Winter is coming. For Maine families, it’s never been more expensive.

Behind the steering wheel of his silver pickup, Scott Bates fills in the blanks with numbers.

It’s 8:51 a.m., and at $4.85 a gallon, heating oil is 11 cents cheaper than the night before. He could buy 1,000 gallons and sell each for around $5.25. But not $5.55, because this is a crisis.

What if he didn’t get paid for any of the day’s deliveries? Some quick math in his head confirmed that his company, Bates Fuel, would be on the hook for $48,000, and it isn’t even winter yet.

“We need dollar drops,” he said, refreshing an app on his phone that tracks minute-by-minute oil prices. “We’re getting cent drops.”

This is Bates’ front-row seat to Maine’s unique economic hardship. Here, around 50% of homes rely on fuel oil as their main heat source, more than any other state.

Ryan David Brown for CNN

The soaring cost of energy and heating oil is one reason why the economy remains a top issue for Maine voters, just days before the midterm elections. Even more so in Bates’ home of Aroostook County, which swallows some 6,700 square miles way up near the Canadian border. In the largest county east of the Mississippi, the closest grocery store can easily be an hour away.

Politicians and pundits call it “affordability.” In Aroostook, that’s an empty kerosene tank, kids sleeping in snowsuits and parents lining their windows with plastic sheets to keep the draft from crawling in.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Troy Jackson, the late-breaking Democratic candidate, are neck-and-neck, trying to convince Mainers that they have the answers.

Collins this month announced the early release of $38 million in federal home heating assistance after working with Trump officials. She has worked with the administration to insulate Maine industries from the trade war, including some tariff relief announced on Friday. And she successfully pressed the administration to release more home heating oil that had been in reserve.

Jackson has talked about growing up fearful his family would run out of heat. He says the ultimate answer to today’s crisis is to end the war in Iran. His campaign directs voters to resources like wood banks and programs for overdue bills.

Both candidates know Aroostook’s challenges. Collins is a self-described “County girl” from Caribou. Jackson is a fifth-generation logger from Allagash.

This week, Maine’s Department of Energy Resources said that residents statewide would pay around $750 more than last year to fill a standard 275-gallon tank to capacity. Heating oil costs had just hit a record high of $6.04 per gallon, an 83% increase from this time last year.

That’s $750 many in Aroostook County simply don’t have. Families could easily refill their tanks four or five times from now until spring. And prices won’t necessarily plunge if the Iran war ends.

Bates has been letting so many customers slide that he hasn’t turned a profit since April.

“This is the first time in 36 years I have felt like enough’s enough,” Bates, 69, said. “This is too much for everybody.”

Bates pulls over and checks his phone. It’s 10 a.m., and heating oil is up 6 cents, to $4.91 a gallon. He could wait and hope for a tick down. Or the price could edge past $5, and he’d regret it all night.

He buys 1,000 gallons. An order confirmation pops up – an animated green checkmark decorated with rainbow confetti.

In early October, the trees in Aroostook County are blanketed in fiery reds, oranges and yellows. Already, a third of Bates’ customers are running on credit. His drivers are setting out for more “50s,” shorthand for the households that can only afford 50 gallons at a time.

There’s usually a service charge for such small deliveries. After all, it’s costing a lot more lately to fuel a delivery truck. But Bates waived the fee this season.

The morning fog had lifted as Bates trails one of his delivery trucks and its driver, Lee Wood. Beyond the foliage and some grazing cows was a clear view of Mount Katahdin, Maine’s highest peak.

He points out a power plant that employed locals for decades, then shuttered as the biomass industry struggled.

Founded in 1989, Bates Fuel had made it through the Great Recession and the pandemic. But the math is getting harder. Benchmark prices on the global oil market are set by traders “sitting back in some corporate office somewhere,” Bates said.

Wood pulls the delivery truck up to a house with blue shutters and American flags. It takes him just 38 seconds to pump 50 gallons.

In rural Aroostook County, median household income is $54,400, some $22,000 less than the state median. About 16% of all residents and 12% of seniors live in poverty. Jobs often revolve around trucking, logging and farming.

When someone can’t afford heat, they call nonprofit organization Avec Community Action. In 2025, Avec got almost 8,000 home energy assistance applications from families in northern Maine and distributed more than $3 million in aid.

Its small staff is under remarkable strain. The organization is responsible for Aroostook plus two nearby counties. There are 20 people processing thousands of applications for one-third of the state.

By late September, staffers had 500 voicemails to return.

Heidi Rackliffe, Avec’s chief program officer, was bringing her team in on weekends to call everybody back.

“They rely on these programs,” Rackliffe said of Avec’s customers, “because that’s how they survive.”

Jason Parent, Avec’s CEO, plays a voicemail from a resident who recently paid $500 to fill her tank.

“Anyway, Jason, I’m really, really struggling. I’m still working at the age of 80 to try to make ends meet. Could you please call me today so that the anxiety doesn’t kick in too much?”

Down the hall, Greta Power handles a growing stack of applications from middle-class families seeking help for the first time. Power keeps apples and mini 3 Musketeers in her office, knowing people skip meals to buy fuel.

She gets angry thinking about last winter, when the longest government shutdown in American history delayed federal fuel funds for over a month.

Then, Avec had to triage 80- and 90-year-olds most in need.

“I cannot believe this is the United States,” Power said.

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People were calling for emergency deliveries weeks before funds were available. Others made too much money for low-income programs or exhausted their one-time benefits with months of winter still to go. Intake appointments for heating aid were already booking out into February.

Maine’s senior citizens on fixed incomes are among the hardest hit. The state has the nation’s oldest population – 23% of residents are 65 and up.

Ruth Munson, 73, called Avec in late September. Her kerosene tank was almost out, and she needed an emergency fill-up. The chill was slipping through the cracks in her windows and warps in her 48-year-old trailer.

Munson and her husband live off a combined $1,993 a month in Social Security and had been getting Avec’s help for decades. A wooden plaque on the wall said “The Munson Estate,” but the only luxury she bought was cable.

High prices, she said, felt like “hell on wheels.”

Bates keeps sending trucks to the customers who are behind on payments. He isn’t sure how much longer he can manage.

Bates could retire and spend more time making maple syrup with his grandson. The shed behind his home is practically a science lab, full of jugs and evaporators and gallons of sap.

But retirement also means selling all eight of his trucks and laying off workers. And what about his customers? Larger fuel dealers would never excuse so much debt, he said.

“Where are they gonna go?”

That question keeps Michael Fawcett buzzing around the Wytopitlock Food Pantry. He’d found “Pitlock” on the map 25 years ago, when he left Las Vegas in search of cheap land. Now, he leads a group of volunteers who dole out fresh produce, pasta, eggs and more every few weeks.

He hoped to give his community some “margin,” he said. Almost all of the pantry’s customers are seniors, and there’s was a waitlist with a dozen more.

Fawcett scraped together donations and runs the pantry without pay. He crisscrosses the town collecting bottles and cans for the 5 cent deposit. Sometimes his haul yields an extra $25.

But the pantry is about $2,000 in the red every year. Insurance on the pantry truck: $1,100. Fuel: $950 and rising. Cleaning supplies, produce bags and other basics: $500.

Doreen Crawford raised six children in Wytopitlock while her husband worked in trucking. Sometimes they had enough to get by; sometimes not. The 91-year-old has been coming to the pantry for at least 15 years.

Crawford managed to lock in a price with her fuel vendor – $4.29 a gallon from September to May. But she was still sleeping without heat, preferring to “snuggle right down in there.” In the fall, she flicks on the heater for a few hours each morning, “just enough to take the chill out.”

Sho Magby, 50, was already cold as she circled through the pantry and considered a small supermarket cake. She hadn’t taken off her grey beanie.

She said she’d be out of firewood in the next few days. Her heating assistance appointment was over a month out.

“I mean, I could use my oven,” Magby said.

Staring down the months ahead, Bates hopes to keep people from making such a choice.

Surely, the sprawling global market would eventually grant some relief. A bubble would burst. The price would drop.

“I’ll grind through, probably, this winter,” Bates said.

He isn’t counting on the midterms to change much of anything. Bates voted for Trump multiple times but said he doesn’t agree with everything the president has done.

That’s typical around these parts, which Trump carried in 2024 by around 26 points.

“We vote Republican because it’s like the lesser of the two evils,” Bates said. “I don’t look at the Republican Party as my savior or anything. Because they’re not.”

He tallies the gallons he’s bought in the last few days. He counts how long it would take to pay it off. He keeps driving.

斯科特·贝茨坐在他的银色皮卡的方向盘后，用数字填空。

现在是早上8点51分，取暖油价格为每加仑4.85美元，比昨晚便宜了11美分。他可以买1000加仑，然后每加仑卖5.25美元左右。但他不会卖5.55美元，因为这是一场危机。

如果他当天的所有送货都没收到货款怎么办？他快速心算了一下，确认他的公司贝茨燃料公司将承担 48,000 美元的损失，而现在甚至还没到冬天。

“我们需要美元下跌，”他一边说着，一边刷新手机上一个实时追踪油价的应用程序。“现在我们看到的只是美分下跌。”

贝茨得以近距离观察缅因州独特的经济困境。在这里，大约50%的家庭依靠燃油作为主要取暖来源，这一比例高于其他任何州。

CNN记者瑞安·大卫·布朗报道

能源和取暖油价格飙升是缅因州选民在期中选举前夕仍然最为关注经济问题的原因之一。在贝茨的家乡阿鲁斯托克县，这个问题尤为突出。该县面积约6700平方英里，位于靠近加拿大边境的北部地区。在这个密西西比河以东最大的县，最近的杂货店可能也要一个小时的车程。

政客和评论员称之为“负担得起”。但在阿鲁斯托克，这意味着空荡荡的煤油罐、穿着雪服睡觉的孩子以及用塑料布封住窗户以防止冷风吹进来的父母。

共和党参议员苏珊·柯林斯和后来加入竞选的民主党候选人特洛伊·杰克逊势均力敌，都在努力说服缅因州选民相信他们能够解决问题。

科林斯本月宣布，在与特朗普政府官员合作后，提前发放了3800万美元的联邦家庭取暖援助资金。她一直与政府合作，努力使缅因州的产业免受贸易战的影响，包括上周五宣布的一些关税减免措施。此外，她还成功敦促政府释放更多此前储备的家用取暖油。

杰克逊曾谈到自己小时候担心家里会断暖气。他说，解决当前危机的根本办法是结束伊朗战争。他的竞选活动引导选民利用木材银行和逾期账单偿还计划等资源。

两位候选人都了解阿鲁斯托克面临的挑战。柯林斯自称是来自卡里布的“乡下姑娘”。杰克逊是来自阿拉加什的第五代伐木工人。

本周，缅因州能源资源部表示，全州居民加满一个标准275加仑油箱的费用将比去年增加约750美元。取暖油价格刚刚创下每加仑6.04美元的历史新高，比去年同期上涨了83%。

对于阿鲁斯托克县的许多人来说，这相当于750美元，他们根本拿不出这笔钱。从现在到春天，这些家庭可能要加四五次油。而且，即使伊朗战争结束，油价也不一定会暴跌。

贝茨拖欠了太多客户的款项，以至于自四月份以来就一直没有盈利。

“这是36年来我第一次觉得够了，”69岁的贝茨说。“这对每个人来说都太过分了。”

贝茨把车停到路边，查看手机。现在是上午10点，取暖油价格上涨了6美分，达到每加仑4.91美元。他可以等等看价格会不会回落。但也有可能价格会突破5美元，那样他今晚肯定会后悔一整晚。

他买了1000加仑。订单确认信息弹出——一个装饰着彩虹彩带的绿色动画对勾。

十月初，阿鲁斯托克县的树木披上了火红、橙黄的盛装。贝茨的客户中，已有三分之一开始赊账加油。他的司机们正忙着为那些一次只能负担得起50加仑汽油的家庭送油，这里用“50加仑”来指代他们。

通常这种小额送货都会收取服务费。毕竟，最近送货卡车的燃油成本大幅上涨。但贝茨本季免除了这项费用。

清晨的薄雾散去了，贝茨跟在一辆送货卡车和司机李·伍德身后。透过树叶和几头正在吃草的牛，可以清晰地看到缅因州的最高峰卡塔丁山。

他指出，有一家发电厂曾为当地人提供了几十年的就业机会，但随着生物质能产业的衰落而关闭。

贝茨燃料公司成立于1989年，挺过了经济大衰退和新冠疫情的难关。但如今的形势越来越严峻。贝茨表示，全球石油市场的基准价格是由“坐在某个公司办公室里”的交易员设定的。

伍德把送货卡车停在一栋有着蓝色百叶窗和美国国旗的房子前。他只用了38秒就泵出了50加仑水。

在阿鲁斯托克县的乡村地区，家庭收入中位数为54,400美元，比州中位数低约22,000美元。约16%的居民和12%的老年人生活在贫困线以下。当地工作通常与卡车运输、伐木和农业相关。

当有人付不起取暖费时，他们会联系非营利组织Avec Community Action。2025年，Avec收到了来自缅因州北部近8000个家庭的能源援助申请，并发放了超过300万美元的援助金。

该机构人手有限，却承受着巨大的压力。它负责阿鲁斯托克县以及周边两个县的事务。仅有20名员工，却要处理全州三分之一地区的数千份申请。

到九月下旬，工作人员需要回复 500 条语音留言。

Avec 的首席项目官 Heidi Rackliffe 周末会带着她的团队来给每个人回电话。

“他们依赖这些项目，”拉克利夫在谈到Avec的客户时说，“因为这是他们生存的方式。”

Avec 的首席执行官 Jason Parent 播放了一段居民的语音留言，这位居民最近花了 500 美元加满了她的水箱。

“杰森，我最近真的非常非常艰难。我都80岁了还在工作，努力维持生计。你能今天给我打个电话吗？这样我的焦虑就不会太严重了。”

走廊另一头，格雷塔·鲍尔正在处理一摞不断增加的申请，这些申请都来自首次寻求帮助的中产阶级家庭。鲍尔的办公室里放着苹果和迷你版的《三个火枪手》，因为她知道人们为了买燃料会节衣缩食。

一想到去年冬天美国历史上持续时间最长的政府停摆，她就生气不已。当时，联邦燃料资金被延迟发放了一个多月。

然后，Avec 不得不对最需要帮助的 80 岁和 90 岁老人进行分诊。

“我简直不敢相信这里是美国，”鲍尔说道。

正在热播：当辛勤工作不再足够时会发生什么？《美国房价危机》追踪了深陷住房负担能力危机的家庭，揭示了深刻而永久地重塑美国经济的结构性力量。

资金到位前几周，人们就开始申请紧急物资配送。还有一些人收入过高，不符合低收入家庭补助计划的资格，或者一次性补助金在寒冬将至前几个月就已经用完了。取暖补助的申请预约已经排到了二月份。

缅因州的固定收入老年人受到的冲击最为严重。该州是全美人口老龄化程度最高的州——23%的居民年龄在65岁及以上。

73岁的露丝·芒森在九月下旬给Avec公司打了电话。她的煤油罐快用完了，急需加满。寒气正从她那辆用了48年的拖车窗户缝隙和车身裂缝中渗进来。

蒙森和她丈夫每月靠1993美元的社会保障金生活，几十年来一直接受Avec的帮助。墙上挂着一块木牌，上面写着“蒙森庄园”，但她唯一买的奢侈品就是有线电视。

她说，高物价让她感觉“如同身处地狱”。

贝茨一直在派卡车去催收那些拖欠款项的客户。他不知道自己还能坚持多久。

贝茨可以退休，花更多时间和孙子一起制作枫糖浆。他家后面的棚子简直就是个科学实验室，里面堆满了罐子、蒸发器和成加仑的树液。

但退休也意味着他要卖掉全部八辆卡车，还要解雇工人。他的客户怎么办？他说，规模更大的燃油经销商绝不会容忍他背负如此巨额的债务。

“他们要去哪里？”

这个问题让迈克尔·福塞特在怀托皮特洛克食品救济站忙碌不已。25年前，他离开拉斯维加斯寻找廉价土地时，在地图上发现了“皮特洛克”这个地方。如今，他带领着一群志愿者，每隔几周就为救济站分发新鲜农产品、意大利面、鸡蛋等食品。

他说，他希望为社区带来一些“余地”。食品救济站的顾客几乎都是老年人，而且还有十几人在排队等候。

福塞特四处募捐，义务经营着这家食品救济站。他穿梭于镇上各处，收集瓶瓶罐罐，每个瓶子和罐子可以换取5美分的押金。有时，他还能额外获得25美元。

但食品储藏室每年亏损约2000美元。其中，运送食品的卡车保险费为1100美元，燃油费为950美元，而且还在上涨。清洁用品、蔬果袋和其他基本物资的开支为500美元。

多琳·克劳福德在怀托皮特洛克养育了六个孩子，她的丈夫则从事卡车运输工作。他们有时勉强糊口，有时却捉襟见肘。这位91岁的老人至少15年来一直光顾这家食品救济站。

克劳福德设法与她的燃油供应商锁定了一个价格——从九月到五月，每加仑4.29美元。但她​​仍然没有暖气，宁愿“蜷缩在里面”。到了秋天，她每天早上会打开暖气几个小时，“刚好驱散了寒意”。

50岁的肖·马格比（Sho Magby）在食品储藏室里转来转去，看着超市里卖的小蛋糕，已经觉得冷了。她还没摘下头上的灰色毛线帽。

她说她家的柴火几天后就用完了。她的取暖补助预约在一个多月以后。

“我的意思是，我可以用我的烤箱，”马格比说。

展望未来几个月，贝茨希望阻止人们做出这样的选择。

可以肯定的是，庞大的全球市场最终会带来一些缓解。泡沫终将破裂，价格终将下跌。

“我大概会熬过这个冬天，”贝茨说。

他并不指望中期选举能改变什么。贝茨曾多次投票给特朗普，但他表示并非赞同总统的所有做法。

这在这一带很常见，特朗普在 2024 年以大约 26 个百分点的优势赢得了这一地区。

“我们投票给共和党，是因为它是两害相权取其轻，”贝茨说。“我并不把共和党视为救世主什么的，因为他们根本不是。”

他清点了一下过去几天买的汽油加仑数，又算了算要多久才能还清油钱，然后继续开车。