As ever with things such as the Autumn Statement and Spending Review, the devil is in the detail - in the latter's case about 160-plus pages of detail.
While the admission of fuel duty from George Osborne's statement this week was, on the face of it, welcomed his admission has proved to be far more significant than first thought.
While FairFuelUK has continued to make the case for a fuel duty cut as stimulus for the economy, it has fallen once more on deaf ears at the Treasury.
Instead, April looks set to bring a return to the fuel-duty escalator that Osborne has effectively cancelled out during the past five years, allowing operators to enjoy falling fuel prices in the past year or so.
That breather is over for the industry. The few lines that are so significant in the Spending Review - that will now heap more cost pressure onto operators - are hidden away in the multitude of tables within.
It's simpy a forecast of revenue from fuel duties from 2015/16 through to 2020/21 that's done the damage. It shows fuel duty revenue starting at £27.4bn and climbing steadily to £29.7bn by the end of the five-year period.
That's an increase in revenue of £2.3bn overall, all at a time when the emergence of hybrid and "green" car technology will logically reduce tax take (from cars). With consumption already high thanks to lower fuel prices, the money will have to come from somewhere, and that's an increase in fuel duty.
Pushed on the issue, the Office for Budget Responsibility has since clarified that their duty forecast is based on the assumption that as the chancellor hasn't said otherwise it's business as usual.
That in the case of fuel duty means returing to an escalator that sees duty pegged to the Retail Price Index. Currently that measure of inflation stands at 1% but by 2020/21 is forecast to be 3.2%.
While the chancellor could of course defer the rise in the Budget in March 2016, he's cash-strapped and the temptation may prove too much. The fuel duty holiday appears to be over.