Brent hits $94 as Hormuz traffic stalls, lifting diesel and fuel surcharges
Crude at $94 Brent is the number to watch this week for most haulers, because diesel rides crude and your fuel surcharge rides diesel. Transits through the Strait of Hormuz have been in single digits all week, and Trump's "Economic D-Day" campaign against Iran has piled a fat risk premium onto the barrel. Brent is creeping toward $100. When the barrel moves like that, the pump follows within days, and the surcharge line on your freight bills follows the pump.
How the surcharge resets
Most carrier and jobber surcharge tables peg to the EIA weekly on-highway diesel average, which resets every Monday. A crude run of this size takes a week or two to fully print at the rack and another cycle to show up in the surcharge peg, so the bill your customer sees next month reflects the barrel today. Carriers running fixed-rate contracts eat the gap in between. Spot haulers reprice faster and get hurt less.
For fuel haulers specifically, the squeeze is double. You are paying more for the diesel in your own tractor and financing a bigger wet load of product on every delivery, with the same net terms. Higher crude means more working capital tied up per truckload before you collect. Watch your credit line, not just your margin.
What is holding the barrel up
The premium here is fear, not a supply cut. VLCC freight rates are at very high levels and Asian LNG is $24 per MMBtu, both signs that the market is pricing the strait staying choked, not oil actually stopping. If Hormuz traffic normalizes, a chunk of that $94 could come back out fast, and diesel with it. If the campaign against Iran escalates instead, the premium stays or grows. Neither is called yet.
Biodiesel at sea
Sunoil ran a vessel on B100 this week, straight biodiesel, no petroleum blend. It is a marine trial, not a highway story, and it does not touch your on-road B5 to B20 economics. Worth a note only because feedstock demand for marine and mandate use competes with the RIN math that sets your blend spread. Queensland biofuel groups are also pushing Australia for a national ethanol and biodiesel mandate. That is a foreign domestic fight with no bearing on your rack price.
What to watch
Watch the Monday EIA diesel print and whether Hormuz transit counts climb back out of single digits. If the strait reopens, diesel could ease and give surcharge tables room to fall. If it stays choked, plan for the surcharge peg to keep climbing into next month and price your contracts with that gap in mind.