High Gas Prices Strain Truckers, Impacting US Midterms

The self-proclaimed largest truck stop in the world offers drivers just about everything they might need during a break. The Iowa 80 parking lots offer 900 spots for trucks and dozens more for passenger cars, while the varieties of snacks, drinks and souvenirs in the market are uncountable. Elsewhere on the premises is a dentist, a barber and a chiropractor, a weight room, a 24-hour diner and a movie theater. There is also a Truckomat, to wash your truck, and a Dogomat, to wash your dog.

But the one thing that Iowa 80 does not offer is relief from the price of gas, which has increased sharply ever since the US joined Israel in attacking Iran and sparking a global energy crisis. On a recent afternoon, a gallon of regular gasoline at the sprawling stop in eastern Iowa went for $4.26, and diesel $5.72.

“It’s a lot of money,” said Malvinder Grewal, as he gazed at a receipt showing he had just spent $809 to fill up his 18-wheeler, which was laden with a shipment of dog food that he expected would net him $2,550 for delivery to Ohio.

As the summer travel season kicks off in the United States, analysts expect the high gas prices precipitated by the war with Iran to stick around. Average gas prices are the highest they have been in four years, according to the American Automobile Association, and price tracker GasBuddy predicted this week that, if the strait remains closed, pump prices could break records in the months ahead.

It’s a perilous position for Donald Trump to be in before November’s midterm elections, when his Republican allies will be defending their control of Congress. His administration has responded by approving the sale of fuel with a higher ethanol content that can be cheaper but risks increasing smog, while the president has floated suspending the federal gas tax.

Evidence has meanwhile mounted that the price increases have enhanced voters’ discontent with his presidency. Recent polls have found Trump’s public approval ratings in the high 30-percentage point range, and sometimes lower. This week, Quinnipiac University reported voters’ views of how he has handled the economy hit an all-time low.

The pain is acute for those who drive for a living, plenty of whom pass through Iowa 80, which sits in the little town of Walcott just off Interstate 80, the second-longest interstate in the country, stretching from San Francisco to New Jersey.

Truck drivers who plop down in barber Angie Clark’s chair for a $25 cut mention gas prices plenty, she said, particularly the owner-operators who must cover their own fuel costs.

“When gas goes up, that makes everything else go up, because everything is transported by truck,” she said. “If this keeps up, all my other costs of goods will go up as well. Do I have to raise my price?”

Recently, she came back home after a three-week trip abroad, and went to fill up her car for what she expected to be $42. Instead, it was $76.

“I about fell over,” Clark said.

Conversations in her shop inevitably turn to the cause of the spike, and whether it was wise to wage war on Iran and bring about the closure of the strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil supply travels.

“We’re over there and we don’t have any purpose being over there,” said Randall Hood, 55, an Oklahoma resident driving a load of pet supplies to Ohio, who stopped in to have his gray mullet shorn.

As he sat in the nearby Laundromat waiting for a load of clothes to finish, Joe Ernst, 51, quibbled with the conventional wisdom that the war had driven up prices, saying that market forces – “hedge funds, futures” – were instead to blame. The phenomenon affected him less than others – as a company driver, his fuel costs, in this case to drive a tanker of cabernet sauvignon from Bakersfield, California, to Chicago – were covered.

Still, he was torn over the wisdom of launching the war. On the one hand, Iran was the longstanding nemesis who had “punched us in the face” during the hostage crisis that began in 1979. On the other, it had become clear to him that the same government behind that outrage would remain in power after the conflict ended.

“Either finish it, or pick up and go home,” Ernst said. “It’s getting frustrating.”

Mary Stevens, who was driving an escort vehicle for a truck carrying a 226ft windmill blade from New Mexico to Indiana, blamed “the stupid war, or whatever, that’s going on overseas” for making a complicated journey even more expensive.

With such a massive load, her convoy couldn’t pull off just anywhere to get gas, meaning they couldn’t always stop where the prices were best. Filling up her diesel truck cost about $125 when it used to cost $80, while her boss was forced to spend hundreds of dollars to fill up his truck.

“It’s getting ridiculous,” Stevens said. “It’s taking all of our money. It’s taking all of the truckers’ money, too.”

What it was not doing, she said, was changing her positive opinion of Trump.

“It is what it is,” Stevens said.