Small fleet owner Wes Oberman and a myriad other member companies of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies have been getting an up-close-and-personal advance look at daily fuel-cost run-ups as diesel traders and wholesale fuel buyers react to fast-moving oil-market fundamentals with war in the Middle East.
When Overdrive Executive Editor Alex Lockie's Tuesday report quoted a wholesale rack-price watcher noting a whopping 80-cent/gallon hike over just two days, evidence of retail rippling was no doubt already clear to owner-operators.
Here in my home city of Nashville, Tennessee, the Love's on Trinity Lane at I-65 advertised a $4.24 credit price. Two days later, it's added a few more dimes/gal.
Wes Oberman, our 2025 Small Fleet Champ in the 3-10-truck division as Oberman Logistics, could see it all coming day-by-day.
As with other NASTC members utilizing the association's Quality Plus Network for discounted fuel purchasing, Oberman and the owner-ops leased to his fleet are recipients of NASTC's Daily Fuel Hedge alerts, delivered in the morning and forecasting in-network diesel price changes for the following day. The system works much like the analyst Lockie quoted -- monitoring wholesale-rack prices, NASTC's able to forecast for network members the following day's price at the point of final sale.
[Related: NASTC's 'Daily Fuel Hedge' and discount program]
Monday, Oberman noted, the NASTC Hedge email predicted an 11-cent hike coming in the network Tuesday, when prices at the Love's shown above would sit at $4.24 credit, $4.18 cash.
Tuesday's email said an even-bigger 24 cent/gal. hike was coming the next morning, according to Oberman, with another 18.8 cents predicted Wednesday morning for today (Thursday), as shown below.
For those of you doing the math, that's a grand total of 54 cents/gal in just three days, an additional 7-8 cents/mile in added costs for the average owner-operator (based on ATBS clients' 7 mpg fuel-efficiency average). Easy enough to do the math based on your own efficiency numbers.
Quick cost run-ups like these are never welcomed by trucking business owners, and come just as owner-ops were benefiting from increasing spot freight market strength. Oberman himself, when we talked Wednesday, was right out of the gate noting just how busy he and owner-operators leased to company were with a surge of flatbed business the first months of the year.
Surge for rates, too, with segment-to-segment variation in the most recent week. We're certainly in a different place than we were five months ago, and numbers bear that out.
Even with the fuel hikes we've seen so far this week, for an average owner-operator whose fixed costs haven't risen substantially the first months this year, rates as of this very moment are likely beating out the hike in fuel, delivering a measure of better profits compared to late-November/early December and farther back in 2025.
The table below games it out, utilizing average dry van rates and average variable costs (adjusting for fluctuations in fuel) at three different points in recent history, with a Dallas-to-Chicago 950-mile run's basics compared in Overdrive's Load Profit Analyzer calculator. Fixed costs are the same in each example, based on the most recent ATBS client averages we have ($262/day; keep tuned for a new update this month with more recent numbers). Variable costs adjust in each example only for fuel prices, using that 7-mpg average figure for mileage.
Good news for this very moment?
Bad news is today's Hedge e-mail, Wes Oberman noted, forecast a 13-cent/gal. hike for Friday. Another 20-30 cents/gal. in fuel hikes and we'll be back to where we were before the Thanksgiving holiday on the profit front, if rates don't quickly rise in tandem.
Keep a close eye on fuel in the coming days and weeks; if you're in NASTC's network, you've got a great tool to account for immediate future increases when spot-negotiating for freight. Use that data to illustrate cost pressures to brokers, and be willing to insist on rates that deliver the profit you expect.
Related reading:
- Trucking 101: Understanding fuel surcharges
- Master negotiation's fine art to stop settling for low rates
- Overdrive's Load Profit Analyzer: How to use to assess rates, costs
- 'Fill up your tanks as soon as possible': Diesel could hit $4.50/gal. average after Iran strikes
- Spot market's recent strength solidifies after tariff ruling
