ODESSA, TEXAS — Standing at pump 6 of a Gas-N-Go while his lifted diesel pickup idled behind him, breathing out a column of black smoke visible from two counties, local man Dale Prewitt, 41, said Wednesday that he simply could not understand why fuel had gotten so expensive. "Somebody out there is burning through all of it," Prewitt said, then climbed into the cab and turned about a gallon of diesel into a cloud shaped roughly like Ohio. "And I want to know who."
Prewitt paid a shop in Midland $2,400 in 2023 to pull his truck's diesel particulate filter and install a tune that dumps extra fuel into the cylinders whenever he stomps the pedal. By his own count he has since "rolled coal" on about 30 Priuses, 11 cyclists, one Tesla, a farmers market and a church bake sale he "had a feeling about." Each time, extra diesel goes out the stacks as soot instead of going down the road. Asked where he thinks that diesel comes from, Prewitt said "the pump," then said "the government," then stared at the pump for a while.
The numbers have not been kind to him. The national average for diesel set a record of about $6.49 a gallon on Sept. 19, according to AAA, as disruption to tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dragged on. Regular gasoline slipped under $4 this week for the first time since July. Prewitt does not buy gasoline. He called the drop "a trick," noting that "my number didn't go down." His number is diesel. It is the only thing his truck drinks, and also, in clearly visible amounts, the only thing it breathes out.
💨 The Coal Roll Cost Calculator
Move the sliders to match your weekly smoke habits. We will work out what it costs, and who you will blame for it.
Burn rate is a HuckFinn Lab estimate of 0.05 gallons per second of full black smoke, taken from one truck, one stoplight and one very upset cyclist. A Prius trip to Midland is about 20 miles at 50 mpg. Results do not account for tires, lift kits or the decal, which is extra.
Prewitt is not alone. A 2020 Environmental Protection Agency report found that emissions controls had been stripped from more than 550,000 diesel pickups over about a decade, adding more than 570,000 tons of nitrogen oxides to the air. Analysts put that on par with adding roughly 9 million legal trucks to the road. Prewitt said he had not read it but "felt seen."
The pressure came off in January, when the Justice Department said it would no longer bring criminal charges against people who make, sell or use emissions defeat devices, though civil fines are still possible. Prewitt marked the news by rolling coal outside the county courthouse. "Freedom," he said, then coughed for 11 seconds. "That's the smell."
"It is the purest closed loop in American economics," said Dr. Lorna Haskett, an energy economist at the Permian Institute for Obvious Outcomes. "He turns money into smoke to protest how much money it costs to make smoke. If you could hook the resentment up to a turbine, Texas would be energy independent by Thursday."
Haskett walked reporters through the mechanics with a dry-erase board. A truck's computer, she explained, meters fuel to match the air coming in. A smoke tune tells it to stop doing that, so the extra diesel has nowhere to go but out the back, unburned and on the bill. "He is paying retail for fuel and using it as a hand gesture," she said. Then she drew an arrow from the pump to the cloud, and another from the cloud back to the pump, and set the marker down. "That's the whole slide."
Prewitt estimates he spends about $1,100 a month on diesel, of which "some" goes to smoke. When a reporter suggested that "some" might be the reason for the bill, Prewitt rolled coal on the reporter, then asked whether anyone could spot him $20 for the pump, because he had "just put eighty bucks in and it's already gone." He was looking up when he said it.
⛽ The Blame Pump
Every gallon you pump, the Blame Pump lights up the person responsible for the price. It has never once picked the right one, because the right one was deleted.
About 40% of each gallon goes on to the "Exhaled" readout, by a reading of one man's right foot. The Blame Pump cannot light up your tailpipe; it was removed by a shop in Midland, along with the part of the brain that would have noticed.
Prewitt's theories of the fuel price include OPEC, electric cars "using up all the electricity that diesel is made of," California, and a Prius he rolled coal on in 2024 that he believes "is still mad about it and has friends." The truck has never been on the list. "The truck's on my side," he said, patting a fender that left soot on his hand. He wiped it on his jeans, which were already black.
He has also started a Facebook group, Odessa Drivers Against High Fuel Prices, whose 3,400 members post photos of their trucks blowing smoke next to captions about price gouging. The pinned post calls on members to "boycott the pump for one day" and comes with a 40-second video of Prewitt revving at a red light until the car behind him is no longer visible. The boycott is set for Saturday, which members plan to mark with a "coal-rolling convoy" to the state capitol, 330 miles away.
"People keep telling me to look in the mirror," Prewitt said. "Well, I can't. I can't see anything back there."
At press time, Prewitt had raised $340 on a crowdfunding page titled "Help Dale With Fuel Costs," then spent it in a single cloud outside a Whole Foods in protest of fuel costs. The National Weather Service office in Midland issued an air quality alert shortly after. Prewitt called the alert "fake, probably from the same people jacking up the prices," and drove off to find them. He could not see where he was going.
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