Record diesel is a supply problem that will outlast contract season, and the shippers who treat carriers as partners will keep their capacity when it tightens.
U.S. retail diesel reached a record $6.505 a gallon as of September 19, according to AAA, and the Energy Information Administration's weekly on-highway average has set back-to-back records of its own, reaching $6.285 for the week of September 14. Most of the discussion so far has centered on what these prices mean for trucking companies, yet the shippers who depend on those trucks have just as much at stake in how the next several months unfold. As the CEO of a carrier that buys a great deal of that fuel, I want to offer shippers a view from our side of the table on what to expect and what they can control.
Shippers should not expect this to reverse before contract season, because the EIA's latest Short-Term Energy Outlook forecasts that U.S. distillate inventories will fall below 100 million barrels this month and stay below their five-year low through the end of 2026 and most of 2027. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that a shortage of oil tankers threatens to keep diesel expensive even if crude prices ease, since fewer available ships are slowing deliveries while record freight costs squeeze refiners. Freight budgets for the fourth quarter and bids for 2027 should assume elevated fuel costs, because a budget that counts on relief by spring will likely need to be rebuilt by midyear.
A budget that counts on relief by spring will likely need to be rebuilt by midyear.
Fuel surcharge programs deserve a close look first, since they are where well-intended cost control most often backfires on shippers who believe they are protecting their budgets. CCJ recently pointed out that the surcharge figures behind the major spot rate reports were already well behind the market, and many contract schedules carry the same lag through monthly resets, outdated base prices, or caps negotiated when diesel was far cheaper. A schedule like that looks like savings on paper, but when a carrier's fuel cost runs well ahead of what it recovers, the difference shows up as tender rejections and fall-through on the lanes shippers care about most. A weekly reset against the current EIA figure also works in the shipper's favor, since it passes along relief the moment prices begin to fall.
Those rejections are harder to absorb in a market where ACT Research's Driver Availability Index tightened to 35.9 in August, according to CCJ, and spot equipment capacity reached decade lows. Carriers hauling spot freight typically receive no separate surcharge at all, and FTR and Truckstop reported earlier this month that surging diesel had largely wiped out the seasonal gains in broker-posted rates. That leaves the smallest and least capitalized carriers absorbing the worst of this, and some of them will not make it through the winter. Shippers who built routing guides around the lowest available rate during the freight recession are about to be reminded that cheap freight has consequences when the trucks behind those rates disappear.
Cheap freight has consequences when the trucks behind those rates disappear.
Dock operations are the lever shippers control most directly, and few of them treat detention, appointment windows, or schedule changes as fuel costs, even though that is exactly how carriers experience them. Every hour a truck waits at a dock with the engine running to keep the cab habitable, or with a reefer unit holding temperature, burns fuel without moving a mile. Missed appointments and last-minute schedule changes do similar damage, pushing carriers into longer and less efficient routes as they try to recover lost time on the rest of the week's loads. Shippers who reduce detention, offer wider appointment windows, expand drop-trailer programs, and give carriers more lead time to plan are lowering the fuel cost embedded in their own rates, and they become the customers carriers compete to serve when capacity is scarce.
Load planning matters more at $6.50 diesel than it did a year ago, when AAA put the national average at $3.71, because a trailer that leaves half full burns most of the fuel a full one would while carrying half the freight to pay for it. Carrier selection deserves the same attention, and at Gulf Relay our recognition as a multi-year SmartWay Excellence Award recipient reflects sustained investment in idle reduction, governed speeds, aerodynamic equipment, and driver coaching that lowers the diesel burned on every load we haul. Shippers can and should ask their carriers for fuel performance data, because efficiency now translates directly into what it costs to move their freight.
FMCSA's nationwide hours-of-service waiver for fuel haulers, which runs from September 16 through December 16 and allows up to 16 hours of driving in a 24-hour period, should help keep fuel moving to terminals and stations through the fall. Shippers should not read it as a signal of relief on price, however, since it addresses a delivery bottleneck and leaves the underlying cost pressure exactly where it was.
The shippers who come through this period in the best position will be the ones who treat their carriers as partners with a shared interest in a stable, well-run freight network. That means paying a surcharge that reflects what fuel actually costs, running docks that respect a driver's time, and choosing carriers for reliability and efficiency rather than the lowest line on a bid sheet. Capacity that felt plentiful through the freight recession is always the first to disappear once a recession starts to turn, as this one now is, and the shippers who remember that will find carriers ready to serve them when it counts.
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