Diesel Hits $5.13 — Spot Carriers Are Eating Every Cent
Diesel jumped 33.8 cents in a week. The fuel surcharge won't save you. Here's what the supply math actually means for owner-operators right now.
By Herman Armstrong
Spot rates don't come with a fuel hedge. Every cent of diesel's latest spike lands directly on you.
The DOE/EIA benchmark hit $5.134 a gallon Monday — up 33.8 cents in a single week and 55.6 cents over three weeks. That is not a blip. Matt Smith, lead energy analyst at Kpler, said tanker exports through the Strait of Hormuz had fallen to as few as ten ships over a three-day stretch. Russia banned its own diesel exports after refinery strikes. U.S. diesel stockpiles are at their lowest point in twenty years. Three separate supply hits landed at once, and the futures market has not finished pricing them in.
The surcharge doesn't cover you
Here's the part the industry quietly skips over: fuel surcharges were built to protect shippers and large contract carriers. They were not built for you.
Jason Miller, Eli Broad endowed professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University, said it plainly: "For freight priced on an all-in basis — e.g., most spot truckload rates — carriers end up absorbing much of the higher diesel prices by making less profit."
That's it. Contract shippers renegotiate. Spot carriers eat the difference. The mechanism the industry talks about like a safety net has a hole in it exactly the size of an owner-operator.
What operators are actually doing
Dean Croke, principal analyst at DAT iQ, says small carriers face outsized exposure because of the limits of fuel surcharge add-ons. A prolonged Hormuz shutdown hits them hardest — they don't have the cash reserves to absorb steeper operating costs while the market sorts itself out.
So drivers are making the math work the only way they can: slowing from 75 to 65 mph, cutting deadhead, hunting lighter loads. That speed drop saves roughly 8 to 9 cents per mile in fuel. That's not a strategy. That's a survival move.
The structural picture doesn't ease from here. U.S. refineries are already running near capacity, which means lower crude prices won't quickly translate to cheaper diesel at the pump. Diesel averaged $3.56 a gallon in January 2025. It's $5.13 now. The supply math that got us here hasn't changed.
Price every load like $5.13 is the floor — because right now, there is no structural reason it isn't.