If it feels like diesel prices versus gas prices are moving at different speeds, you’re not imagining it. Gasoline is going up, but diesel is climbing faster. The difference is starting to show up in dollars at the pump.
The gap is getting hard to ignore
Right now, national averages from AAA put gasoline at about $4.16 a gallon. Diesel sits closer to $5.68. That spread is now well over a dollar and growing.
What really catches your eye, though, is how fast it happened. Over roughly the past month, gas went up about 79 cents. Diesel jumped closer to $1.29. Same stretch of time, very different pace.
Even in the short term, diesel keeps edging ahead. Weekly numbers from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show diesel posting bigger gains than gasoline. And if you’re watching prices in places like Arizona, you’ve seen it firsthand. Diesel there jumped nearly 50 cents in a single week. And when we drove over into California, we were flabbergasted to see diesel at one Love’s posting at more than $8 a gallon!
Why diesel is moving faster
Part of it comes down to where things stood before prices started climbing. Gasoline supplies were in decent shape. Diesel, not so much. When supply is already tight, it doesn’t take much to push prices higher.
Then you layer on global pressures. Diesel is traded more heavily on the world market than gasoline, so when shipping routes get shaky, diesel tends to react first. Trouble spots like the Strait of Hormuz matter here. If fuel can’t move smoothly, diesel feels it quickly.
There’s also the simple fact that diesel demand doesn’t let up. People might cut back on weekend driving when gas spikes. The economy doesn’t get that option. Freight still moves. Crops still get harvested. Construction keeps going. Diesel keeps getting burned.
And there’s a seasonal wrinkle many folks don’t think about. Heating oil and diesel come from the same family. A colder stretch pulls from that shared supply, leaving less cushion when prices start to rise.
Finally, refineries can’t just flip a switch and make more diesel overnight. It takes time to adjust output, and diesel is harder to ramp up than gasoline. When demand jumps, supply lags behind.
What it means when diesel jumps
Put it all together and you get what we’re seeing now. Diesel isn’t just higher. It’s moving up faster.
Diesel tends to act as an early signal for the rest of the economy. When it rises this quickly, it often points to higher costs working their way through the system.
Why RVers feel it even if they use gas
Even if your rig runs on gasoline, diesel still reaches into your wallet. It’s the fuel that moves goods across the country. When it spikes, shipping costs rise, and those costs show up in campground fees, groceries, parts, and just about everything else tied to travel. A friend of ours who is a mobile mechanic is now charging customers a mileage surcharge. His repair rigs burn diesel.
If you’re running a diesel pusher or a tow vehicle that drinks the stuff, the impact is more direct. Fill-ups hurt more, and they hurt sooner.
Diesel isn’t just another fuel price. When it rises this fast, it tends to pull everything else up with it.
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This is a tremendously accurate synopsis of the current market trends and the general juxtaposition of higher deisel prices in a strong economy. In a strong economy, farming and freight moving carry on…. and on and on, regardless the external geopolitical pressures.
Great report Russ n Tina. Very accurate, very balanced.
😎✌️
What drives me batty is the U.S. is a net exporter of petroleum products and imports practically nothing from the Middle East yet the prices rose for domestically sourced, refined and distributed fuel as if we were reliant on the Strait of Hormuz. I get it, producers can export to the highest bidder so we have to compete with the potential for export but the numbers shot up faster than I expected.
Unlike China, which I understand is restricting exports of any refined products from it’s shores, the U.S. is free market and will not interfere in our producers participating in the world market. Since China is also an Iranian ally, their ships can pass through the INTERNATIONAL WATERS of the Strait.
If the strait is not open by the end of the weekend, it will be time for Bridge and Power Plant Day to proceed. Iran’s power card in these negotiations is the strait, ours is pure power. They had a chance to open it fully…. so far, no love. Negotiations by other means is still negotiations.
An hour ago, we paid $125 for 20 gallons of diesel in Show Low, AZ. When we were here last December, we paid $70 for 20 gallons of diesel. Nearly double in only 5 months!
We all know who is responsible for this.
One single person. Unbelievable
You and Ron should get a room!
Biden, Obama, the whole Democrat Party?????
Actually, it goes back to Carter, then Regan, Clinton, both Bushes, but by far and away, Obama was the worst. He shipped a plane load filled with $6B U.S. dollars to the wretched regime in Iran, and turned a blind eye to everything they were doing. No one wanted to confront North Korea when they took a similar path that Iran is taking, and it is now estimated that No. Korea has a minimum of 50 nuclear warheads. Someone had to halt Iran and their world of terror.
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In the end, unfortunately, it will only slow Iran. In not too long a time they will be back.
I do agree that prior administrations from both parties, by being weak on terrorist nations, exacerbated the issue. Whether it was no response to Crimea emboldening Putin or Iran funding numerous terrorist groups in the region, it all builds and comes back to us multiplied long term when someone is bold enough to confront the building danger.
We do. It’s the regime who terrorizes the industry by shooting drones into non-combatant oil tankers. The same ones threatening to blow up vessels who refuse to be extorted into paying a toll in international waters.
In fact, it’s the same regime that seized the U.S. Embassy in 1979 triggering the Iranian Oil Embargo which limited gasoline purchases (at ridiculous prices) to ten gallons a trip regulated by using one’s odd/even license plate to determine what day they could try to buy.
None of us know what nuclear capability Iran had. My uncle was a full bird Colonel in the Pentagon. He could never talk details, but he told me once that if the American people knew all the “things” going on in the world they would never sleep at night.
I recently went to a talk about the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland (the Burning River). At the turn of the previous century, diesel was the primary fuel and gasoline was just a by-product that they dumped into the river.
I always get a kick out of how any article about fuel prices from nearly any news source always shows a sign from the very highest priced place they can find. As usual, trying to incite even more fear.
I’m not trying to say prices right now aren’t high, although not yet above what they were just a few years ago, but showing a station with mean or even median prices would be more in line with truth.
In my area gas is now in the $3.60’s. Diesel about a dollar more, but that’s on my Open Roads card…although that is also trucker pricing.
People in the western states would wait all night in line to get those prices. It’s been quite a few years since diesel routinely sold well below the price of gas.
Jet fuel is also in the distillates group with diesel and heating oil. For some reason, even with much higher prices, near misses and even accidental hits on the tarmack and runways, and jammed airports, more and more people choose to fly. 🤔
Thank you. I assumed that more refineries made gasoline than diesel fuel. I forgot everyone uses diesel. I guess my gasoline powered F-150 was a good choice after all.
Diesel was this high back in 2022. We were traveling the Rocky Mountain area and paid upwards of $5 a gallon.