Kai Risdall

Performance of a couple of retail stocks today.

Dollar General lost about two tenths of one percent.

Home Depot gained four tenths percent.

Bond prices went down.

Yield on the 10-year T-note rose four and a quarter percent.

You're listening to Marketplace.

This is Marketplace.

I'm Kai Risdal.

We're going to do a one-two here on war and what it is doing to U.S.

consumers and businesses.

Because while it is true that this country has been less affected than Europe and Asia, what's happening here is not nothing.

Case in point, that global commodity, crude oil and its derivatives.

The national average for a gallon of diesel fuel sits right now at $5.53 a gallon.

That is from AAA.

A year ago, it was $3.57.

And for a whole lot of companies in this economy, smaller ones in particular, the costs of war are very, very real, as Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes reports.

Pretty much everything that goes in or on an animal.

Joseph Babbitt is an accountant with the company, which owns a fleet of trucks to make deliveries.

All of them run on diesel.

We're actually in a kind of a major drought right now.