There was a card wedged in my door this morning. The fuel company, wishing me a happy Labor Day and asking whether I would like to lock in my winter price now.

Every September that card shows up. For years I put it straight in the bin.

Then I read the government’s own numbers. They cover exactly this. What a heating price does between the day the card arrives and the day the tank runs low.

$2.13

Average residential propane, per gallon, in October

 

$2.58

The same gallon, the same season, in March

Forty-five cents. And the Energy Information Administration flagged the reason in its own text: there was relatively little change in the wholesale price across those months. The gallon leaving the terminal cost roughly the same all winter.

So the climb came out of the calendar.

Retail heating fuel gets dearer through the season. That is when the trucks are busy and the customer has stopped shopping. In February a cold house ends the negotiation.

Put it on a tank. A few hundred gallons across a winter turns forty-five cents into well over a hundred dollars. Nothing changed but the date on the ticket.

Oil households are bigger still. Last completed season the average oil-heated home burned close to four hundred gallons. It spent around $1,390 on the winter.

This year the card lands on a stranger week than usual. Strikes between the United States and Iran picked back up at the start of September, after a month of quiet. Tankers were hit in the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude finished last week near $96, up about nine percent.

A driveway in New Hampshire and a strait eleven thousand kilometres away are now on the same invoice. That is worth ten minutes of your holiday.

There is a second wire running out of that driveway, and it goes somewhere less obvious. Sign the card and the dealer holds your cash from September until February.

Money sitting still for five months earns whatever short-term paper pays. What short-term paper pays gets decided in one room in Washington on the sixteenth of this month.

Heat is the quiet half of the aisle the cohort is standing in.

Somebody chose September for that card. He chose it carefully.

The catch runs both ways, and it is why I read the card instead of signing it. He carries the risk on a locked price, so a mild winter or a falling market leaves you paying above the street. That is the deal. You are buying certainty, and certainty is never the cheapest option on the page.

The arithmetic

The residential propane price rising from $2.13 a gallon in October to $2.58 in March, and the note that wholesale prices changed relatively little across those months, are from the Energy Information Administration’s Winter Fuels Outlook for the 2025 to 2026 heating season, a supplement to its October Short-Term Energy Outlook and updated monthly through April. The 21% figure is Boomers Trade’s own arithmetic on those two prices. Average heating-oil consumption near 400 gallons and average seasonal spending near $1,390 are EIA base-case figures for the most recently completed season. EIA reports the share of homes by main heating fuel as roughly 46% natural gas, 43% electricity, 5% propane and 3% heating oil, with the Northeast accounting for about 80% of heating-oil use. The hundred-dollar illustration assumes a few hundred gallons across a season at the same forty-five cent gap and is our own arithmetic, not a forecast. Brent crude near $96 and up about nine percent last week, the resumption of United States and Iranian strikes at the start of September, and the tanker attacks in the Strait of Hormuz are market and news facts as of this weekend. The outlook for the coming winter has not been published yet. The Federal Reserve announces its rate decision on 16 September 2026. The read on who profits is Boomers Trade’s own.

 

The date to watch is in October, when the government publishes its outlook for the coming winter. That is the number the dealers price against, and it lands weeks after the cards go in the doors. Which tells you something about who the cards are really for.

Mine is on the counter this year. Enjoy the holiday, and go look at your tank.

Andrew

Boomers Trade is written by someone getting older right alongside you, and watching who profits from it.