Chelsea Tatum fired up her Ford F-350 Diesel, the kind that has those dual wheels in the rear. She backed the massive truck out of her tiny driveway in Lander, Wyoming. Plopped on top was a live-in camper. “Yeah, you can't see anything,” Tatum chuckled. “Definitely smacked a rock, a large boulder here or there.”She uses the rig for road trips and driving rough terrain to her favorite hiking spots. But on this spring day, it was just show and tell. Tatum leaped out, a couple feet to the ground. She was no match for the F-350, sizewise. A pickup attached to a horse trailer parked outside of a gas station in rural Wyoming. The sticker price for diesel is $5.59. Caitlin Tan/Marketplace“I think it's nice as a woman to have something that's, like, big and tough and loud,” she said, sporting Lisa Frank Crocs and bright red lipstick. But that tough and loud feeling is burning a hole in her jeans pocket. “I only get 10 miles to the gallon with the camper on it,” Tatum said.Lately, it’s $200 to fill up. Since the start of the war in Iran, diesel prices in the U.S. have soared, averaging $5.66 most recently — up about $2 since last year. Often, the focus of those prices is on the long haul trucker industry and small businesses. But in some Mountain West and northern Plains states, about every third vehicle on the road is a pickup truck. Double the national average. Wyoming has the highest ratio of pickup drivers. Everyday people in Wyoming depend on — and prefer — the power of diesel. Like Tatum. But with the price of diesel lately, she is having to think carefully about whether to drive her car instead of her truck.“It's a lot of math and being, ‘How much is it gonna cost me to get there? Does it make sense?’”Right now, it does not make sense. But that does not mean she is going to park it by the side of the road with a “for sale” sign.“There's something about a big truck that makes a lot of noise,” Tatum said. “It's feeding some primal need of having this, like, big monster truck.”In Wyoming, diesel engines roar through neighborhoods. Big trucks sandwich small cars in parking lots. And if you do not own one, you know someone who does. “My mother, who is 85 years old, has this gigantic truck,” said Melodie Edwards, a longtime Wyoming resident. “I was like, ‘Mom, would you like to sell that truck?’ ‘No.’ She must have a giant truck.”Edwards is the host of The Modern West podcast, which explores the region’s culture and way of life. That includes diesels. “There's a certain pride in that, by a lot of people, they're driving a fossil fuel vehicle,” said Edwards. “And they're loud. That's just how it is. It's just sort of like the soundtrack of the American West.” Marta Johann uses her big diesel to pull horse trailers. She rides her own and other people’s horses regularly, getting the animals used to different mountain terrain.Caitlin Tan/MarketplaceAnd it is hard to get that song out of your head.“It would be really hard to pry the truck out of people's iron grips,” she said. “They're not going to give them up easily.” In fact, diesel prices have been relatively high since the pandemic, and there are still plenty of Wyomingites driving big diesel trucks.“Sometimes our snow will just drift all the way over the highway, and you need to just be able to get through a crazy snow drift,” Edwards said.Or you need the big truck for taking care of your animals. Just outside of Lander, is Marta Johann’s place with sprawling grass fields and sagebrush. On a crisp spring evening, she was leading a frisky brown and white horse named Clementine.“She’s really feeling like a free spirit right now,” Johann said over Clementine’s whinny.Riding horses is the thing Johann loves to do. People even hire her to take their own horses out for training and exercise.“We go, not just out of here,” she said, pointing to the closest mountain peaks. “We go two, three mountain ranges over to get horses in new places and exposed.”Johann pulls her horse trailer with a Ram 2500. Which recently ended up at the shop.“Coming back from our last trip of hauling the clutch went out on it,” she said. Another expense on top of diesel prices. But Johann is certainly not selling it. “You just kind of get kind of sucked into that spot being like, ‘I guess I have to pay if I want to continue this lifestyle,’” she said. Because there is just something about a big old diesel.