Supply Chain Action Points
Read this first — the conclusion, and the moves to make:
- In the next 14 days, audit the fuel surcharge formula on your top ten lanes: pull the index it references, the mileage band and the mpg assumption in writing, and compare them against the tractors actually running your freight.
- Separate fuel from linehaul on every invoice for the next 30 days so you can watch the two moves independently; contract talks that lump them together give away the fuel argument for free.
- For any lane touching California, ask for a California-specific fuel basis instead of the national average, because the $1.701 a gallon gap does not get smoothed away in your actual cost.
- Before your next renewal, request an all-in rate with a stated fuel basis and a defined reset cadence, and test it against a $3.897 diesel scenario to see what you are really locking in.
- Set a monthly trigger: if the Hormuz reopening slips and diesel stays above the May peak of $5.640, reprice the long-haul lanes first, because that is where a per-mile surcharge does the most damage.
The U.S. national average diesel price reached $5.350 per gallon as of June 1, up $1.899 year-over-year and $1.453 above the pre-Hormuz blockade baseline of $3.897. Truckload fuel surcharges have risen to $0.70 per mile from $0.45 pre-blockade, adding approximately $150 per 600-mile standard load. California diesel hit $7.051/gallon. The EIA has revised its 2026 diesel forecast dramatically upward from $3.50 to $4.80/gal annual average, with Q2 projected at $5.61/gal. Bank of America raised its Brent crude forecast to $77.50/barrel, while Fitch projected $87/barrel assuming Hormuz reopening by late July. Despite the fuel cost surge, truckload rate increases are primarily demand-and-supply-driven, with spot rates hitting records even as diesel prices eased slightly from their $5.640 May peak.
The Analysis
US diesel averaged $5.350 a gallon on 1 June. That is $1.899 above a year earlier and $1.453 above the $3.897 that was normal before the Hormuz blockade. The truckload fuel surcharge went from $0.45 a mile to $0.70, which adds roughly $150 to a standard 600-mile load. California diesel hit $7.051. EIA lifted its 2026 diesel forecast from $3.50 to $4.80 a gallon with Q2 at $5.61, Bank of America put Brent at $77.50, and Fitch projected $87 assuming Hormuz reopens by late July. Spot rates hit records even as diesel eased off its $5.640 May peak.
Everyone is staring at the $0.70. I read the two numbers the table does not print: the mileage the surcharge quietly assumes, and what the linehaul does while you are busy arguing about fuel.
It is worth taking apart what actually moves the money here, which lane carries the load, when the pass-through lands, and the one line the fuel headline leaves out.
Start with the three numbers that set everything else. Diesel at $5.350 a gallon on 1 June, up $1.899 from a year earlier and $1.453 above the $3.897 pre-blockade baseline. The fuel surcharge at $0.70 a mile, up from $0.45 before the blockade. And California at $7.051, which is $1.701 above the national average. Those three describe a cost shock that is being passed through a formula, and the formula is where the real argument happens.
Why now is plain enough to state without decoration. The Hormuz blockade put a risk premium into crude, crude feeds diesel with a lag, and carriers recover fuel through a surcharge table indexed to a published price and paid on miles driven. EIA moving its 2026 forecast from $3.50 to $4.80 a gallon and putting Q2 at $5.61 is the clearest sign this was not fully anticipated. Bank of America at $77.50 Brent and Fitch at $87, the latter assuming Hormuz reopens by late July, tell you the range the market is arguing over. The surcharge is the mechanism that drags that argument onto your invoice.
Who pays what depends on the lane far more than on the fuel price. A shipper running long-haul dry van at a 600-mile average absorbs the full $150 a load, because the surcharge is charged per mile and long lanes have the most miles in them. A regional shipper on 150-mile drops pays roughly a quarter of that, which is why a national diesel headline can feel like a non-event in a short-haul network. California is the outlier: with diesel at $7.051 against a $5.350 national average, any lane touching California carries a $1.701 a gallon penalty that a national table smooths away for everyone else. If your freight originates or terminates in California, the national number is not your number.
When it lands is worth being precise about, because the timing is asymmetric. Fuel surcharge tables reset on a lag against a published index, so a crude move appears in your invoice a week or two later. The same lag applies on the way down, and that is the part nobody plans for: you pay quickly and you get the money back slowly. The EIA revision from $3.50 to $4.80 is a warning about the second wave, because lifting an annual average that far means the forecasters expect the elevated level to persist rather than spike and fade.
The piece to notice is what the surcharge table quietly assumes. Divide the surcharge by the diesel price and you get gallons per mile, which is just the inverse of fuel economy. Before the blockade, $0.45 divided by $3.897 implies about 8.7 miles to the gallon. Now, $0.70 divided by $5.350 implies about 7.6. Look at the increment instead: the surcharge rose $0.25 a mile for a $1.453 increase in diesel, which implies roughly 5.8 miles to the gallon on the margin. So the table has not simply been repriced for a higher fuel price; the mileage assumption underneath it has been re-based downward. That matters, because the surcharge you pay is computed on an assumed consumption level, not on the tractor actually pulling your freight. If your carrier runs newer and more efficient equipment than the table assumes, you are subsidising that gap, and you will never find it on a fuel line item, because it is not a line item.
The other half of the ignored point is sitting right in the numbers you already have. Spot rates hit records even as diesel eased off its $5.640 May peak, and the reporting says truckload rate increases are primarily demand-and-supply-driven. Put those two sentences together and the real exposure appears: you are paying a surcharge that is cost-driven on top of a linehaul that is demand-driven. The surcharge is only the visible half. When diesel eventually falls back toward that $3.897 baseline, the fuel line will fall and the linehaul will not, because the linehaul was never about fuel. Shippers who treat the fuel line as the whole cost shock are going to be surprised by what the total does on the way down, not only on the way up.
Flip one assumption and the whole picture shifts. Fitch's $87 a barrel assumes Hormuz reopens by late July. If that reopening slips, $87 stops being a forecast and becomes a floor, and a diesel forecast that has already been revised from $3.50 to $4.80 gets revised again. If the reopening holds and sticks, the $1.453 premium over the pre-blockade baseline erodes, the surcharge follows it down, and the argument goes back to the linehaul, where it started.
Run a small calculation with the assumptions stated out loud. Assume 100 truckload shipments a month at a 600-mile average. The surcharge step from $0.45 to $0.70 is $0.25 a mile, which is $150 a load, so $15,000 a month and roughly $180,000 a year on that book alone. Now check that recovery against real consumption. Assume a tractor does 6.5 miles to the gallon, which puts fuel at $5.350 divided by 6.5, about $0.823 a mile, against a $0.70 surcharge, a shortfall of about $0.123 a mile, or roughly $74 on a 600-mile load. That shortfall is exactly why the linehaul ends up carrying what the surcharge does not. On a California lane, the $1.701 a gallon gap over the national average is about $0.262 a mile at 6.5 miles to the gallon, another $157 or so per 600-mile load that a national table never shows you.
The read is simple. Treat the fuel line and the linehaul as two different bills with two different causes, because that is what they are. When the fuel one falls, do not assume the other follows it.
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