With only two months remaining in the year, it’s clear that diesel's volatile swings will be one of 2026's biggest stories.
Beginning in March, diesel prices skyrocketed to above $5 per gallon following the onset of conflict between the U.S. and Iran. After some mid-summer declines in prices at the pump, prices shot up again late in the summer to a new record high of $6.53/gallon.
That volatility is likely here to stay, at least for the early parts of 2027, according to a panel of experts speaking last week at the Wex OTR Summit at the Marriott Sawgrass Golf Resort & Spa in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.
Denton Cinquegrana, Director of Energy Research at Dow Jones Energy, said crude oil market futures for 2027 remain near $90/barrel for WTI and over $100/barrel for Brent crude.
“That’s the market telling us it’s going to take a long time for this to play out,” he said. “If we snap our fingers and the war is over tomorrow, it’s going to take some time, probably the better part of three months, to put ships back in place, fix any damage, and de-mine the Strait [of Hormuz]. [Iran] has said the Strait is mined and others have said it’s not. Well, we’re going to have to find out one way or another.”
Cinquegrana added that demand for diesel will remain high “because the economy runs on it,” whereas airlines can control jet fuel demand by decreasing the number of flights, and consumers, to a lesser extent, can control gasoline demand by cutting out non-essential driving.
Because of those factors, pump prices aren’t likely to go down much in the near term for truckers.
“We could say this is over tomorrow and it’s still going to take several months,” Cinquegrana said. “Not only that, you’re going to need commercial and strategic reserves filled up from a crude oil perspective, and product inventories here in the U.S. and globally will need to be filled, too. That’s going to keep a floor under demand for the foreseeable future. So, I’m not necessarily sure prices decline or normalize over the next few months.”
That “normalization” Cinquegrana alludes to, he said, would be somewhere in the $4/gallon range, compared to the $6.35/gal. national average reported by the Energy Information Administration last week.
Chuck Ryan, president and CEO of the Ambest travel center network, echoed Cinquegrana, noting that if oil prices “dropped today, that does not mean [diesel’s] price will go down. In fact, I think we will have this problem for the next several months, whether the wars end or not.”
Domestic refining capacity is another issue keeping prices high. The last new refinery built in the United States was in 1977, and in 1980, there were more than 300 refineries operating in the U.S. Today, there are only 128 in operation. Some are larger than they used to be, but overall refining capacity is down 60% while the U.S.’ population has grown 60% over that period.
Additionally, the refineries that are still operating have been doing so at 95% capacity throughout the summer, “which is hard to do,” Cinquegrana noted. “In the time when you needed near perfection, they pretty much got it.”
Ryan added that he thinks “the refineries are doing a magnificent job, but operating them at above 95% is almost dangerous because they don’t have time to maintain them. If one of those goes down in a hot shutdown, it could impact a significant portion of the product we have available today.”
Cinquegrana and Ryan also both felt that there’s not much that can be done to help ease prices at the pump, including the allowance of red-dyed diesel for on-highway use and releasing heating oil from the heating oil reserves.
“These are Band-Aids on a shotgun wound,” Cinquegrana said. “…At the end of the day, nothing is going to fix this other than the free flow of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Russian refineries returning to near capacity, and turnaround season getting through.”
He added that there are just “very few levers you can pull.” Cutting fuel taxes, he noted, is “just kicking the can down the road, and then the roads get even worse. … The only variable that would help is time. It’s going to take time to get back to what would be considered normal.”
Ryan said U.S. policymakers “fail to put together a cohesive energy policy. We haven’t had one in this country for more than 30 years, and policies change.”
“The plan now is, if you’re a major oil company, do I build a refinery, if I could even get a permit?” Ryan added. “Because four years from now, or two years from now, we could be anti-oil again. It’s a challenging situation, and the complexities are many.”
[Related: Diesel rising again: New tools for MPG-investment ROI, IFTA tracking, reporting]
What trucking companies need to know about fuel pricing
“Where you buy your fuel matters,” said Meghann Erhart, Chief Commercial Officer for Maverik, Inc.
Whether it’s the retailer buying fuel from the producer, or the consumer buying fuel from the retailer, Erhart said many factors play into the price of fuel, including taxes.
When trucking companies are looking at a fuel discount through any number of fuel card providers, Erhart said it’s important to look past the size of the discount and to look at the true net price.
She alluded to a conversation her company had with a fleet customer after Maverik had observed a big decline in business. The fleet told them they found a bigger discount with another provider, but after looking past that, the price of fuel was still lower with Maverik, even if the discount wasn’t as high. “But they got excited about the very high discount,” she said, but “they didn’t realize the actual price of the fuel was so much higher than what they could have gotten.”
For owner-operators and truck drivers in general, there’s also value at a fuel stop beyond the pump price. Rob Nordlander, head of B2B commercial sales at Circle K, said a “sale isn’t just transacting a dollar,” adding that “there are other ways a merchant provides value outside of price.” Namely, how drivers are being taken care of, how long a stop takes, whether everything works as it should during a stop.
“If a driver reports back that they went to a station and people aren’t friendly, or the bathroom’s not clean, or the pumps don’t work, or their transactions don’t go through, that’s a place they’re not going to go to,” Nordlander added.
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