METHUEN — It’s 1 p.m. Thursday at Pleasant Valley Gardens and crews are loading tulips on diesel trucks for delivery to New England Market Baskets.
Fifth-generation farmer Heather Bonanno has been keeping her 10,000 tulips warm on cold nights in the farm’s greenhouse, heated by diesel oil, the price of which has been soaring over the past month.
“You know, you call to order oil, and they tell you the price per gallon — and your heart sinks,” Bonanno said.
The disheartened are legion among Merrimack Valley farmers, landscapers, truckers, bus companies and others, all vulnerable to the surging diesel prices.
If they are not feeling the pain now they expect to be feeling it soon.
Ultimately, costs associated with the diesel fuel market ripple out and whittle away at everybody’s wallet.
In the month since the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran, leading to oil flow disruptions and market trepidation, the average price of diesel fuel in Massachusetts has jumped by 40% to $5.65 a gallon, according to AAA on Friday.
The increase in New Hampshire is comparable, rising from $3.99 per gallon a month ago for diesel to $5.61 per gallon on Friday.
Some Merrimack Valley stations are selling diesel above $6 a gallon.
A Route 133 gas station west of the Andover town line was selling diesel for $6.29 a gallon on Friday.
The price increase is felt more acutely in Massachusetts where diesel fuel costs are higher — between about 5% and 6% over the past year — than the national average for diesel, according to AAA New England figures.
Escalating diesel costs have far reaching consequences for the economy and consumers, say people who study energy and transportation, including UMass Lowell professor Hunter Mack.
“Every corner of the economy has energy baked into the prices,” said Hunter, a combustion science professor at UMass Lowell, with an interest in transportation
That means everything from asparagus to roofing shingles to a trip to the beach.
The integral role diesel plays in the economy and risks associated with supply disruptions result in prices rising faster and lowering slower than the price of regular gasoline, he said.
“Right now we’re in a very risky period where these prices are looking ahead to even more supply side issues,” Mack said.
Futures market dealers do not want to set a price for diesel today that is going to hurt them tomorrow.
Today, Atkinson, New Hampshire landscaping company owner Logan Benko is feeling a direct impact on his business.
He owns two diesel-fueled trucks and depends on them to transport equipment and materials and travel between job sites.
“Fuel is one of my biggest operating expenses, and when prices jump like this, it cuts directly into profits and makes it harder to keep jobs affordable for customers,” Benko says.
Bill Fitzgerald of Mann Orchards in Methuen is a fourth-generation farmer and his kids are running the orchards now.
Their season is starting about now so they have yet to pay the higher diesel prices to operate their tractors and other equipment as well as two trucks, he said.
They do not rely on fuel as much as some operations but will have to find efficiencies to weather the higher costs, said Fitzgerald, whose great grandfather started the farm in 1877.
“Every little bit hurts,” he said.
Large diesel-dependent transportation operations such as truckin, school bus companies and public transit authorities are directly impacted by the diesel market.
At MeVa headquarters, in Haverhill, the regional transit authority’s fuelers draw on the site’s 20,000-gallon underground diesel fuel tank to fill the 120-gallon tanks on 75 diesel-powered buses every day.
The buses average between 5 and 7 mpg and log 2.5 million miles a year.
Fortunately, MeVa signed a 12-month contract on July 1, for $2.73 per gallon, according to Dan Flaherty, MeVa’s feet maintenance manager, guaranteeing the price through June 30.
Large volume buyers such as MeVa typically get a better rate on fuel contracts with suppliers.
They negotiate a price based on the period it is provided, say a year, or six months or monthly. A longer period typically results in a lower price.
“There’s a risk, risk on both ends and you know, it’s like when you get a mortgage,” Noah Berger, MeVa’s administrator, said.
Large transportation companies, including freight haulers and companies that ferry students to schools may not have locked in such a friendly rate as MeVa’s, and many truckers and passenger vehicles that run on diesel find themselves at the mercy of the volatile oil market.
That price is entering all-time record territory — $6.41 set May 18, 2022, according to AAA New England.
Before the war in Iran the price for diesel for MeVa over the next fiscal year was $2.84 a gallon, Flaherty said.
That price is off the table now and MeVa will think long and hard and consult with other regional transit authorities before signing its next diesel contract, Berger said.
A spokesperson for the Lawrence school system, which contracts student transportation with Beacon Mobility, the umbrella group for NRT Bus, forwarded questions about diesel prices to the NRT senior operations manager, Lynda Gomez.
Gomez did not respond to emails and phone calls seeking comment on diesel use.
Meanwhile, smaller operations such as Pleasant Valley Gardens, founded in 1910, are confronted with the higher diesel prices right now when its three trucks are on the road.
The price of diesel doesn’t just affect them.
“It’s costing me more to produce the flowers, and unfortunately, it trickles down to the consumer, which I hate to do,” Bonanno said.