Diesel at $6.53: The Oklahoma Rancher Paying $1,400 More a Week to Keep the Machines Running
Scott Belden, a third-generation cattle rancher in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, does not have a fuel problem he can dodge. Every machine on his place burns diesel, and the price of it has roughly doubled in a year. He told ABC News in mid-October that he is now paying $1,000 to $1,400 more per week than he used to, and that this is "probably the most stressful time in my life." His logic is simple: "If I want to continue to operate, I'm going to buy diesel. No matter what the price is, I'm going to buy diesel." Belden calls diesel the lifeblood of the country — everything people eat, consume and wear arrives on a diesel-powered truck. "Middle of America is hurting," he warned.
AAA put the national average for diesel at a record $6.53 a gallon in late September, up from about $3.76 before the spring's war with Iran — an increase of roughly 75 percent year over year. Diesel is different in kind, not just degree: a truck moving grain has no substitute fuel, so demand barely flexes.
Oklahoma has fared slightly better than the nation and still hurts. AAA Oklahoma reported a statewide diesel average of $5.87 a gallon in mid-September, against about $3.27 a year ago, with Tulsa at $5.95, Vinita at $5.89 and one Afton station at $5.99. The Oklahoma Farm Bureau and local columnists noted off-road farm diesel near $5.66 a gallon; a family running several pieces of equipment through a field burns 750 to 800 gallons a day, which is more than $4,000 a day in fuel alone. One farmer described paying about $6 a gallon to fill a 2,000-gallon farm tank, and roughly $180 for a 30-gallon pickup fill.
Oklahoma acted before Washington did. On Sept. 28, Gov. Kevin Stitt directed the state Tax Commission, Department of Public Safety and Corporation Commission to pause enforcement of taxes, regulations and fines covering red-dyed diesel, in farm vehicles for 120 days, and told the Tax Commission to seek Dyed Diesel Fuel Penalty Relief from the IRS. "Oklahoma feeds the world; however, our farmers and ranchers are facing unprecedented challenges as we head into harvest season," Stitt said, adding that as their costs rise, so do grocery prices. Nebraska and Texas moved similarly.
On Oct. 5, President Trump signed an executive order letting any driver, truckers included, run tax-free dyed diesel on public highways. It defers the 24.4-cent-per-gallon federal diesel excise tax through the end of 2026 with no interest or penalties, and directs Treasury to explore wiping the deferred bill out. The administration estimates truckers save more than $100 per refill; Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the order should amount to roughly $640 million in combined federal and state savings across about 224.6 million harvested acres.
Gregg Ibendahl, a farm management specialist at Kansas State University Extension, is skeptical of the farm-side benefit. Most diesel used by grain farmers is already exempt from the federal fuel tax, he notes, so the real savings sit in hauling grain to the elevator — on the order of $100 over the whole window for a strictly grain operation. "The real benefits from this are going to be truckers," he said. He describes producers as treading water, with budgets already blown past.
Travis Roach, an economics professor at the University of Central Oklahoma, put the national bill in perspective: the U.S. burns about 143 million gallons of diesel a day, so the roughly $2-per-gallon add-on tied to the Iran war means some $300 million a day in extra spending. "It comes from profitability or it gets put into prices, which means it comes from our pocketbooks," he said. AAA Oklahoma points to volatile global crude markets and geopolitical conflict. Ibendahl adds two slower-moving constraints: years of limited U.S. refining capacity, and shipping disruption around the Strait of Hormuz plus the Russia-Ukraine war. Diesel tends to move about 42 cents for every $1 move in crude.
The cost travels down the chain. Freight rates rise, and the grocery items most exposed are those that need fuel-intensive refrigerated trucking — produce, dairy and meat. Analysts told Reuters that retailers may absorb some of it at first, or wait for older freight contracts to expire before fuel surcharges land, so the shelf-price effect will lag. Inflation in the U.S. has already been pushed to 3.7 percent.
Here is the twist: beef is expensive. Uncooked ground beef hit $7.16 a pound in August 2026, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the national cattle herd the smallest in 75 years. That has not saved ranchers. With diesel above $6, livestock hauling costs have risen by about $1.50 a mile, and auction prices have been pushed down by roughly $300 to $600 a head.
Ibendahl's outlook is sober. Under favorable conditions, it could take about a year for diesel markets to return to pre-spring levels; if conflicts and supply interruptions persist, $6 to $7 a gallon may hold into 2027 or longer. "If none of those things happen," he said, "$6 diesel fuel — that could be the name of the game from here on out."