Diesel just broke the record

The US average hit $5.98 a gallon on September 10, up about $2.31 since late February. In California it is $7.91.

You pay without pumping

Diesel moves the trucks and ships carrying milk, lumber and everything else. That cost is baked into shelf prices long before you notice it.

A closed strait did this

The war with Iran has largely shut the Strait of Hormuz, which once carried 10 percent of seaborne diesel. Supply vanished and prices climbed.

The lag before the grocery store

Freight contracts and retailer margins soak up the first hit. Then contracts reprice and fuel surcharges kick in, and shoppers feel it.

“But as contracts reprice and fuel surcharges take hold, more of that cost makes its way to the grocery store.”

$46 billion, $350 a household

A Brown University tracker puts the added consumer cost at $46 billion. Diesel jumped 61 percent, outpacing gasoline's 41 percent.

No slack left anywhere

Ukraine keeps hitting Russian refineries, Russia has stopped supplying the global market, and US refineries are already maxed out. Inventories are the lowest since 1982.

“Russia is no longer supplying the global market.”

Winter is the next hit

Heating oil is essentially diesel, so millions of households face record bills. The Trump administration has threatened to kill the aid program that helps them pay.

“Families are getting hit by both gasoline and heating oil.”

Relief comes slowly

Even if both wars ended tomorrow, flows have to normalize and inventories have to rebuild before pump prices fall. That takes weeks or months.

“Only after inventories have recovered do diesel prices really see a full decline.”