BY AMIT MAHESHWARI
On April 7, oil companies in the Philippines pushed through another large round of pump price hikes. GMA reported this was the 13th straight weekly increase for gasoline and the 15th straight increase for diesel and kerosene. The announced hikes were as high as ₱19.80 per liter for diesel, ₱5.90 for gasoline, and ₱9.10 for kerosene, depending on the oil company.
This is not just another retail fuel story.
It goes straight into trucking, airport transfers, port drayage, empty repositioning, generator use, and last-mile delivery. In a market like Manila, where traffic, port waiting time, and repeated short-haul movements already waste fuel, a sharp diesel move hits freight cost much harder than the pump number suggests. That is the real story.
The macro signal is already showing up. Reuters reported that March 2026 inflation in the Philippines rose to 4.1%, above the central bank’s 2% to 4% target, while the transport index jumped 9.9% year on year. In the same report, diesel prices were up 59.5% year on year and gasoline was up 27.3%.
The reason is not local. It is external. The Philippines remains highly exposed to imported oil, and the government itself has linked current fuel pressure to disruptions tied to the Middle East. Reuters reported that the government declared an energy emergency on March 24, 2026, with the Energy Secretary then saying the country had around 45 days of fuel supply based on current consumption. DOE said again on April 7 that Middle East developments continue to affect global fuel supply and prices.
What this means for freight forwarders
The first hit is inland haulage.
Truckers do not always reprice the same day, but they do change behavior fast. They combine trips, avoid weak-yield moves, ask for surcharges, cut standby tolerance, or delay non-urgent pickups. That means the forwarder starts absorbing cost before any customer sees a revised tariff. This is where margin starts leaking.
The second hit is mode economics.
When diesel moves this sharply, the cost gap between direct delivery, hub transfer, and deferred movement changes. On Manila, Cebu, and Clark legs, that can change the best routing decision even if freight rates on paper look unchanged. This is an inference from the pump-price shock plus the transport-inflation jump, but it is exactly how these cost shocks usually work in freight operations.
The third hit is customer behavior.
Shippers start pushing back on revised charges, especially if their quote was sent days earlier on old assumptions. That creates dispute risk. In practice, forwarders end up carrying the old sell rate against the new buy rate. The problem is not only the size of the fuel hike. It is the speed of the change.
The fourth hit is execution risk.
Reuters reported this week that high fuel costs are already forcing some Philippine farmers to abandon harvests because transport and labor costs make delivery unprofitable. That is agriculture, not forwarding, but the point is the same: when transport cost rises fast enough, cargo movement decisions change at source.
Why technology matters now
Most forwarders still talk about fuel as a vendor problem.
It is not.
It is a pricing problem, a control problem, and a visibility problem.
The first place technology helps is quote control.
A forwarder needs rates that expire fast, surcharge logic that can be updated the same day, and customer quotes that clearly separate base transport from fuel-linked add-ons. If fuel moves this much in one week, static rate cards are a trap. A system should let sales update diesel-linked tables once and push that logic into quotes, jobs, and margin checks.
The second place is job costing.
If inland haulage, airport transfer, or container movement costs are not captured at shipment level, management will see the pain only at month-end. By then the damage is already done. Forwarders need estimated-versus-actual costing by job, customer, lane, and vendor. Without that, rising fuel just shows up as “lower gross profit” with no clear reason.
The third place is route and trip discipline for owned fleets and dedicated vendor fleets.
The fuel savings here are not small. The U.S. Department of Energy says real-time driver feedback and behavior monitoring through telematics can cut fuel use by 10% to 25% by reducing speeding, idling, and harsh braking. The U.S. government’s fuel-economy guidance also says aggressive driving can lower fuel economy by around 15% to 30% at highway speeds and 10% to 40% in stop-and-go traffic. In Manila conditions, stop-and-go matters more than highway theory.
That means telematics is not just for large truck fleets. Even a forwarder with limited owned trucks can use it to flag idle time at terminals, repeated detours, excessive standby, unauthorized use, and unproductive double trips. A forwarder without its own fleet can still demand this data from dedicated haulers or bake fuel-performance clauses into vendor contracts.
The fourth place is exception alerts.
A proper freight system should tell the team when a truck is waiting too long at a port gate, when delivery is slipping toward storage or detention risk, when a shipment needs re-sequencing, or when a pickup should be grouped with another job. Fuel cost spikes punish bad planning more than they punish distance.
The fifth place is scenario planning.
When fuel is unstable, operations should not ask, “What is the rate?” They should ask, “What is the rate if diesel rises another 5%, if the truck waits 4 more hours, or if we move this by another gateway?” That is where a serious ERP or TMS helps. Not by making pretty dashboards. By helping the team make a better decision before the cargo moves.
About the Author
Amit Maheshwari is the CEO of Softlink Global. He built Logi-Sys, a freight platform now used by logistics companies in more than 50 countries.
With over three decades in the logistics technology industry, he focuses on solving day-to-day operational problems in freight forwarding through practical software systems. He writes the “IT in Logistics” column for PortCalls Asia, where he cuts through technology hype and discusses the real issues that affect cargo movement, compliance, and operations across Asia and global trade lanes.
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