Record diesel costs cripple trucking companies across California

California’s record diesel prices are hammering trucking companies already squeezed by soaring insurance, equipment and regulatory costs, with some warning they can no longer afford to keep their rigs on the road.

The statewide average hit a record $8.39 a gallon Friday, according to AAA, up from $7.98 just one week ago and $5.17 a year ago. In Los Angeles and Long Beach, diesel averaged $8.36 Friday.

Nationally, diesel also hit a record $6.45 a gallon Friday, compared with $3.71 a year ago, according to AAA.

The surge comes just one week after The Post found California stations displaying diesel at a staggering $9.99 a gallon, effectively maxing out some digital price boards.

For Andrew Piazza, whose father and two uncles founded Piazza Trucking more than 70 years ago, the pain comes with every fill-up.

“Our trucks are like $1,500 per fill-up,” Piazza told The Post.

“A few years ago it was in the three-to-four-dollar range, and now you see as much as eight, over $8 a gallon,” he said.

Piazza Trucking, founded in California in 1953, specializes in moving oversized and heavy equipment, including electrical transformers, telephone poles, excavators and tractors.

Piazza said trucking companies cannot simply pass every extra dollar in fuel costs onto their customers because they are competing against other carriers willing to move the same freight for less.

“You gotta absorb a little bit because there’s always someone that can do it for cheaper,” Piazza said. “The owner-operators, they have less overhead. But it’s affecting everybody.”

Eventually, however, something has to give.

“If certain lanes [routes] have been the same price for a while, you can’t haul that freight on that lane for that same price anymore,” Piazza said. “So it’s just kind of making the price of everything go up.”

That is what makes the diesel spike potentially painful far beyond truck stops.

Trucks carry everything from groceries and construction materials to the massive equipment Piazza’s company moves across Southern California.

For the past three months, Piazza said, his trucks have been hauling industrial-size air-conditioning units to hospitals and commercial buildings as the region battled intense heat.

One recent job took AC equipment to the LA Live and Crypto.com Arena complex.

The broader squeeze is also rippling through California’s trucking, agriculture and shipping industries.

Los Angeles trucker Kenyatta Cole said his three trucks burned through more than $10,000 in diesel during the first two weeks of June and another $6,000 during the final two weeks.

The three trucks grossed about $32,000 in gas for the month, Cole said.

“This business is coming to a screeching halt,” Cole warned on social media this week.

“Why should we, the owner-operators, bear this burden alone?” he wrote, arguing brokers who collect fees to connect truckers with work need to negotiate higher rates with contractors.

Cole’s family has spent three generations in trucking. He previously told The Post that already crippling insurance costs and California environmental regulations were squeezing independent operators.

Now diesel is adding another gut punch.

 Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times reported small trucking fleets and farmers were struggling with record fuel costs, with higher transportation expenses threatening to eventually reach grocery bills.

GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan issued a similar warning last week, saying record diesel prices would hit “every cargo, shipment, every delivery” and could reignite inflation throughout the supply chain.

For Cole, the math is already becoming impossible.

“Some think this will weed out those who can’t hold out,” he wrote.

“This is far from the truth.”

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