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High Diesel Prices Bankrupted 16 Trucking Companies in Just 30 Days

50 points speckx 2 hours ago 24 comments

ectospheno 2 hours ago | parent

Aren't there several orders of magnitude more trucking companies in the US than 16?

schiffern 2 hours ago | parent

Heck, shouldn't that be below the expected bankrupt trucking companies in any given 1-2 month period?

genxy 1 hour ago | parent

Good opportunity for oligarchs like Musk to move in.

barney54 59 minutes ago | parent

What?

deepfriedchokes 58 minutes ago | parent

You win, they win. You lose, they win. It’s a scam.

simondotau 47 minutes ago | parent

...to move in and sell innovative new products in a healthy, vibrant and mature marketplace? In direct competition with Mack, Freightliner, Kenworth and Peterbilt? Selling products which only get sold if people choose to buy them?

...to sell products which could keep trucking affordable and potentially save some future trucking companies from bankruptcy?

...to reduce the country's exposure to global energy shocks by transitioning to a form of energy with a diverse means of production?

Correct, it's a good opportunity.

slopinthebag 38 minutes ago | parent

people really do just say anything to hate on others eh

rasz 31 minutes ago | parent

See the problem is the flawless and totally Autopilot Full Self-Driving systems somehow got excluded from the Tesla Semi for some inexplicable /cought crashes with big explosions and potential of tens of fatalities /cough reason, so cant really enter trucking market without hiring humans and admitting something is not right with a "tech company".

Foxhuls 19 minutes ago | parent

I don’t want this to imply that autopilot is somehow flawless and not allowing/including it is the wrong choice. However crashes and fatalities are something that already happen so I’ve always found it shocking just how much they’re highlighted and focused on when a computer causes them. I just think these things need to be looked at from a much more statistical angle than they currently seem to be. Innovation has kind of always been dangerous and risky throughout history with unfortunate lessons learned. Mitigating them should obviously be the goal but some level of risk kind of has to be acceptable.

enoint 11 minutes ago | parent

These are the people who presume all undocumented aliens are dangerous, and that voting fraud is statistically meaningful, and that sports leagues with 0 trans players are consumed by trans players’ problems. Quietly moving quickly will probably work better than a long, thoughtful campaign of Carter-esque nagging.

enoint 16 minutes ago | parent

They could justify a human in the cab to satisfy existing reflective triangle regulations. Provides cheap publicity to nourish their lobbyists.

enoint 19 minutes ago | parent

I’d see it if:

- diesel prices were actually bankrupting companies. Those companies have been adjusting to daily price fluctuations, and also passing that surcharge on.

- cheaper diesel was expected to remain unattainable across the Midwest, making an E85 (or higher) fleet viable.

- can they pick up some of the fleet of closing operators without labor considerations?

Cerium 1 hour ago | parent

I felt this on my last truck shipment. My previous LTL provider suddenly closed and the next cheapest option is more than twice as expensive.

fn-mote 1 hour ago | parent

Totally unsurprising.

I expect these are small companies surviving month to month without the ability (or skill) to plan for catastrophic changes in the future (present).

celestialcheese 25 minutes ago | parent

This is a meaningless stat without comparison. There are nearly 500k trucking companies operating in the US, with ~91% operating 10 trucks or fewer.

16 companies seems like standard churn (if not a significantly lower than what I'd expect in a low margin business like trucking).

_blk 23 minutes ago | parent

Mind you there's a hefty tax surcharge on Diesel that could easily be lowered if the trucking economy was that important to states like California. Two years ago Diesel was at 8$ when it was 4 everywhere else, last year 9$, 5-6 in most other states. Now 10$? Haven't been there lately but it's still at 6 in MO/AR. It's not the oil price that's the problem with the Diesel price.

delichon 23 minutes ago | parent

The interstate pneumatic tube network I designed with macaroni in the fifth grade is looking visionary now.

pkulak 22 minutes ago | parent

Or trains...

simondotau 22 minutes ago | parent

I did a quick check to see how unusual this is. According to LLM-assisted research on actual U.S. trucking companies filing Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 (rather than carriers simply shutting down) the number isn't especially remarkable.

16 trucking bankruptcies in 30 days looks elevated, but it's not unprecedented. FreightWaves counted more than 20 trucking-related Chapter 7/11 filings in another 30-day period earlier in 2026, while previous downturns have produced much larger waves of failures.

What's happening here is that a sudden cost shock (like a diesel price spike) is probably clustering failures that might otherwise have been spread over several months. So 16 filings in a month may say something about timing, but by itself doesn't seem strong evidence of an extraordinary increase in the underlying rate of trucking bankruptcies.

That isn't to say higher fuel costs are a non-event; clearly they're bad for an industry already operating on thin margins. But we'll need longer-term statistics before we can tell whether fuel prices caused a sustained, systemic increase in trucking bankruptcies.

--

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/freight-market-pushes-anot... (Early 2026)

https://www.thestreet.com/retail/bulmaks-files-chapter-11-ba... (Late 2025)

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/an-unusually-terrible-frei... (Mid 2023)

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/the-trucking-bloodbath-isn... (Mid 2022)

https://www.truckingdive.com/news/trucking-fleet-bankruptcy-... (Early 2021)

https://www.propertycasualty360.com/fcs/2020/01/13/another-o... (Early 2020)

runako 19 minutes ago | parent

So 16 in 30 days is a rate that, if sustained, trends toward ~3x the high end of your estimate of normal.

I don't expect "trucking" to fail, I expect stronger players to push price that will eventually show up in inflation stats.

servo_sausage 10 minutes ago | parent

It would lead 195 per year if it stays at that trend; only 1.3x the high end of "normal".

simondotau 9 minutes ago | parent

That's assuming that this article is pointing to a new trend and not merely a clustering event, where the price shock is simply bringing future failures forward in time.

irjustin 2 minutes ago | parent

> I don't expect "trucking" to fail

Trucking is a fundamental need so once competition thins out prices will naturally rise and eventually the cost of fuel will be pushed to the customer.

Honestly I'm not sure why we started this war. It really feels like our president taking notes on Russia and saying you know what....