Figures verified against EIA, week ending August 10, 2026
The 2026 Middle East oil shock has added $1.45 per gallon to US diesel. The EIA weekly national average was $3.809/gallon for the week ending February 23, 2026, peaked at $5.643 for the week ending April 6, and stands at $5.257 for the week ending August 10, 2026. For a truck running 2,500 miles a week at 6.5 MPG, that is $557 a week or about $2,411 a month in extra fuel, and it moves fuel cost per mile from $0.59 to $0.81.
This page was first published on March 8, 2026, while the shock was still unfolding. It has been rebuilt against the EIA weekly series so the figures match the published record rather than the projections made at the time. Every price below carries the week it belongs to. Broader market context sits on our freight rates and market conditions hub.
How much has diesel risen in 2026?
The whole story is in one public dataset: EIA's weekly US No. 2 diesel retail price survey. The national average sat at $3.809/gallon for the week ending February 23, 2026. It moved to $3.897 a week later, then jumped to $4.859 for the week ending March 9 — a rise of $0.96 in a single weekly print. It kept climbing to $5.643 for the week ending April 6, the 2026 high. It then fell back to $4.578 by July 6 before rising again to $5.257 for the week ending August 10, 2026.
Two figures are worth carrying rather than the headline number, because they stay true for longer: 2026 to date has run $3.46 to $5.64 and averaged $4.80. Any budget built on a single week is a budget built on the wrong number.
What moved underneath it. EIA's weekly WTI spot price was $65.87/barrel for the week ending February 27, 2026, $78.37 on March 6, and $96.07 by March 20 — a 45.9% rise in three weeks — peaking at $105.67 for the week ending April 3. Brent ran $71.36 to $111.40 over the same window and peaked at $124.61 for the week ending April 10. Both had eased by the week ending July 31, 2026: WTI $84.51, Brent $91.63.
Why a Gulf disruption reaches a US truck stop. EIA reports that oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz averaged 21 million barrels per day in 2022, about 21% of global petroleum liquids consumption. Crude trades on a global market, so the price the US pays moves with a disruption anywhere on that market — and the US is still a large importer, at about 6.2 million barrels per day for the week ending July 31, 2026 in EIA's weekly imports series. Domestic production does not insulate the pump from a global price.
For how a fuel move fits alongside the other indicators worth watching, see our guide to the freight market indicators that matter and our 2026 diesel price outlook.
Where is diesel cheapest and most expensive right now?
The national average hides the number that actually decides where you fuel. For the week ending August 10, 2026, EIA recorded California at $6.618/gallon and the Gulf Coast at $5.044 — a spread of $1.57/gallon, worth about $0.24/mile in fuel cost at 6.5 MPG. Each row below links to the EIA series it came from.
| Region | Wk ending 02/23/26 | Wk ending 04/06/26 | Wk ending 08/10/26 | Change since 02/23 | Extra $/week* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | $4.944 | $7.567 | $6.618 | Up $1.67 (33.9%) | $644 |
| New England (PADD 1A) | $4.201 | $5.997 | $5.514 | Up $1.31 (31.3%) | $505 |
| West Coast ex-CA (PADD 5) | $4.050 | $6.366 | $5.526 | Up $1.48 (36.4%) | $568 |
| Rocky Mountain (PADD 4) | $3.683 | $5.412 | $5.271 | Up $1.59 (43.1%) | $611 |
| Midwest (PADD 2) | $3.798 | $5.304 | $5.181 | Up $1.38 (36.4%) | $532 |
| Gulf Coast (PADD 3) | $3.489 | $5.415 | $5.044 | Up $1.55 (44.6%) | $598 |
| US national average | $3.809 | $5.643 | $5.257 | Up $1.45 (38.0%) | $557 |
*Extra fuel cost per week versus the 02/23/26 baseline, assuming 2,500 miles at 6.5 MPG (385 gallons). Prices are EIA weekly prints; the 04/06/26 column is the week of the national peak and is not necessarily each region's own high. Every price links to its EIA series above.
Two practical consequences. First, fuel-stop planning is worth real money when the interregional spread is this wide — a full 300-gallon fill bought $0.50/gal lower saves $150. Our fuel-saving guide for truck drivers goes through the rest of the levers. Second, if you run multiple states, the price you pay and the fuel tax you owe are separate problems — run the fuel tax side through our IFTA calculator.
What does the diesel increase cost you per mile?
At 6.5 MPG, fuel cost per mile went from $0.59 at $3.809 diesel to $0.81 at $5.257 — an increase of $0.22/mile. Over 2,500 miles a week that is $557, and about $2,411 a month at 4.33 weeks. Run your own MPG and mileage through the fuel cost calculator rather than borrowing these inputs.
The number that matters is total cost, not fuel cost. ATRI's operational costs of trucking research puts average marginal cost at $2.336/mile for 2025, of which $1.854/mile is everything except fuel. Add $0.81/mile of fuel at today's price and the all-in figure lands near $2.66/mile.
That is an industry average and it is not your breakeven. A paid-off truck beating 6.5 MPG will run under it; a financed truck with high insurance and heavy deadhead will run over it. The point of the average is the direction of the error: a rate you priced against a March cost model is materially below cost today. Rebuild the figure from your own settlements with the cost per mile calculator, then set a floor with the rate per mile calculator and check individual loads with the profit per load calculator.
Empty miles cost more now too. At $0.81/mile in fuel alone, a 150-mile deadhead is $121 of diesel before anything else is counted — against $88 at February's price. Price it into the load decision with our deadhead calculator and see the structural fixes in our guide to avoiding deadhead miles.
Do fuel surcharges cover a diesel spike this size?
Most surcharge schedules index to the EIA weekly national diesel average and step on a sliding scale. A widely used broker convention adds about $0.01/mile of surcharge for every $0.06/gallon of indexed diesel increase. That is a convention, not a standard — and note what it assumes: $0.06 per gallon divided by $0.01 per mile is exactly 6.0 MPG. A truck that does worse than 6.0 MPG is under-recovered by the formula itself, before any timing problem.
Applied to the $1.45/gallon increase since February, that convention implies roughly $0.24/mile of additional surcharge. Actual fuel cost rose $0.22/mile at 6.5 MPG. So the formula is approximately right for a mid-efficiency truck — the recurring loss is timing, not the coefficient. EIA publishes the survey on Monday afternoons; a schedule that resets biweekly or monthly leaves the carrier funding the increase in between, and during the week ending March 9, 2026 that gap was $0.96/gallon of unindexed cost.
Which side of the market you sell into changes the picture. Contract freight priced before the shock carries a surcharge schedule written for a different fuel world; spot pricing resets faster but exposes you to volume risk. Worth noting that the usual direction reversed this year: DAT-reported dry van spot passed contract in June 2026, the first time since February 2022. Our spot versus contract freight comparison works through the trade-off, and our rate negotiation guide covers how to raise the surcharge floor rather than the linehaul.
Reefer carriers carry an extra exposure. A refrigeration unit burns diesel independently of the tractor, and standard per-mile surcharge formulas do not account for it. We are not going to quote a burn rate we cannot source — use the specification for your own unit and its running hours, multiply by $5.257, and treat the result as an uncompensated cost per load unless your rate confirmation says otherwise. Our reefer versus dry van profitability comparison sets out the rest of the cost difference.
A previous version of this section carried a five-row table of spot and contract rate changes by equipment type sourced in part to "TDE internal data". That is us citing ourselves, and the underlying figures were not independently verifiable, so the table has been removed rather than restated.
What the oil shock changed beyond the pump
Fuel is the effect we can measure precisely. The freight-pattern effects are real but harder to quantify without a source, so the framing below stays at the level the evidence supports.
Hormuz is a crude and LNG chokepoint, not a container route
A correction to the original version of this page: Asia-to-Europe and Asia-to-US container traffic does not transit the Strait of Hormuz. Hormuz is the only entrance to the Persian Gulf, which is a dead end; the container risk in this region runs through Bab el-Mandeb, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Hormuz exposure is crude oil and LNG export volume. That distinction matters because it separates a fuel-price problem from a transit-time problem, and they call for different responses. Our supply chain disruption guide for truckers covers the transit-time side.
Gulf Coast petrochemical freight sees both sides of a crude spike
The Houston, Beaumont, Lake Charles and Baton Rouge corridor converts crude and naphtha into chemicals and plastics, so feedstock cost feeds straight into producer margins. Carriers running Texas and Louisiana chemical and hazmat freight should watch producer output announcements rather than infer volume from the oil price — the relationship runs both ways and we have no public volume figure to cite for 2026.
Higher crude improves domestic drilling economics
Sustained crude above pre-shock levels improves the economics of Permian, Bakken and Eagle Ford production, which historically pulls flatbed demand for pipe, drilling equipment and frac sand. We are not quoting a lane rate for that freight: the figures on the earlier version of this page were unsourced, and a rate band presented as what you will earn is not something we will publish. Check current postings on your own load boards before repositioning.
Fuel cost compounds with the other pressures on small carriers
A sustained cost increase of $0.22/mile lands on top of everything else moving through the 2026 market. See our analysis of the carrier exodus reshaping freight in 2026, the tariff impact on trucking rates, and the cross-border freight disruption for how these stack.
Eight steps to protect your margin at $5.26 diesel
You cannot control the crude price. You can control the cost model you price against, the surcharge terms you accept, and how many empty miles you buy.
1. Re-run your cost per mile at today's diesel, not March's
Fuel at $5.257/gal and 6.5 MPG is $0.81/mile. Add ATRI's $1.854/mile excluding fuel and your all-in cost is roughly $2.66/mile before your own fixed costs are checked. Rebuild the number with your real MPG and settlements rather than a national average.
2. Audit the fuel surcharge you were actually paid
Pull your last ten settlements and compare the surcharge paid against the EIA weekly national average for the week each load ran. EIA publishes the survey on Monday afternoons, so a schedule that updates biweekly or monthly is structurally behind during a rising market.
3. Push for weekly, EIA-indexed surcharge adjustments
Ask for weekly rather than biweekly or monthly resets, a lower base diesel trigger, and a stated floor. Every one of those is a contract term you can negotiate; none of them requires the broker to raise the linehaul.
4. Buy fuel where the regional spread is in your favour
EIA's regional series show a $1.57/gal gap between California and the Gulf Coast for the week ending August 10, 2026. Filling 300 gallons at a price $0.50/gal lower saves $150 on that fill. Plan fuel stops against the PADD table rather than by habit.
5. Price deadhead in fuel dollars before you accept the load
At $0.81/mile in fuel alone, a 150-mile deadhead costs $121 before insurance, maintenance or tyres. Put that number into the load-acceptance decision, not into the month-end review.
6. Measure what a half-MPG is worth to you
Over 2,500 miles, moving from 6.5 to 7.0 MPG cuts consumption by about 27.5 gallons — $145 a week at today's price. Whether slower cruising, terrain-aware lane selection or idle reduction gets you there is a question for your own truck's data, not a rule of thumb.
7. Treat surcharge floors and accessorials as the negotiable part
Linehaul is set by the market; detention, layover, tarping and the surcharge floor are set by whoever asks. During a fuel spike those line items are the fastest margin you can recover on freight you are already hauling.
8. Get a dispatcher who prices fuel into the booking decision
The load that looks acceptable on a rate sheet can be below cost once the deadhead, the fuel corridor and the surcharge lag are priced in. That arithmetic has to happen before the load is booked, not after the settlement arrives.
Step eight is the part we do. Our dispatchers price fuel corridors, deadhead and the surcharge lag into the booking decision rather than the settlement review — see how our dispatch service works.
How the March 2026 projections actually resolved
When this page was first published on March 8, 2026 it offered three forward scenarios with probability weights. Those weights had no named source and the outcome is now known, so the scenarios are reproduced here only so the record is honest, set against what EIA subsequently published.
| Projected in March 2026 | What EIA recorded | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| De-escalation: diesel falls to $4.00–$4.20 within 4–6 weeks | Diesel was $5.643 (wk ending 04/06/26) and $5.608 (04/13/26) — the 2026 high | Wrong — diesel rose |
| Prolonged standoff: diesel $4.40–$4.80 for 3–6 months | Jun–Aug 2026 ran $4.578 (07/06) to $5.348 (08/03); $5.257 on 08/10 | Mostly above the band |
| Escalation: crude past $120, diesel $5.20–$5.60, $6.00+ in California | Brent peaked $124.61 (04/10/26); diesel peaked $5.643 (04/06/26); California $6.618 (08/10/26) | This is what happened |
Actuals from the EIA weekly diesel series, California series and Brent spot series. The March probability weights are not reproduced: they were attributed to "analyst consensus" with no analyst named.
The transferable lesson. The forecast was wrong in both direction and magnitude, and a carrier who priced contract freight off it in March would have carried the difference for five months. Price against the weekly print you can verify, not against a scenario. That is the same discipline our spring 2026 freight recession update and 2026 industry forecast should be read with.
Sources
- EIA — Weekly US No. 2 Diesel Retail Prices (national) — all national diesel figures and the chart series.
- EIA regional weekly diesel series — California, New England (PADD 1A), Midwest (PADD 2), Gulf Coast (PADD 3), Rocky Mountain (PADD 4), West Coast excluding California (PADD 5).
- EIA — Cushing, OK WTI spot price FOB, weekly and Europe Brent spot price FOB, weekly.
- EIA — Weekly US imports of crude oil.
- EIA Today in Energy — Strait of Hormuz oil flows — 21 million b/d in 2022, about 21% of global petroleum liquids consumption.
- ATRI — An Analysis of the Operational Costs of Trucking — $2.336/mile total for 2025, $1.854/mile excluding fuel.
Related reading
- Freight Rates & Market Conditions — the hub this article belongs to
- Diesel Price Outlook 2026 — the longer-run fuel picture
- Fuel-Saving Tips for Truck Drivers — what actually moves MPG
- Spot Market vs Contract Freight — which side reprices faster when fuel moves
- Nearshoring Impact on Trucking — where import volume is actually shifting
- 2026 Freight Rate Recovery — rate context beyond fuel