Most freight contracts add a fuel surcharge that moves with the U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA) weekly diesel price. Enter a diesel price to see how large the surcharge gets, and what share of the freight bill it becomes, for a truckload, LTL, and rail shipment.
At a gallon, the fuel surcharge would make up this share of the freight bill (base rate plus surcharge):
This chart shows the weekly EIA retail diesel price since 2006. EIA surveys 590 stations and truck stops each Monday; its estimate for the latest week has a standard error of about . In June 2022 EIA switched to a new sample that reads about 5 to 8 cents lower than the old one did in the same weeks, and it did not revise earlier prices.
The next chart runs the same formulas on every week of that history, holding today's base rates fixed. The rings show what public carriers reported as fuel surcharge revenue divided by total revenue: each full year from their annual 10-K filings, and January to June 2026 from their second-quarter 10-Q filings.
Suppose the rest of the freight rate stays flat, with no inflation. Then the only thing that changes the bill is the fuel surcharge. Pick a starting diesel price, and this section shows how much the total freight bill changes when diesel moves to the price you entered above.
Freight is only one part of what goods cost. Counting every trip from farm or mine to factory, warehouse, and store, for-hire trucking and rail make up about 7% of what retailers pay for the goods they sell, and about 2% of all consumer spending, based on the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) 2023 input-output tables. If the whole fuel-driven freight increase is passed along, prices would change by about:
The consumer goods range depends on how stores pass along the cost. The low end adds the higher freight cost dollar for dollar. The high end assumes stores keep the same percentage markup. These figures count only the freight channel. They leave out private truck fleets that shippers run themselves and parcel carriers, which also pay more for fuel, so the real effect is likely larger. They also leave out what consumers pay directly for gasoline and diesel.
The next chart runs each formula across diesel prices from $1 to $10. The surcharge share rises quickly at first, then levels off, because the surcharge becomes a larger part of the total. The dashed lines show two published tariffs. Most shippers pay less than the published rate, so the solid LTL and rail lines use what carriers actually collect, from their filings.
The contract sets a base diesel price, often near $1.20 to $1.25, and an assumed fuel economy, often 6 miles per gallon. Each week the surcharge per mile equals the EIA price minus the base price, divided by the miles per gallon. The shipper pays that on top of the per-mile base rate.
Less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers publish a table that sets a surcharge percentage for each diesel price, applied to the shipment's charge after any discount and updated weekly with the EIA price. Large shippers often negotiate their own tables. What carriers collect runs well below the published rate: at the 2025 average diesel price of , Old Dominion's tariff was , while the fitted average that LTL carriers collected was of their base charges. The calculator uses what carriers collect.
Large railroads mostly use the same EIA diesel price, but average it over a month and apply it about two months later. Union Pacific says in its 10-K that changing fuel prices can take up to two months to affect its surcharge. That lag is why rail rates move later than truck rates. Union Pacific's published carload surcharge adds 0.5% for each 5¢ above $1.35, but many contracts use their own terms, so what railroads collect is lower. The calculator uses what they collect.