{"id":237456,"date":"2026-04-19T01:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T01:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/237456\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T01:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T01:23:09","slug":"rising-and-fluctuating-fuel-prices-pinching-pockets-of-interstate-semi-truck-drivers-in-south-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/237456\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising and fluctuating fuel prices pinching pockets of interstate semi truck drivers in South Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steven Maclean, a long-haul truck driver, says he has spent $2,500 more on fuel this past month hauling supplies from Canada to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/tag\/south-florida\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">South Florida<\/a> and across the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t plan for anything extra, that&#8217;s for sure,&#8221; Maclean said. &#8220;You barely pay yourself&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Maclean noted he has seen different <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/news\/rising-fuel-prices-force-south-florida-businesses-and-gig-workers-to-add-surcharges\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">diesel prices <\/a>in each state he has traveled to. As of Saturday, AAA reported Florida&#8217;s average diesel fuel price at $5.54 a gallon.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Florida&#8217;s price is the best now that I&#8217;ve seen,&#8221; Maclean said. &#8220;Maine, like a month ago, was $5; now it&#8217;s up to $6, I think&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The conflict in Iran continues to impact fuel prices. Al Hanley, who is with a CDL school that trains truck drivers, teaches techniques to limit fuel usage.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Idle time is a killer, so if they&#8217;re stuck in traffic, and the truck is running and it&#8217;s doing miles, that hurts them,&#8221; Hanley said. &#8220;Planning your routes better\u2014maybe operating at different times of the day, overnights, or weekends\u2014and maybe not driving during rush hour if they can avoid it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Hanley said it is hard to tell how much this will impact the freight industry because <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/miami\/tag\/gas-prices\/\" target=\"_blank\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">fuel prices<\/a> have fluctuated almost daily.<\/p>\n<p>AAA data shows Miami&#8217;s average diesel price is $5.52 a gallon, 3 cents less than yesterday, but this price range is significantly higher than the average of $3.43 a gallon this time last year.<\/p>\n<p>Trucking companies often buy fuel in bulk, but the price they pay one day could be higher than the price the next day, Hanley said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s called a short squeeze,&#8221; Hanley said. &#8220;They&#8217;re having to get a higher price today and receive it at a higher price than it is really in the market&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Hanley believes that if drivers use his tips, they could save thousands in gas a year, noting that trucks carrying heavy loads over long distances usually have poor gas mileage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steven Maclean, a long-haul truck driver, says he has spent $2,500 more on fuel this past month hauling&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[96970,28,11415,11248,123,125,124,807],"class_list":{"0":"post-237456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-diesel-fuel","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-fuel-cost","11":"tag-gas-prices","12":"tag-miami","13":"tag-miami-headlines","14":"tag-miami-news","15":"tag-south-florida"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}