City Harvest runs 23 trucks that carry rescued food to soup kitchens and pantries across New York City. This fall its chief executive, Jilly Stephens, told PBS News what the fuel bill is doing to that work: "Those costs are about 15 percent higher than they were last year. And we estimate that that could add about $100,000 to our budget that we weren't expecting to pay."
That is $100,000 meant for moving food to hungry people, now going into fuel tanks.
Record diesel prices work like a tax on working families, and those families did nothing to cause them. Any relief from Washington should go first to the households, food banks, farms and small fleets paying that tax, not to an oil industry that has already shown it can bend the White House's plans. Lawmakers should also be asking who is making money from the spike.
A shock made far from home
The national average for diesel hit a record $6.53 a gallon on Tuesday, 77% higher than a year earlier, according to AAA data reported by CBS News. The causes are global. Bob McNally of Rapidan Energy told PBS that the war with Iran disrupted Gulf supply first. Russia then banned diesel exports in July, after Ukrainian strikes on its refineries.
GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan told CBS that Russia normally produces about one in nine barrels of diesel worldwide. It is now supplying effectively none to the market.
No farmer in Iowa, trucker in California or food pantry in New York made any of those decisions.
Where the cost lands
Diesel runs tractors, trucks, trains, construction equipment and, as heating oil, home furnaces. McNally told PBS News the fuel is an inflation risk the Federal Reserve watches, and described the spike this way: "It's a sudden, sharp, unavoidable tax increase you have no choice but to pay."
Follow that tax down the line. John Boyd, founder of the National Black Farmers Association, said his cost at the pump is up roughly 50% while the market pays $5 a bushel. "I'm robbing Peter to pay Paul because I don't have the money. And I'm letting some other bills go, trying to put diesel fuel in my combine," he said.
Illinois farmer Steve Turner said farm budgets written in January had nothing set aside for this, and that farms commonly use 10,000 to 20,000 gallons of diesel. "Even if this could all end tomorrow, which it won't, it's going to take time to recover," he said.
Then the bill reaches customers. Morgan Sanshuck, owner of The Boyz Rentals in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, said her company's operating costs had more than doubled. "But effective Sunday, we're having to raise prices. We were forced into it. We were losing money uncontrollably," she said.
Tim Pollock, president of the California Trucking Association, said fuel surcharges fall short: "It doesn't make up all the fuel, especially when it's astronomically high like it is." Whatever small fleets and small businesses cannot absorb, they pass on. Our earlier reporting traced how the spike ripples from farms and freight to household budgets.
The ban that could hurt the people it promises to help
Some farm-state Republicans and MAGA populists want to keep American diesel at home. Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee introduced two bills on Sept. 17: one would ban exports through January 2027, and the other would trigger a ban whenever the national average reaches $5 a gallon. President Donald Trump, who PBS reports long denied he would consider a ban, told the New York Times: "I've called for it within my people. I've been talking about it."
The case for a ban deserves a fair hearing. De Haan told CBS the country produces about 5.3 million barrels a day of distillate fuels and uses about 3.6 million. Why ship fuel abroad while farmers here fall behind on bills? The anger behind that question is legitimate.
But diesel is priced on a world market. McNally said a ban might cut prices by many dimes a gallon for a few weeks in Texas, Louisiana and perhaps the Lower Midwest. Then refiners would trim output, world prices would soar, and regions that rely on imported prices, such as the Northeast and Alaska, would pay more. "They only work for a very short period of time. Then you're worse off afterwards," he said.
Free newsletter
Get the morning briefing
Start each day with the stories that matter and why — a short, free email from our newsroom.
De Haan was blunter: "Refineries are just going to try and get around it — they have a business to run." Tracy Shuchart of Hilltower Resource Advisors said foreign buyers would likely sign deals with other suppliers. Heading into heating season, a showy ban could raise costs for the very households it claims to protect.
Who got a seat at the table
Politico reported Wednesday that the White House was preparing a 90-day export ban, while oil industry representatives and some GOP lawmakers fought to stop it. By Thursday, after heavy industry protest, Energy Secretary Chris Wright was asking companies to curb exports voluntarily. On Friday, Politico reported the White House was weighing moves short of a ban, with no final decision.
The economists may be right about the ban. But the industry made its case with access that food banks and small farms do not have. Refiners are selling into a global market paying record prices, and the public deserves to know what that is doing to their margins.
The fix, and who controls it
The relief should follow the people carrying the cost:
- The White House can extend the Jones Act waiver, which lets fuel move between U.S. ports on foreign ships and expires Nov. 15, and push diplomacy in the Gulf. "Aside from that, the only thing that the administration really can do is get the Strait reopened," De Haan said.
- Congress can direct money to heating aid for households and fuel help for food-rescue groups, small farms and small fleets, instead of symbolic bans.
- Congress can also call refiners to testify about their margins during the spike, in public.
Boyd summed up who is paying now: "But we're the guys, the first in line that are paying for this administration's mistakes." Trump, Wright and Congress hold the tools to change that.