Running on empty: Diesel price spikes and other costs set to make funerals more expensive

Tuesday, 31 March 2026

Through his war in Iran, US President Donald Trump has inserted himself into every aspect of ordinary life through rising prices, and that includes in New Zealand’s funerals and funeral parlours.

Whakatāne funeral director Bradley Shaw says his Gateway Funeral Services has not passed increased fuel prices on to bereaved families, but that cannot go on indefinitely.

Gateway is not alone. A survey of 55 funeral directors released on Friday by the Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand showed only nine had passed on the increased cost of fuel to the families buying funeral services from them.

However, almost every one that hadn’t yet said they would have no choice but to do so if Trump’s war continued to keep fuel prices elevated for much longer.

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“It can’t go on for very long before funeral directors are going to have to pass on this cost,” says Shaw.

It will be with great reluctance that funeral directors lift their prices, he says.

“That hurts families’ pockets, and it hurts the people who are already grieving,” he says.

Trump’s impact on the global economy has been eye-opening for Shaw.

“I don’t think we really realised the power of the White House, and what effects it can have on the whole world,” he says.

“In three weeks cost has fuel cost has doubled. I was in Australia on the weekend at a conference over there and you know, same conversation, same thing. So, it doesn’t matter where you are, it’s affecting everybody.”

To the uninitiated, fuel costs may not seem a big contributor to the running costs of a funeral home. However, funeral directors can put in a great many miles.

Gateway provides services as far away as Cape Runaway and halfway to Tauranga, says Shaw. It’s a rural patch. Journeys to collect a deceased loved one and return to Whakatāne can be several hundred kilometres.

Funeral day hearses, and more discrete transport vehicles, are large and generally diesel-powered.

Of the 55 funeral businesses surveyed, 45 did 400km or more of travel in a typical week and 17 did more than 1000km.

One of the anonymous businesses included in the survey told the association: “Our area covers a large part of the top of the South Island, and with police calls some transfers are two or more hours away, plus return.”

But, Shaw said there were other ways that higher fuel prices were flowing through into funeral costs.

“I’ve received at least three price increases from suppliers in the last since Monday,” he says.

Another of the anonymous quotes from the association’s survey showed how this could work.

“Our crematorium is fuelled by diesel. The increase in the cost of fuel has doubled the fuel component cost of each cremation,” it said.

There’s only so much funeral parlours can do to mitigate the impact.

Shaw said Gateway had redoubled its efforts to be efficient in the use of its fleet of seven vehicles.

The survey was done for a political purpose.

In the National Fuel Plan, funeral directors are still not named as an essential service. That could mean that if Trump’s war leads to fuel rationing, funeral directors may miss out.

And that’s bringing back bad memories of the early days of Covid lockdowns, when they were initially left off the list of service providers deemed so essential they could continue to go about their trade, while non-essential services had to shutter their operations.

“We’re often known as the last responder,” Shaw says. “Ambulance. Fire. Police. They are your first responders. We’re the last responder. We’re the ones that work quietly in the background. We don’t ask for much, and and fly under the radar, I guess you would say. That’s why we get forgotten when it comes to this sort of stuff.”

But, he says: “We’ve tried to establish ourselves in the last few years as being an important piece of the puzzle.”