Trump's dyed-diesel order gives truckers no relief as diesel prices hit records
President Trump's executive order on dyed diesel landed this week with pump prices at records, and truckers say it does nothing for them. Dyed diesel is off-road fuel, tax-exempt and marked with a dye so it can't be run on the highway legally. The order points at farm costs, which means it skips the people hauling freight.
What the order does
The order widens farmer access to dyed diesel to blunt their fuel bills. Truckers told Transport Topics the help is thin. Farmers already have access to the fuel, and many have finished harvest, so the timing misses the season it was meant to cover. Carriers also have to work through state rules that differ from one line to the next, which could cause confusion for fleets crossing borders.
Rep. Stuart backed the order on the farm side. The Washington Examiner made the separate case that a diesel export embargo wouldn't help struggling farmers either, since pulling barrels off the export market doesn't guarantee cheaper fuel at home. For haulers, none of it touches the on-road diesel they actually buy.
Surcharges coming back
The Cape May-Lewes Ferry is adding a per-vehicle diesel surcharge. One ferry isn't the story by itself. It's the signal: when diesel runs at records, surcharges start reappearing across freight, and the cost lands on whoever books the move. Operators who dropped surcharge language when diesel was soft may want to check their contracts now.
The Cuba seizure
ICE seized 90 biodiesel shipments worth more than $2.8 million that it says were bound illegally for Cuba. Customs and Border Protection flagged the cargo moving out of Port Everglades and the Port of Houston to Enetec S.A., a state-owned wholesaler in Havana, back in early September. Cuba called the seizure "piracy and plunder."
For US operators the relevance is supply, not politics. Biodiesel pulled out of two major export ports is biodiesel that could stay in the domestic pool, and anything that tightens or loosens renewable supply feeds back into blended diesel pricing and RIN economics. Diesel tax relief is also being read as a possible tailwind for refiners like Valero, which has renewable diesel exposure.
What to watch
Whether states line up their dyed-diesel rules or leave fleets to sort out a patchwork. Whether record diesel pulls surcharges back into more freight contracts over the next few weeks. And how the Cuba case moves, since the volume involved is small but the enforcement posture around biodiesel exports is what could matter for supply if it widens.