For Etienne Hightower, rising gas prices, higher cost of living for employees and mercurial tariffs have meant a trucking business that is running on fumes.
“Nobody wants to pay us more to haul stuff, yet all my expenses are going up,” said Hightower, the CEO of Believers Trucking. “Right now, I’m fighting to maintain my staff, their quality of life, and I want to give them more.”
Hightower, whose company runs 30 trucks as a freight partner of Amazon, said it used to cost him $1.30 per mile to run a truck at a price of $2 per mile, yielding a 70-cent profit per mile. But the price of gas and other increased expenses has pushed his cost up to $1.80 per mile, while depressed demand for shipping due to tariffs has forced him to drop the company’s price to $1.90 per mile.
“I’m working on like a 10-cent profit margin,” Hightower said. “We haven’t had major mechanicals, but I’m assuming that those are coming — they always do with trucking — those prices will also probably eat up that 10 cents.”
Gas prices in North Carolina are up nearly 50% from a year ago, according to the AAA, with regular fuel at $4.21 a gallon on average in the state. And diesel prices in North Carolina are up more than 60% over that same period, now costing $5.49 on average.
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Hightower and several other North Carolina business leaders came together at a round table convened by Rep. Deborah Ross (D-Wake) on Thursday to discuss the economic consequences of the Iran war and the second Trump administration’s trade policies.
“This war was started illegally, it’s being continued illegally, and Congress has not had an opportunity to weigh in,” Ross said. “And the people of the United States are footing the bill. They’re footing the bill through their gas taxes and they’re footing the bill through all the money that goes to have a war.”
North Carolina Republicans have backed Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran despite the price hike. Republican U.S. Senate nominee Michael Whatley said in an interview with the right-leaning Breitbart News on Monday that “we cannot allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, period,” adding that Trump’s oil efforts have helped mitigate rising prices.
“I don’t like gas prices this high either, but I do remind people that they’re lower than they were under Joe Biden,” Whatley said. “The only reason gas prices aren’t as high as they were back in Biden’s days is because the President has unleashed American energy.”
Hightower said the recent economic turmoil has compounded damage that his business was only just recovering from after the pandemic, with freight coming to the U.S. down roughly 25% in the last eight quarters.
Believers Trucking CEO Etienne Hightower said at a May 7, 2026 business round table that rising gas prices, the impact of tariffs, and increased healthcare coverage expenses are all making it more challenging for his business to stay afloat. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)Other Trump administration policies have also hurt the industry, he said, noting that they’ve had a 13% spike in cost of healthcare coverage for employees due to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the expiration of the Affordable Care Act’s tax credits.
“We have about 50 drivers that are going without raises. They’re being hit both ways. One, with the extra expenses in their life, and then they’re working super hard for me, unfortunately,” Hightower said. “I wish I could give everybody two more dollars an hour, but that’s just not in the cards.”
Instead, Hightower said, his company has begun providing life insurance to its truckers. They’re also setting up a “crash pad” for their drivers, some of whom live an hour or more away, so that they can spend the night after long hauls or while working consecutive days.
“A lot of them get dropped off now because they only have one car, so they can spend three or four days,” Hightower said. “If they have a place to sleep and, you know, a place to cook some food, it’ll save them some money.”
Damon White, a team lead with Believers Trucking, said because they’re now using a new yard, he has to take the toll road to get to work, which means more money spent on gas and his overall commute.
“It’s more of an impact on some of my guys that work for us at Believers because they live an hour, some live an hour and a half, away, so they have to spend more money,” he said. “The war just needs to end, so after that everything can maybe get back to normal.”
Gary Harris, the executive director of the North Carolina Petroleum and Convenience Marketers Association, said new oil imports may not necessarily alleviate the rising costs from the Iran war in the short term at a May 7, 2026 business round table. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)Gary Harris, the executive director of the North Carolina Petroleum and Convenience Marketers Association, said the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has created a substantial disruption that may last long after the war. Roughly 90% of the crude oil going through the Strait was heading to Asia, which is now being replaced by American crude oil exports across the Pacific.
But the oil the U.S. is exporting is not easy to replace with new imports from reserves such as Venezuela’s, Harris said. Venezuelan crude oil is much more “sour” than American crude oil, meaning it has a high sulfur content and requires a substantially different refinement process from the “sweet” crude oil extracted in U.S. oil fields.
That means the new oil coming in from Venezuela is unlikely to bring costs down in the short term — and the instability across the gas sector may make refineries reluctant to make the overhauls necessary to accommodate oil sources that are uncertain to remain available in the long term.
“A refinery is not something that you just flip a switch and change from crude to sour,” he said. “It takes a lot of time to change the way things are done there.”
Hightower said he foresees a long road to recovery. “I’d like to say it’ll be over in 20 months after the war ends, but I don’t think it will be. But I think eventually we’ll get there.”
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