We're back in a moment that feels a bit like those first few weeks of March with fuel turmoil all around the world. After snapping the shot at my local Love's that ran with Matt Cole's reporting yesterday ($6-plus national average diesel, the second record high in as many weeks), I checked back in with 2025 Overdrive Small Fleet Champ Wes Oberman.
What's the National Association of Small Trucking Companies' daily fuel hedge say about tomorrow? I asked him about expected price increases for Wednesday.
His answer: Just a 1.1-cent hike in the average price in NASTC's cost-plus "Quality Plus Network" fuel program for volume discounts. The association's been sending out those daily updates to members for well more than a decade now, and the practice has caught on all around trucking. You probably have access to similar advance warning of price hikes you can use to hedge purchases via your own fuel networks/card providers.
The Oberman Logistics owner took heart in that small increase, yet speaking Tuesday also delivered an expectation for the worst with news of attacks on oil infrastructure and in shipping lanes around the Mideast and elsewhere: "I think tomorrow will be the big hit," he said, and not big hit in a good way.
Turns out he was right.
Keep in mind when negotiating with brokers: The nearly 32-cent increase coming to that network Thursday, September 17, ought to be worth a 5-cent-or-so rate increase for any owner-op at 6 mpg.
Oberman was upbeat about rates for his mostly flatbed fleet, now up to his self-imposed cap of 16 owner-operators leased this year, he noted yesterday. "Rates are keeping up," he said, yet noted it was getting to be more of a kind of fight to make it so.
"Brokers are really trying to keep rates down," he said of negotiations of late.
You can see those dynamics in average spot rates through this most recent period of diesel-cost run-up, during which reefer rates have followed fuel up, unlike flatbed rates.
I turned back to Overdrive's Load Profit Analyzer tool for a snapshot of profit potential with the cost run-up on our bellwether, 950-mile hypothetical Dallas to Chicago reefer run, adjusting costs to account for national average fuel last week, likewise average rates. Even with the cost run-up, reefer profit potential continues up, however slightly. Using the same average costs for flatbeds for the most recent week, you can see profits diminished by comparison.
[Related: Overdrive's Load Profit Analyzer: Ways to assess rates, costs]
An additional 30-some cents/gal. in diesel today and tomorrow, without corresponding 4-5-cent rates hikes, will shave that much more off the profit potential.
Here's hope that we don't in fact see the $8-$10/gal. national average pricing analysts have said could be the result if chaotic dynamics around the world don't change, and quickly. If we do, keep the surcharges, rates firmness coming and make bank if you can.
Small Fleet Champ Wes Oberman honored as Innovator
For the record, our aforementioned 2025 Small Fleet Champ Wes Oberman is in the running for our sister fleet-management-focused publication CCJ's annual Innovator of the Year award.
Also for the record, he's not the first SFC so honored. Our other 2025 champ for the larger-size division, North Carolina-headquartered furniture-haul specialists Thomasville Furniture Xpress, is also in the running. Earlier in the year, CCJ editor and regular Overdrive contributor Jason Cannon profiled TFX's in-house work on its Transportation Management Software system to satisfy their particularly complicated needs as an LTL carrier.
I also told parts of that story in my TFX feature profile prior to the company's big win, the story updated at this link.
[Related: Never mind the rates: Small Fleet Champ TFX 'finding ways to be more efficient']
Regular readers will recall the subject of Wes Oberman's Innovator honor, too: His own growing all-owner-operated fleet's TMS, built not with a software engineer assisting but a different kind of help. Oberman utilized AI programs ChatGPT and Claude Code, with other services for functionality.
Tip of the hat to my CCJ colleague Angel Coker Jones for really digging in on the detail of just what Oberman did to, ultimately, save a boatload of time in the back office for himself, Laura his wife and business partner, and the former driver/current dispatcher all now in the Oberman back office as the company grows.
