The 3:2:1 crack spread is 61.9, its widest in a month

Crude fell much faster than the fuel it makes. WTI is 71.41, down 20.7% over 30 days, only 7 percent off the bottom of its 30-day range. Diesel is down 12.1% and gasoline 8.6% over the same stretch. That gap between crude and product is what widened the spread. The 3:2:1 crack spread is 61.9 now, up 14.28 in a month. A refiner buying crude and selling product is earning a good margin right now, wider than it has been in weeks.

The street looks different. The diesel retail-to-wholesale spread is 1.28 a gallon, down 33 cents over 30 days. Wholesale diesel has held up better than the pump, so the margin between what a marketer pays at the rack and what the truck stop charges is thinner than it was a month ago. Rack diesel is 4.578, still at the 51 percent mark of its range even after crude dropped by a fifth. Wholesale diesel held its value while crude fell, so the street spread tightened while the refiner spread widened. The barrel got cheap, the finished gallon did not follow it down as far.

For a jobber or a hauler, the read is straightforward. Your product cost has not eased as much as the headline crude number suggests, and your resale margin on diesel has given back about a third of a dollar since June. Gasoline held up better, down 8.6% to 3.911, sitting mid-range at 58 percent.

If crude stays this close to its floor, wholesale product could drift down to meet it over the next week or two, which may hand some of that street margin back. The rack is the number to watch.