Drivers are paying 14-cents more per gallon than just one week ago.
The real shocker is the over six-dollar price for diesel, the highest price ever in the state.
Driver Steven Sams dreads filling up his 18-wheeler. Today he is paying two dollars and fifty cents more per gallon than just one year ago.
“It just cost more and more to run and operate,” Sams said. “At the end of the day, we end up losing profit. It makes it hard to get other ends to meet.”
Driver Sandy Carswell hauls gravel in the foothills and has watched diesel prices steadily climb since the start of the Iran war more than six months ago. According to AAA, prices quickly climbed as the cost of crude oil, the main ingredient in refined fuel like diesel, soared amid supply chain disruptions across the Middle East.
“It’s hard on people,” Carswell said. “Especially a small company. It’s hard for them. I understand it’s part of it but it hurts.”
Burke County Schools says it uses diesel for the district’s 90-buses. They refilled their holding tank today at a cost of 39-thousand dollars and say that’s 22-thousand higher than 15-months ago. Melinda Foster is traveling with her husband across the East Coast for their jobs in off-road racing. She believes the higher fuel prices are having an impact there too.
“The events that I travel to are motorsport events,” Foster said. “And it’s affected the attendance in those events a lot because people just can’t afford to travel like they did.”
We did see some lower prices for Diesel away from the interstates, including one business in Hickory selling at five dollars and sixty-four cents a gallon.
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