How Do You Calculate a Fuel Surcharge for Your Trucking Customers?

How a fuel surcharge table tied to the EIA diesel index works

Every Monday, EIA collects the cash self-serve pump price of ultra-low sulfur diesel, taxes included, as of 8:00 a.m. local time, from a sample of 590 truck stops and service stations. It publishes the averages around 10:00 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, or on Wednesday after a federal holiday, still dated Monday. EIA says it does not calculate, assess or regulate fuel surcharges: they are negotiated privately, and many shippers, transportation companies and truckers use its weekly price in their fuel pricing formulas.

Besides the U.S. average, EIA publishes regional series, from the Gulf Coast and the Midwest to California. The series the contract names is worth real money. For October 19, 2026, the Gulf Coast price was $5.903 and California’s was $8.242. Under the hypothetical $4.00 base and 6.5 MPG, that is 29 cents a mile on one and 65 cents on the other: $290 or $650 on the same 1,000-mile load. Name the series that matches where the trucks buy fuel, exactly as EIA names it.

The contract also says which week’s price applies to a load, by pickup, tender or delivery date, and what applies before a new price is out. A load picked up on Tuesday, October 13, 2026 had no October 12 price yet: EIA released it on Wednesday, October 14, after Columbus Day. Heartland Express’s annual report notes that its surcharge billing typically uses the prior week’s average price, so in a rising market the fleet buys fuel before the surcharge catches up.

A fuel surcharge table is the same formula worked out in advance, one row per band of diesel prices. Illustrative example: a table built from the hypothetical $4.00 base and 6.5 MPG adds one cent a mile for every 6.5 cents of diesel, and sets each row at the formula’s value at the bottom of its band, rounded down. Three of its rows:

• $6.145 to $6.209 a gallon: 33 cents a mile. EIA’s October 5, 2026 price ($6.199) and October 12 price ($6.179) both land here.
• $6.210 to $6.274 a gallon: 34 cents a mile.
• $6.275 to $6.339 a gallon: 35 cents a mile. The October 19 price ($6.276) cleared this row’s floor by a tenth of a cent.

The formula rounded to the nearest cent gives 34 cents for October 5 and October 12; the table gives 33. Neither is wrong, but one cent a mile is $10 on every 1,000-mile load, so the contract states the band edges and the rounding rule, and anyone can rebuild a row to check it.

Loaded miles only? The miles and gallons a surcharge does not pay for

The contract decides which miles carry the surcharge. Two public truckload carriers describe their own programs in their annual reports for 2025: Knight-Swift says its surcharge generally applies only to loaded miles and typically does not offset unpaid empty miles, idle time or out-of-route miles; Heartland Express says it generally does not recoup surcharge on non-billable miles or on fuel burned idling. That is how two large fleets describe their own contracts, not a rule.

On a loaded-miles contract, four gaps sit outside the surcharge: empty miles, out-of-route miles that never appear on the bill, idling, and the assumed MPG when the trucks get fewer miles per gallon than the contract says.

Illustrative example: the hypothetical 1,000-mile load above starts with a 150-mile empty run to the pickup, and the truck actually averages 6.0 miles per gallon, not 6.5. Over 1,150 miles it burns about 191.7 gallons, and the part of that fuel above the $4.00 base costs $436.23. The surcharge pays $350.00. Of the $86.23 gap, $56.90 is the 25 gallons burned running empty, and the other $29.33 sits on the loaded miles, almost all of it the MPG difference. The example prices fuel at the index; the fleet’s own fuel card prices make its real gap larger or smaller.

Three moves close part of the gap, each the owner’s call. Price known empty legs into the linehaul for the lanes that need them. Recompute the trucks’ real MPG monthly from fuel card gallons and ELD miles, and bring it to the next rate review. And where a customer’s freight forces long repositioning runs, ask for the surcharge on total miles; if the answer is no, the linehaul is where those miles get paid.

How to check that the fuel surcharge reached every invoice

A surcharge in the contract is worth nothing on an invoice that left without it. The check takes one named person, fixed days and one sheet. Federal statute points the same way: 49 U.S.C. § 13708(a) says a motor carrier “shall disclose, when a document is presented or electronically transmitted for payment … the actual rates, charges, or allowances for any transportation service.”

• Tuesday after 10:00 a.m. Eastern (Wednesday after a federal holiday): the billing lead records the new EIA price for every series the contracts use, and the cents per mile under each customer’s schedule, in one sheet. The rate goes into the billing software that morning, and a second person recomputes one row by hand.
• Every invoice: the surcharge as its own line, showing the index week, the cents per mile and the billed miles, so the customer’s payables team can check it without calling.
• Friday: every load delivered this week under a surcharge contract, next to its invoice, with the expected surcharge against the surcharge billed. Flag a missing line, the wrong week’s rate, the wrong miles, and an all-in load billed under a contract schedule, or the reverse.
• Factored loads: confirm the surcharge appears, line for line, on the weekly factoring statement.
• Payments: read each remittance for a surcharge short-paid while the linehaul was paid in full, and call the customer that week.
• Missed lines: send a supplemental invoice at once. Under 49 U.S.C. § 13710(a)(3)(A), a carrier “must issue any bill for charges in addition to those originally billed within 180 days of the receipt of the original bill in order to have the right to collect such charges.” The contract may set its own window; see below.

Once a month, the owner reads one number: surcharge billed against fuel bought above the base price (fuel card gallons times the gap between the average price paid and the base). Illustrative example: a hypothetical 15-truck fleet delivers 160 loads in a month under surcharge contracts. The Friday checks find 7 invoices with no surcharge line and 11 billed at the prior week’s rate, a cent a mile low. At 800 billed miles and 35 cents, that is $1,960 plus $88, about $2,050 in one month. A missing line does not look like a mistake on the income statement. It looks like a smaller invoice.

Fuel surcharge on all-in spot rates from brokers

An all-in rate has the fuel inside it: no surcharge line, and no adjustment if diesel moves between booking and delivery unless the rate confirmation says so. The rate confirmation, read with the broker-carrier agreement, sets the terms for that load. If it lists linehaul and fuel surcharge separately, invoice both exactly as written, not recomputed under the fleet’s own table; if it says all-in, a surcharge line it does not show invites a short-pay.

What an owner can do with an all-in offer is take it apart before saying yes. Illustrative example: a broker offers $2,900 all-in for 1,000 loaded miles. Under the hypothetical schedule above, this week’s surcharge would be $350, so the offer is $2,550 of linehaul, $2.55 a loaded mile. Compare that with the linehaul the fleet charges direct customers on a similar lane and with its own cost per mile, not with last month’s all-in rates, which were built on a different diesel price.

The shipper behind the load may be paying a surcharge. C.H. Robinson’s annual report for 2025 says its contract truckload rates with customers are usually paired with a fuel surcharge agreement that “allows for fuel to primarily be a pass-through cost,” while it buys most of its truckload services from carriers on a spot or transactional basis. That is the broker’s model; the carrier’s protection is its own linehaul floor. Under 49 CFR 371.3(c), a carrier may review the broker’s record of the transaction, which shows the broker’s compensation, not necessarily the shipper’s surcharge.

What the contract has to say for a fuel surcharge to hold

Is it legal to charge a fuel surcharge? Nothing in the federal texts quoted here sets a surcharge, caps one or requires one, and EIA says surcharges are negotiated privately. The statute lets a carrier “enter into a contract with a shipper, other than for the movement of household goods … to provide specified services under specified rates and conditions” (49 U.S.C. § 14101(b)(1)), and on request a carrier must give the shipper “a written or electronic copy of the rate, classification, rules, and practices” its rate is based on (§ 13710(a)(1)). In practice, a surcharge agreed in writing is a charge like the linehaul; one added after the fact is an argument. Household goods, intrastate moves and particular contracts are for a transportation attorney; this is not legal advice.

Section 14101(b)(1) also lets the parties, in writing, expressly waive rights and remedies under that part of the statute, so a signed shipper agreement may waive or replace the billing and dispute rules above; read it, and ask a transportation attorney, before relying on the 180 days. A schedule that holds up names, in the master agreement or an attached schedule the rate confirmations refer to:

• The index, exactly as EIA names it: the U.S. average or one named region.
• Which week’s price applies to a load, and which price applies before a delayed holiday release.
• The base price and the assumed MPG, or the full table with its band edges and rounding rule.
• The miles: billed loaded miles from a named mileage source, or total miles, and how stop-offs and out-of-route miles count.
• What happens below the base price: zero, or a credit.
• A fallback if EIA changes or stops the series. EIA implemented a new diesel sample on June 13, 2022, and says that week’s estimates are not directly comparable to the week before.
• How the schedule changes, and which document wins when a rate confirmation and the master agreement disagree.

For leased owner-operators, the lease is the second document. Under 49 CFR 376.12(e), it must “clearly specify the responsibility of each party with respect to the cost of fuel,” and under 376.12(g), when pay is a percentage of gross revenue, the owner-operator gets a copy of the rated freight bill before or at the time of settlement. Write into the lease whether the surcharge passes through, and check that it shows on the owner-operator’s settlement.

When this is not the problem, and where the Review fits

If every load runs on a broker’s all-in rate, there is no surcharge line to audit; the question is the linehaul floor. If the Friday check already runs and keeps coming back clean, the surcharge is not where the money goes missing. For an owner-operator or a fleet of a few trucks, the sheet above is the whole job.

For a fleet of about 20 power units and up, the Revenue Review counts this under the Delivery → Invoice hand-off. From read-only exports of dispatch, invoices, rate confirmations, fuel cards and factoring, it recomputes the surcharge each delivered load should have carried, sets it against what was billed and collected, and lists the missing lines, stale weeks and wrong miles, with a monthly dollar figure for fuel above the base that no surcharge recovered, where the records support one. It sets no rates and gives no legal advice. It takes two weeks and ends in a written report the fleet keeps. The team behind the Review has run its own trucking company for seven years, and a client’s data never touches our own fleet.

If surcharge lines turn out to be the gap, the next step is a free 20-minute call, where we say whether the weekly check above, run in-house, covers it, which may well be the honest answer.