Drivers who fueled on the way to vote on Tuesday paid more for diesel than on any congressional election day on AAA's record. AAA's national average was $6.29 a gallon on November 3, against $5.35 on the previous congressional election day in November 2022, and regular gasoline was $4.15, up from $3.80 in 2022 and, Bloomberg noted, the first election day with a national average above $4. By Wednesday morning the Associated Press had called the House for the Democrats, completing a sweep of both chambers; CBS News counted seven Senate seats flipped, in Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maine, with Alaska and Mississippi still too close to call. The president's own explanation of the result, given to Fox News by phone, was fuel; he also said he did not consider it his defeat. Here is what the week after the midterms looks like from the fuel island, what the administration is promising, and what the freight market is doing while Washington argues about why.
What the president and his energy secretary said
I don't think it's the war, I think it's the gas prices. People agree with what I'm doing in Iran, but they really, probably weren't willing to do the short-term consequence of paying more for gasoline. And you know, I understand that.
Trump called the higher fuel costs 'a short-term problem but for long-term gain' and added, 'I don't like to consider it a defeat for me, I wasn't on the ballot.' Business Insider's accounting, from AAA's tracker as of November 3: regular gasoline about 36% higher than a year ago, roughly a dollar a gallon, with Michigan up 52%; diesel about 70% higher, at record highs in all but three states this fall. Fuel began climbing after U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began on February 28, when the national gasoline average was $2.98, according to AAA, and crude was $67 a barrel the day before.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright, on Fox Business's 'Big Money in the Morning' on election day, made the administration's forward-looking case. 'Gasoline and diesel prices peaked in September, they're on their way down, and they will continue down meaningfully in the months ahead,' he said, according to The Hill. He said the administration is working with producers to restart closed refineries and expand existing ones, that exports of refined products out of the Persian Gulf are increasing, and that production in the U.S. and India will rise. 'Prices are high. The best cure for high prices is high prices, it grows supply.'
What the pump actually says
On diesel, Wright is right so far: AAA's record national diesel average is $6.5276, set September 22, and the EIA weekly benchmark topped out at $6.529 the previous day. On gasoline he is not: AAA's 2026 high for regular was $4.564 on May 21, four months before September. On the 'meaningfully down' part, the numbers are smaller than the sentence. EIA's Monday, November 2 reading was $6.292, down 6 cents from the week before but the eighth consecutive week above $6, a run that began September 14. It is $2.54 above the same week last year. AAA's Wednesday morning average is $6.275, down 7.5 cents in a week, about 7 cents below a month ago and $2.58, or 70%, above a year ago. Regular gasoline moved faster, down 12 cents on the week to $4.12.
The regional map matters more than the national line for anyone running lanes. In EIA's November 2 survey, California is $8.076, the West Coast as a whole $7.272, the Rocky Mountains $6.445, the Midwest $6.402 and the Gulf Coast $5.912; the Lower Atlantic is the cheapest region at $5.814. The week's declines were largest in California, 7.9 cents, and the Midwest, 7.8, with the Lower Atlantic and the Rockies close behind at 7.6, and smallest in the Northeast heating-oil belt, half a cent in New England and one cent in the Central Atlantic, where distillate demand is about to rise with the thermostat.
The futures market showed how thin the ground under any forecast is. FreightWaves' John Kingston, in a November 3 interview, described a single session in which the December ultra-low-sulfur diesel contract fell 25.45 cents a gallon on social-media chatter about U.S.-Iran peace talks, then gave back 10 to 11 cents the next day when Iranian officials said no agreement was any closer. Roughly 10 million barrels a day of global refining capacity has been knocked offline by attacks in the Middle East and Ukraine, he said, and distillate inventories are extremely low going into heating season. 'The market is absolutely going to go down' if a real easing comes, Kingston said, but 'after that kind of almost sugar high has worn off, you have inventories to refill. You have facilities that have to be rebuilt.' Diesel's steep backwardation, with near-term prices well above later months, is the market's own statement that supply is tight now. The same week, Valero announced it would buy the shuttered LyondellBasell refinery in Houston, idle for about three years and rated at more than 100,000 barrels a day, for roughly $350 million; Kingston noted that the price, far below the more than $4 billion Marathon is getting for two operating Midwest refineries, signals the Houston plant needs substantial investment before it adds a barrel of supply.
What Congress changing hands does and does not change
The new Congress is seated January 3, 2027. Until then the current one sits in a lame-duck session, and the fuel measures carriers have been living with this fall were executive actions that did not need Congress: the executive order allowing red-dyed diesel on the highway with its deferred federal tax, the $8 billion Harvest Fuel Relief Program USDA announced for farmers, with first payment rates due this month, the reserve releases coordinated with allies and the on-again, off-again diesel export-ban debate. None of those depended on Tuesday's vote. What a Democratic House and Senate can do is hold hearings, write the appropriations bills and decide what reaches the floor in 2027; none of that moves the price of distillate in the Gulf. The loggers show where the pressure is going: Alabama agriculture commissioner Rick Pate has formally asked USDA to add loggers to the Harvest Fuel Relief Program, and the American Loggers Council, which says a fill-up on a log truck now costs about $1,350, has called for a suspension of diesel exports and the federal diesel tax.
Meanwhile, the freight market
The October Logistics Managers' Index, released November 3, read 70.7, the second-highest in four years. Its transportation capacity component was 38.0, in contraction, which FreightWaves notes is the 11th straight month below 50 and compares with 54.5 a year ago. Transportation prices cooled slightly to 88.0 but remain in strong expansion; the aggregate logistics-cost measure hit 257.5, the highest since March 2022; inventory levels jumped to 66.9, the fastest build since September 2022, as retailers stocked for the holidays. On the tender side, FreightWaves' SONAR rejection index was 12.86% on November 3 and averaged about 13.5% in October against 5.73% a year earlier, with tender volume about 7% higher year over year. Spot rates are up close to 47% year over year and contract rates about 20%, at a 52-week high.
Overdrive's weekly read, using FTR and Truckstop data, has spot rates falling across van, reefer and flatbed last week, which it attributes to the season, with all-in spot about 41.5% above last year. Goldman Sachs, in a note reported by Investing.com on November 4, sees the same season differently: spot rates excluding fuel rose about 7% month over month in October, against a historical October decline of about 5%, and the bank expects year-over-year gains of about 36% in November and more than 20% in December, the months in which, it says, trucking stocks historically show renewed strength. The stocks pulled back after spot rates fell in August and September; through August they were up about 32% year to date, against 21% for transports and 12% for the S&P 500.
The math an owner-operator is doing this week
At $6.275 and 6.5 miles per gallon, diesel is about 97 cents a mile; a year ago, at $3.69, it was 57 cents. A 7.5-cent weekly drop is worth about 1.2 cents a mile. Spot rates are up roughly 41% to 47% year over year, per Overdrive and FreightWaves, which is why both the LMI and Goldman describe a tight market rather than a broken one. The exposure is in the lag: a surcharge schedule keyed to Monday's EIA number resets behind the pump, which helps on the way down and hurts on the way up.
What to do with the week's numbers
Before you change anything
Treat 'peaked in September' as a statement about the past, which the data supports, not a forecast you can price. Wait for consecutive EIA weekly declines before touching a surcharge schedule.
Reprice by region, not by the national average: a Northeast lane lost a penny last week; a Midwest lane lost almost eight cents.
Lock contract freight where you can. Contract rates at a 52-week high and capacity contracting for 11 months is the environment where shippers sign; it does not last forever.
If you haul timber or farm product, watch USDA: the Harvest Fuel Relief Program's first payment rates are due this month, and the logger request is in.
Keep the fuel card in the cheapest region you touch. The spread between the Lower Atlantic and California is $2.26 a gallon this week.
The president says the election turned on a number everybody can read from the road. The next moves in that number will be decided by figures only the market reads: inventories, refinery restarts and whether a strait stays open. The president says the pain was short-term. His energy secretary says the peak is behind us. The pump says $6.27, down seven cents, and the fuel sellers who spoke at last week's WEX OTR Summit still say spring.
Fuel, rates and the people who pay both
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