Diesel6 min read
Diesel just set a record: $6.529 a gallon
The weekly government average that freight contracts use hit the highest reading in the series that started in 1994. A year ago it was $3.749.
The EIA survey for the week of September 21 printed $6.529 per gallon for U.S. on-highway diesel, up 24.4 cents from the week before and up $2.780 from $3.749 a year earlier. The same series bottomed near a dollar in 1999 and, until this month, the famous peak was 2022, when the weekly average topped out around $5.81. This reading cleared that.
September has been a straight climb: $5.967 on September 7, $6.285 on September 14, $6.529 on September 21. The 2025 average for the whole year was $3.660. Through September 21, the 2026 year-to-date average of the weekly readings was $4.974 — and that average is being dragged up by a very expensive autumn, not by a mildly pricey spring.
The national number hides a wide map
California averaged $8.246. The Lower Atlantic, which includes much of the Southeast, averaged $6.139. The Midwest jumped 43 cents in a single week, to $6.680. A shipper in Georgia and a shipper in California are not living in the same fuel market, even when a contract quotes “the DOE average.”
Why the sign at the truck stop will not match
Three different “diesel prices” circulate at once. The EIA weekly number is a retail survey used in fuel surcharges, and it lags the week. A daily average such as AAA moves faster and will not match — around September 29, daily national pump quotes were in the mid-$6.40s even while the last weekly index still said $6.529. Futures for ultra-low-sulfur diesel, the wholesale benchmark traders watch, were nearer $4.50 a gallon. The gap between a wholesale benchmark and the pump is tax, refining, distribution, and station margin. None of those is the number your surcharge uses unless the contract says so.
The EIA was scheduled to publish the next weekly reading on September 29. Until that table is out, $6.529 remains the latest official index. Do not rewrite a contract off a screenshot of a truck-stop sign.
Sources
- Transport Topics on record diesel prices, September 24, 2026
- EIA weekly retail gasoline and diesel prices
- EIA gasoline and diesel fuel update
The Ro-Mac Brief summarizes public reporting for a general reader. Figures can be revised by the agency that published them. This is not legal advice.
Keep reading
- Washington opened a joint crackdown on fraud in trucking
Transportation, Homeland Security, and federal prosecutors are going after sham driving schools, licenses that should never have been issued, and drivers who cannot pass an English check at the roadside.
- What CDLLife is reporting this morning
Georgia paused its diesel tax for 30 days, federal regulators refused a return to paper logbooks, and six family trucking companies sued two big brokers. Here is the plain version.
- Why a driver can be shut down for not speaking English
It sounds like politics. At the scale, it is a practical rule about signs, crashes, and the person who has to explain what is in the trailer.