About
About Monday Diesel
The DOE diesel number, read plainly and translated to the mile, with no advice attached.
What this is
Monday Diesel is a weekly brief plus a set of always-current data pages on the price of on-highway diesel in the United States: the Monday DOE number most fuel surcharge schedules peg to, its regional breakouts, the gaps between regions, the daily ULSD spot at the two public hubs, and the whole thing translated to cost per mile at a stated reference. It is built for the people who feel the number in their week: owner-operators, small fleet managers, freight brokers writing surcharge schedules, and farm and construction buyers running diesel equipment.
Who writes it
Monday Diesel is published by Alex Willen. The data pages are generated from the public record on a fixed schedule; the weekly brief reads what moved and writes it up in plain English. Every hard number on every page traces back to the agency that published it. Spotted an error, or want to reach the editor? Reply to any weekly brief — corrections are read and fixed at the source.
Where the numbers come from
Everything comes from the US Energy Information Administration: the weekly on-highway diesel price survey, priced as of Monday and posted Tuesday morning (the DOE number, by region), and the daily ULSD spot series for New York Harbor and the Gulf Coast. The spreads, the retail-minus-spot margin proxy and the cost-per-mile figures are arithmetic on those series; the methodology page lists the sources and the refresh schedule. Nothing here is estimated, interpolated or sourced from a private data vendor. EIA data is a work of the US government and is in the public domain; we redistribute it with attribution and add only the arithmetic and the plain-English read.
How often it updates
EIA posts the diesel number Tuesday mornings, priced as of Monday; the pipeline pulls it and the pages update the same day, with the brief following it. The spot series are quoted for each business day, but EIA publishes them in batches, so the newest spot print can run several days behind the retail number. Every figure is dated to its own data week, and every page carries a visible "Last updated" stamp for the site refresh itself.
What we will and will not do
We report public data and attribute every hard number to its source. We do not forecast prices. We never tell a reader when or where to buy fuel, what surcharge to set, or how to price a load, in any phrasing. The per-mile figures use a stated 6.5 mpg reference and are illustrations of the index, not billing math. We are not investment, hedging or purchasing advice; decisions are yours to make with your own counsel and the primary data.
New here? Start with how to read this, or see where the data comes from and how often it refreshes on the methodology page.