inflation, huge wealth inequality)?