Speaking at the IAA Transportation show in Hanover, Daimler Truck Chief Executive Officer Karin Rådström said most clients "have floaters in their contracts with their customers, which means that they are able to offset the higher diesel price." She added that the difficult bit is the timing, since operators often must cover fuel costs before getting reimbursed. Orders have not shown a clear hit so far, although the broader uncertainty "obviously isn't good for business," she said.
US diesel set a new high on Monday, coming after it exceeded $6 a gallon for the first time last week, with global oil and fuel supply disruptions constricting the market. Prices have risen by more than 60% since hostilities began in the Middle East. Achim Puchert, head of Mercedes-Benz Trucks, said expensive fuel can strengthen the case for battery-electric trucks. On the consumer side, Stellantis NV's Europe chief Emanuele Cappellano said buyers react quickly to higher oil prices: "For sure there is a reaction, I mean once you see the oil price growing it immediately reflected some kind of reaction in the market."
Cappellano said fleets react more slowly than retail car buyers and might postpone renewing vehicles instead of jumping straight to new technologies. "What we see is that sometimes they prefer slowing down the renewal of the fleet instead of having risk of buying full-electric commercial vehicle." Both companies identified charging infrastructure as the biggest obstacle to wider electric truck adoption. They also pressed for updates to the European Union's penalty framework for manufacturers that fail to meet emissions limits, contending the industry is unlikely to reach the target of making 35% of new truck registrations electric by 2030, versus roughly 2% today.
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By weight, trucks carry over 70% of U.S. domestic freight, hauling goods from groceries to building supplies, which means diesel surges can quickly feed into consumer prices. Daimler Truck's biggest market is North America, with nearly half of its vehicles sold across Freightliner and Western Star. With fuel costs at records and charging networks still thin, watch how fleets juggle near term operating expenses against longer term tech shifts and policy goals through this cycle and into 2030.
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