Key Currency Exchange Rates for Friday, 3/21/25

National Average Price for Regular – Current: $2.817; Month Ago: $2.658; Year Ago: $2.367. National Average Price for Diesel – Current: $3.074; Month Ago: $2.972; Year Ago: $2.522.

Futures were little changed in New York after gaining 2 percent last week. The number of U.S. rigs targeting oil remained unchanged at 747, Baker Hughes data showed Friday. A repair of the North Sea’s Forties Pipeline System is complete and pressure testing has started, operator Ineos Group said Monday. The halt of the line earlier this month sent prices surging. Oil is heading for a second yearly advance as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies including Russia prolong supply curbs through the end of 2018. Iraq’s Oil Minister Jabbar Al-Luaibi said Monday that he’s optimistic prices will gain next year with global stockpiles falling and demand rising in China and India. Click Read More below for additional information.

Growth in the U.S. economy boomed in 2018, slowed in 2019, and turned south in 2020 when COVID-19 started to spread widely in March. In 2019, trucks shipped 72.5% of all domestic tonnage, including an increase of 366 million tons over 2018. Also, across the northern and southern borders, trucks moved three-quarters of the value of trade between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Compared with previous recessions, trucking fared far better than the overall economy as the recession in the first half of 2020 was concentrated in the much less freight intensive, services sector. At the start of 2020, the U.S. remained in the longest economic expansion on record with the unemployment rate at 50-year lows. In the three primary categories of freight—retail, manufacturing, and housing construction—only manufacturing was struggling from an industry-specific recession in 2019. In January, retail sales notched a record high, and construction on new homes surged to its highest level in over a decade, according to the Census Bureau. Even manufacturing showed signs that it bottomed out in 2019, as the Institute for Supply Management’s Purchasing Managers Index reported an expanding manufacturing sector in January and February after 5 months of contraction.