DeWine signs 90-day, $0.47-a-gallon diesel tax cut as Ohio carriers call the fuel crisis a "tipping point"

The Ohio Legislature has passed and Gov. Mike DeWine has signed a gas tax holiday bill that cuts the state tax on diesel fuel by $0.47 for 90 days, officially beginning Sunday, Oct. 4, according to reporting by The Columbus Dispatch on Oct. 2. The relief lands as national diesel prices hit a record-high average of $6.53 per gallon on Sept. 21 and remain near the historic peak — while diesel in Ohio averages even higher, at around $6.65 per gallon, nearly $3 more than the $3.66 per gallon Ohio drivers paid a year ago.

Carriers interviewed by The Dispatch describe an ongoing cash-flow crisis. "It is very dire. We have seen trucking companies go out of business," said Thomas Balzer, president and CEO of the Ohio Trucking Association. Kiera Sullivan, general counsel and shareholder of Continental Express in Sidney, said her company's fuel costs are up 75% compared to last year, and fuel surcharges reimburse carriers only 30 to 120 days after the money goes out. "We're paying for that fuel right now because our trucks need to deliver that freight right now," Sullivan said, "and we don't get reimbursed on fuel surcharge for 30 to 120 days, sometimes up to 3 to 4 months, which is a big, big, cash flow problem."

Sherri Garner Brumbaugh, president and CEO of Garner Trucking Inc. in Findlay, said her company has already cut back on hiring for administrators and support staff and made raises more conservative: "If you haven't made cuts already, you're behind. We've definitely made cuts, all the wants have gone away and it's been needs." Balzer put the stakes plainly: "There is definitely this point, this kind of tipping point that we're at right now with the industry that people are really, really struggling to be able to weather all this and make it out the other side."

The pressure arrives on top of a four-year trucking recession, The Dispatch reports, with carriers losing millions year over year — just as freight rates were starting to tick back up. And the costs will reach consumers: the Transportation Energy Institute notes that trucking companies pass fuel costs to customers like grocery stores, who pass them on at the register, since the trucking industry delivers more than 80% of the country's finished products.