US diesel hits record $5.90 a gallon, up 30 cents in a week on refinery damage
Diesel is the number that matters for anyone hauling freight this week. The US average hit a record $5.90 a gallon Monday, AAA said, about 30 cents above the week-earlier level, after damage to Gulf refineries in the war against Iran cut supply. US officials have also linked part of the surge to strikes on Russian refineries.
Surcharge math
A 30-cent move in seven days runs straight through every mileage-based fuel surcharge. At 6 miles per gallon, 30 cents a gallon is a nickel a mile more that shippers owe carriers, and carriers owe their own fuel haulers on top of that. Surcharge tables reset weekly off the DOE average, so the pain lands with a lag, and carriers on stale tables are eating the gap right now.
Bunker squeeze
The diesel scramble is starving the marine fuel market. Refiners are running barrels toward diesel and away from fuel oil, and Energy Aspects sees a shipping-fuel shortage of about 218,000 barrels a day this quarter, per Reuters. That would be the first bunker shortage since 2025, when the gap was just 6,000 barrels a day. Asia looks set to take the worst of it. For US jobbers the read-through is simple: as long as diesel cracks pay refiners more than fuel oil, the diesel pull stays on and pump prices stay firm.
Hormuz and Qatar
Six empty LNG carriers are heading toward Qatar, which Bloomberg reads off Kpler tracking data as a sign QatarEnergy may be about to restart loadings through the Strait of Hormuz. Goldman Sachs warned crude could reach $120 a barrel as shipping risk climbs around the strait. That price talk is the crude side of the diesel problem: haulers do not buy Brent, but every dollar on the barrel feeds the rack a few weeks later. If tanker traffic through Hormuz normalizes, some of the war premium could ease.
What to watch
Next Monday's AAA and DOE prints tell you whether $5.90 was a spike or a floor. Watch the diesel crack spread, because that is what keeps refiners pulling barrels away from bunkers and toward the pump. Watch Hormuz tanker counts and whether Qatari loadings actually resume, not just the empty ships pointed that way. And watch your own surcharge tables against the DOE number. Carriers running a fixed peg or a slow weekly reset are the ones absorbing the move while the tables catch up.