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JULY 27, 2026 |
Service prices are rising at the fastest pace since 2022, and customers are paying it
Demand hit an eight-month high, the Labor Department redrew the line on paid drive time, and oil ran to $100 and back in five days. Here is what to do about each one.
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IN THIS EDITION
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GROWTH Demand is up. So is what you are allowed to charge. |
| 02 |
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BUSINESS The DOL just redrew the line on paid drive time. |
| 03 |
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GLOBAL Oil hit $100, then fell off a cliff. Diesel did not follow. |
| 04 |
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TOOLS Four tools to price, prove and protect your hours. |
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COUNTERINTUITIVE
| Demand just hit an eight-month high, and your competitors already raised prices S&P Global’s flash US PMI for July, released Friday, put services activity at 53.6, an eight-month high, up from 51.2 in June. More people are buying. That part is easy. The part most owners will miss: selling-price inflation accelerated to its steepest rate since August 2022, and charges in the service sector are climbing at close to a four-year peak. Input costs hit a 14-month high. Translation: the businesses you compete with have already pushed their prices up, and customers are paying. Employment barely moved, rising only marginally in July after two months of decline. Firms are absorbing more demand with the same crew, which is another way of saying capacity is tight and you have leverage you probably are not using. The Fed meets Wednesday, July 29, with the funds rate at 3.50%–3.75%. Markets still expect a fifth straight hold, but the odds of a hike jumped to roughly 38% from 12% a week earlier after the oil spike (see 03). Cheap money is not coming to rescue your margin.
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53.6
US Services PMI, 8-month high
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Aug 2022
Last time prices rose this fast
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38%
Odds of a Fed hike, up from 12%
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“July saw a concerning intensification of supply chain delays and accompanying renewed upturn in price pressures, constraining growth and subduing demand.”
Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist, S&P Global Market Intelligence
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THE BOTTOM LINE
If you have not repriced since spring, you are now the cheapest option in your market by accident, not by strategy. Pull your last ten quotes this week, add the input costs you have actually absorbed, and put the new number on the next bid. Your competitors already did. That is what a four-year high in service charges means.
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BREAKING · US DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
| The DOL just redrew the line on when your crew’s drive time is on your dime On July 22 the Wage and Hour Division issued two opinion letters, FLSA2026-9 and FLSA2026-10, that answer the question every service business with a crew argues about: when do you have to pay for driving? FLSA2026-9 covers mid-day travel between home and the office. The answer: not compensable when the employee chose the timing for their own convenience and is fully relieved of duties in the car. Ordinary home-to-work travel stays unpaid whether it happens at 7 a.m. or 1 p.m. FLSA2026-10 is the one that will cost people money. A tech who simply receives a page at home is fine, because that is incidental. But a tech who calls clients from home to set the day’s appointments is doing work the DOL calls “integral and indispensable” to the job. Once that required work starts, the drive to the first appointment stops being a commute and becomes paid time.
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2
New opinion letters, issued Jul 22
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2–3 yrs
How far back a wage claim reaches
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$0
What this costs to fix today
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Dispatch calls made from home before driving → the drive to job one is likely paid. |
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Simply receiving a page or a text → still an unpaid commute. |
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The employee picks the timing for their own convenience → unpaid. |
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You dictate the timing and the route → paid, and you must record it. |
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“Travel becomes compensable only when the employer, rather than the employee, dictates its timing and manner and imposes real constraints.”
US Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division
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THE BOTTOM LINE
Opinion letters are not new law. They are how the DOL tells you it will enforce the law it already has, and back-pay claims reach two to three years deep. Before Friday, answer one question in writing for every role you employ: does anyone call, text or dispatch from home before they drive? If yes, either move that call to after arrival, or start paying the drive. Then confirm the crew doing that driving is actually covered on your policy.
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WHIPLASH · RED SEA & STRAIT OF HORMUZ
| Oil ran to $100 and back in five days. Your diesel bill only went one way. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping and a near-halt in Strait of Hormuz traffic pushed Brent above $100 a barrel on July 23. Then it reversed. As of today Brent is back around $90, down roughly 8% in a single session, after the US and Iran paused strikes over the weekend and Washington signalled openness to talks. Do not read that reversal as relief. Brent is still up about 23% this month and 31% against a year ago. And the barrel price is not what you pay. Diesel is. The EIA’s national on-highway average for the week ending July 20 hit $5.134 a gallon, up 33.8 cents in a single week and $1.32 against last year. That one reading erased more than half of a nine-week decline. California is at $6.471; the West Coast average is $5.877. Fuel invoices lag crude by two to three weeks. The $100 spike is still in transit toward your account.
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~$90
Brent today, after topping $100 on Jul 23
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$5.134
US diesel average, week ending Jul 20
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+33.8¢
One-week jump in diesel
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THE BOTTOM LINE
Every quote you send this week for August work should carry a fuel line, not a fuel assumption. Peg it to the EIA’s Monday diesel number, which is free, public and updates weekly, so the customer is arguing with a government figure instead of with you. And if you run trucks, vans or trailers, this is the week to confirm your commercial auto limits still make sense at these operating costs.
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FOUR THINGS THAT PAY FOR THEMSELVES
| Never repeated from a past edition. Real pricing, real URLs.
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💱
PTX Exchange
Flat 1.2% fee · free app
The dollar swung hard with this week’s oil shock. Check the live rate before you send money home. PTX Exchange shows the real rate on the home screen and charges a flat 1.2%, instead of burying a spread inside a “zero-fee” transfer. Seven currencies, FinCEN-registered MSB, support in Portuguese, Spanish and English.
ptxexchange.com
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⛽
EIA Gasoline & Diesel Fuel Update
Free · no account
The official US on-highway diesel average, national and by region, published every Monday. This is the number to write into your fuel surcharge clause so nobody has to take your word for it.
eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel
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📍
Timeero
From $6/user/mo · 14-day free trial
GPS time tracking with segmented tracking, so you can show exactly which drive time was on the clock and which was not. That distinction is the entire subject of story 02.
timeero.com
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⏱️
Homebase
Free for 1 location, up to 10 employees · paid from $30/mo
Time clock, scheduling and timesheets for hourly crews. The free tier is a real free tier, not a 14-day trial, which makes it the cheapest way to start documenting hours this week.
joinhomebase.com
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QUICK READS THIS WEEK
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DON’T TAKE OUR WORD FOR IT. VERIFY IT YOURSELF
Paste any of these into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. If we got something wrong, we want you to find it.
| 01 |
What was the S&P Global flash US Services PMI for July 2026, and how fast were selling prices rising compared with previous years? |
| 02 |
Summarize US Department of Labor opinion letters FLSA2026-9 and FLSA2026-10, issued July 22, 2026. When is employee travel time compensable under the FLSA? |
| 03 |
What was the price of Brent crude on July 23 and July 27, 2026, and what was the US national average on-highway diesel price for the week ending July 20, 2026? |
See every source behind this edition ›
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