Truckers thought the worst was over. Then diesel prices doubled

The rattling whir of a diesel generator fills a corner of the truck yard.

For JD & LA Trucking, it's the sound of business, the company's bread and butter (… and poultry, produce and other perishables): The generator keeps refrigerated containers at the proper temperature until they are loaded onto a semi-truck and sent back out on the road.

That sound, those goods and those miles cost significantly more these days. Diesel fuel has been setting nominal record highs – an aftereffect of rising global oil prices as well as a supply bottleneck from refineries damaged by the wars in Ukraine and Iran.

The trucking industry and the consumer-driven US economy have ridden out energy shocks before. But the timing of this one stings for both: Truckers are still trying to find their groove after their industry's post-pandemic downturn, while already inflation-weary Americans will likely have to swallow yet more price hikes.

"We've survived recessions, we've survived a bad economy, we survived Covid, and I want to believe we'll survive this as well," said Angel Diaz, co-owner of JD & LA Trucking.

Diaz owns the 30-year-old trucking firm with his brother, Jorge. They took over the family business in October 2021, when their father passed away.

They've got 20 trucks hauling goods (dry and perishable alike) from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles – the two largest and busiest in the US – to their clients' warehouses.

On a recent Monday, Angel Diaz drove past Los Angeles-area fuel stations where diesel was selling for $8.38 per gallon.

Earlier this year, he was paying just over $5 a gallon.

Efficiency is crucial in the shipping and logistics industry, and even more so now. The routes are mapped out to ensure that not a drop of fuel goes wasted; however, there comes a point when costs must be passed on to customers or operating is no longer economical, Diaz said.

The truck yards along the Port of LA seem far thinner than they once were, he said.

"That only tells me that people are going out of business; people are selling their trucks; people are deciding to call it quits just because things are getting so expensive," he said. "I really think there needs to be a quick resolution (to the diesel price hike) before more people decide to leave the industry, because if enough people leave, that's going to create supply chain shortages, something I don't think the economy can afford at all."

President Donald Trump earlier this week signed an executive order aimed at easing high diesel prices by directing the Internal Revenue Service to waive penalties on red-dyed diesel and instructing cabinet departments to encourage state agencies to waive taxes and limitations on the use of the fuel that's typically reserved for off-road use.