August
Diesel didn’t cool off in August. Here’s where the market stood – and what it means for carrier margins heading into summer.
Diesel didn’t stay down for long. After sliding to $4.578 by July 6, the calmest read since spring, prices broke sharply the week of July 20 and kept climbing to a new cycle high of $5.652 by August 24, up nearly 46% over August 2025. This time the pain landed on a different part of the fleet: carriers on monthly resets locked their rate to July’s still-low average and have been eating unrecovered cost all August, roughly $53,600 for a 55-truck carrier. Quarterly-reset carriers looked safe because their rate is still pegged to Q2’s elevated average, but that shield is thinning fast, and whoever resets first in Q4 inherits the whole move at once. Two spikes in five months is the pattern now, not the exception, and every reset structure except a live weekly index means somebody is carrying a stale number and paying for it out of margin.
Source: EIA Weekly U.S. No 2 Diesel Retail Prices | magnustech.com