This week's DOE on-highway diesel price

Each week the US Energy Information Administration surveys fuel stations and publishes the average retail price of on-highway diesel, priced as of Monday and posted Tuesday morning (a Monday federal holiday slips it to Wednesday). EIA files it as the U.S. On-Highway Diesel Fuel Price; the trade calls it the DOE number. It matters because it is the contractual index of US trucking: most fuel surcharge schedules between carriers, brokers and shippers peg to this exact figure, so when it moves, surcharge rates across the industry move with it on a fixed formula.

The per-mile figures on this page use a stated reference efficiency of 6.5 miles per gallon, a plain mid-fleet figure for a loaded Class 8 truck. It is a reference point for comparing weeks, not an estimate of any particular truck. At that reference, a 500-mile haul burns about 77 gallons, which is how the haul-cost line converts a cents-per-gallon move into dollars.

On-highway means taxed pump diesel, the fuel trucks actually buy. It is not dyed off-road diesel, and it is not a wholesale or rack price. Regional breakouts of the same survey are on the region pages.

One break in the history: EIA redesigned the survey sample effective June 13, 2022, expanding it from roughly 400 to nearly 600 stations, and says estimates before and after that date are not directly comparable. The chart marks the break, and comparisons that reach across it, including the vs-normal median while pre-2022 years remain in its window, carry that caveat.