Record Diesel Prices Nail Hard-Hit Truckers

According to AAA, the motor club, the average nationwide diesel price has set records on 18 of the past 19 days, including Monday, when it hit $3.83 a gallon.

In the nation's tool and die plants, in the driver's seats of farm tractors and in the cabs of the long-haul semis that ply America's highways, people are feeling the pain.

"It's killing us," said Chad Beachler, co-owner of Beachler Trucking, which operates nine trucks in Loudonville, Ohio. "Every day, I come in here and wonder if I have enough money to buy fuel."

Both diesel and gasoline prices had lagged behind the big increase in the price of oil, as slack wintertime demand helped to suppress increases at the pump. But now both fuels are rising rapidly. Gasoline was selling for a nationwide average of nearly $3.23 a gallon on Monday, a half-penny shy of the record set last May. Oil closed up sharply on Monday to hit a record, $107.90 a barrel, in trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

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