Commercial users of diesel feel the impact of fuel price spikes first but the cost extends well beyond trucks, tractors, machinery and production lines. It ultimately reaches consumers through higher prices and an increasingly expensive cost of living.

For Kealeboga Kamogelo Balepile, founder of Kgolagano Trading Solutions, a South African company primarily involved in the petroleum, wholesale and fuel logistics sector, growing fuel price volatility – driven of late by geopolitical instability and conflict – is becoming an existential issue for ordinary people as well as a strategic risk for businesses.

While motorists count the extra rands at the fuel station, Balepile believes the real cost of a diesel price increase is felt further down the economic chain – through the trucks that move food, the tractors that help grow it, the machines that process it and the factories that manufacture products.

The result is a price snowball that travels through supply chains and eventually lands on shelves, in shopping trolleys, on invoices and in household budgets. “You don’t need to drive to feel a diesel price increase. You just need to eat, build or buy,” says Balepile.

Testing profit margins and household budgets
Transport operators, farmers, construction firms, mines, manufacturers and small businesses feel the effect immediately and are all confronted by the same difficult choices: absorb the additional cost, cut margins, increase prices or find ways to survive.

Balepile argues that the pressure is particularly acute for SMEs, which often lack the buying power and cash buffers of larger businesses. Every diesel increase therefore tightens margins that may already be stretched thin. But, in her view, the bigger issue is not any single price increase. It is the growing volatility of fuel prices and the difficulty of predicting where the next shock will come from.

With global oil markets potentially one geopolitical flashpoint away from another spike, Balepile believes businesses need to stop treating fuel price increases as isolated events.

“This is not a blip. It’s a pattern,” she argues, warning that businesses that plan for one-off increases instead of ongoing volatility will continue to be caught flat-footed:

“We keep asking what it costs to fill a car. That’s the wrong question. The more important question is what it costs to keep a truck moving, machinery operating, or goods travelling from one point to another.”

Fleets and families need contingency strategies
Having worked across the petroleum industry’s toughest intersections, from mining to transport, construction, agriculture and industry, Balepile says she sees the same story repeating: fuel is still being treated as a line item when it should be treated as a battlefield.

Her position is direct. Businesses that continue managing fuel as “just another monthly expense” will keep losing ground. Those that start treating it as a strategic operating cost, with real planning, real efficiency measures and real foresight, are the ones that will still be standing when the next price shock hits. For Balepile, that means recognising fuel as a strategic operating issue rather than simply another expense on the monthly accounts.

The implications extend beyond individual businesses. If diesel remains vulnerable to repeated geopolitical shocks, managing that volatility becomes increasingly important to the resilience of the broader economy – and to the financial wellbeing of ordinary people.

In Balepile’s view, this was never just about diesel: “It’s about whether South Africa keeps moving or grinds to a halt,” she concludes.

Editor’s comment: Balepile’s argument highlights a growing disconnect between where fuel price increases are first felt and where their ultimate consequences appear. Commercial users feel the immediate shock but the cost eventually filters through supply chains to consumers already under pressure from a rising cost of living. With geopolitical instability triggering further energy-market disruption, national fuel resilience is becoming an increasingly important determinant of both business and household sustainability.

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