CRON job can't find my model/table using whenever gem

Question

Set up my whenever schedule.rb as:

env :PATH, ENV['PATH']

set :output, "./cron.log"

every 1.minute do
    runner "Stock.fetch_and_update_stock_data"
end

and in cron.log:

bundler: failed to load command: bin/rails (bin/rails)
Could not find table 'stocks' (ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid)

I am running this in WSL and have only followed official installation steps.

running whenever command:

* * * * * /bin/bash -l -c 'cd /home/jcsii98/avion/stocktrading_api 
&& bundle exec bin/rails runner -e production 
'\''Stock.fetch_and_update_stock_data'\'' >> ./cron.log 2>&1'

I have tried running a simple puts method in my model like Stock.whenever_sample and it was successful in returning the puts statement so I think the problem is really just cron not finding the Stocks table. I have also tried running the model method in rails console manually and it behaved as expected.