A fuel surcharge should be a visible part of the deal, not a second negotiation that starts when the invoice arrives. On Western lanes, that matters because diesel prices do not move the same way in California as they do in the Rockies, and a clause that points to the wrong public number can surprise both sides. The goal is not to pick a favorite surcharge percentage. The goal is to write a method you can defend: which index, which geography, how often it updates, and how it appears on the bill.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes weekly on-highway diesel prices that many freight contracts already use as a reference. The illustrations below show how to read those tables and turn them into contract language. They are not a Teocal rate sheet and do not predict next month’s fuel cost.
Use a public diesel index both sides can look up
EIA’s Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update is the usual starting point. The diesel table reports on-highway prices, including taxes, for the United States as a whole and for Petroleum Administration for Defense Districts. For Western shippers, the useful rows are typically Rocky Mountain (PADD 4), West Coast (PADD 5), West Coast less California, and California. EIA also maintains historical weekly series, including the weekly U.S. diesel price table, so you can see how a chosen series has moved over time without inventing a number.
A defendable clause names the exact series, not “the DOE average” or “the pump price a driver saw.” Write the EIA page or table, the geography, and whether the trigger is the weekly published value or an average of several weekly values. If two people cannot open the same public page and find the same figure for the same week, the clause is not ready.
Do not paste a current pump price into a long-term agreement and call it an index. Spot prices change. An index clause is supposed to travel with them. It should also say what happens if EIA revises a weekly figure or delays a release. A simple fallback — use the most recently published qualifying value until the next release — prevents a week of silence from turning into an argument.
Decide how often the surcharge can move
Weekly updates follow EIA’s own publication rhythm and keep the surcharge closer to the market the truck is actually buying. They also create more invoice lines and more chances for someone to apply last week’s figure to this week’s shipments. Monthly updates are quieter. They smooth brief spikes and dips, but they can leave a carrier or a shipper carrying a gap if diesel jumps just after the monthly reset.
Choose the rhythm in writing. A weekly clause should state which EIA release week applies to freight picked up during a given calendar period — for example, shipments picked up Monday through Sunday use the EIA diesel figure published the prior Monday, or whatever pairing you actually intend. A monthly clause should state whether you average the weekly values in the prior month or use a single designated weekly value, such as the first or last release of the month. Ambiguity about timing is how two honest teams produce two different surcharge percentages for the same load.
The clause should also say whether the surcharge applies to the linehaul only or to accessorials. Detention, layover, and stop-off charges are not automatically fuel. If you intend the surcharge to apply only to mileage or only to the base linehaul, say so. If you intend it to apply more broadly, say that too. Silence here is not neutrality; it is a future dispute.
Match the geography to the lane, especially on the West Coast
A national U.S. average is simple, and sometimes that simplicity is the point. It is a weaker fit when your freight lives in a high-cost pocket of the West. EIA separately reports Rocky Mountain, West Coast, West Coast excluding California, and California diesel prices because those markets do not always move together. A clause built on the U.S. average can understate fuel exposure on California-heavy lanes or overstate it on a lane that barely touches the coast.
Take a Fresno-to-Denver truckload as an illustration, not a priced quote. The origin sits in California. The destination sits in the Rockies. If the surcharge follows only the California series, the Denver end of the trip is ignored. If it follows only the Rocky Mountain series, the California origin is ignored. Some shippers split the difference with a West Coast series, or they designate the origin region’s series because that is where the tractor typically fuels at the start of the run. Any of those choices can be rational. The indefensible choice is leaving the geography unnamed and arguing about it after delivery.
Multi-stop Western routes need the same clarity. A pickup in Kent, Washington, a stop in Boise, and a delivery in Salt Lake City can cross more than one EIA reporting area. Decide in advance whether the surcharge follows the origin, the destination, a stated mix, or a single agreed series for all stops on that routing guide. Then use the same rule every time the lane repeats.
Do not treat one week’s table as a permanent ranking of regions. Differentials change. The contract should point to the living EIA series, not to a screenshot someone saved last spring. If your team wants historical context before choosing a series, use EIA’s weekly history rather than memory or a conversation about “what fuel usually costs out West.”
Spell out the baseline and the step, not only the index name
Naming EIA is only half of the method. The other half is the arithmetic that turns an index value into money. Many freight agreements use a baseline diesel price and then add a surcharge that steps up or down as the published index moves away from that baseline. Others use a percentage of linehaul that changes when the index crosses stated bands. Either structure can work if both sides can reproduce it with a calculator and the public table.
Write the baseline, the increment, and the rounding rule. If the surcharge rises by a stated amount for every penny, or every five cents, that the chosen EIA series moves above the baseline, put those steps in the exhibit. If you cap the surcharge, or if you allow it to fall to zero below a floor, say so. Rounding toward the nearest cent, tenth of a cent, or published band should not be left to whoever prepares the invoice that week.
Use labeled illustrations when you test the clause, and keep those numbers clearly hypothetical. Suppose, only as a walkthrough, that a routing-guide exhibit sets a baseline of four dollars per gallon on the EIA West Coast on-highway diesel series and adds a one-percent linehaul surcharge for every ten-cent move above that baseline. If the published weekly value were four dollars and forty cents, the surcharge would be four percent of linehaul. If it later printed at three dollars and ninety cents, the surcharge would be zero unless the exhibit also creates a negative or rebate step. The dollars in that walkthrough are teaching tools, not an EIA printout and not a Teocal tariff. When you test your own clause, insert the actual EIA figure for the week in question and keep the same arithmetic.
Watch for two common mix-ups. The first is pointing a diesel surcharge at a gasoline series, or at a diesel series that excludes taxes when your exhibit assumed an all-in pump price. EIA’s on-highway diesel table states that the reported prices include taxes; if your clause assumed something else, the invoice will never match the webpage. The second is letting a salesperson quote “fuel included” on one lane and a separate surcharge on the next without updating the routing guide. A bundled rate is not wrong. An unlabeled blend of bundled and surcharge pricing is.
Make the invoice prove the clause
A surcharge that cannot be rebuilt from the invoice is not transparent, even if the underlying index is public. Each bill should show the base transportation charge and the fuel surcharge as separate lines. It should also show, or make easy to find, the EIA series used, the date or week of the index value, the index value itself, and the resulting surcharge amount or percentage. If your billing system cannot print all of that on the invoice, attach a short calculation sheet or a portal record that does.
When an intermediary is involved, ask how the surcharge was calculated on both the shipper side and the carrier side. Those two figures are not required to be identical by any federal fuel-surcharge statute, because there is no single federal surcharge schedule for general freight. They should still be explainable. If a shipper is billed a California-based surcharge while the motor carrier is paid on a lower national average, someone should be able to say that plainly rather than burying the difference inside a bundled rate.
Build a quick internal audit habit. Once a month, pick a handful of shipments and re-create the surcharge from the public EIA table and your clause. If your team cannot do that in a few minutes, the clause or the invoice file is too vague. The Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Freight Management and Operations is a reminder that fuel sits inside a broader freight system; it does not set your surcharge. Your agreement does.
Teocal Transport is a Hayward, California-based carrier offering Western full truckload shipping and less-than-truckload service, along with roller-bed equipment, air freight, trailer and container storage, and GPS tracking used by dispatch. Our freight shipping solutions page describes additional published options such as oversized items, specialized equipment, shock-sensitive loads, partial shipments, GPS tracking, and security seals. Those pages are a place to start a pricing conversation. They are not a fuel table, and any surcharge we quote should be traceable to the index and method both teams write down.
Write the method before you compare the rate
When you send the next Western bid package, include the fuel method beside the origin, destination, commodity, and handling notes. Ask every provider, including Teocal, which EIA series it proposes, how often the surcharge updates, and how the calculation will appear on the invoice. Then compare the complete method, not only the base linehaul.
You can request a freight shipping quote with those details already filled in. Bring the EIA series you want to use, or ask us first why a West Coast, California, Rocky Mountain, or national series better matches the lane. A clear fuel clause will not remove diesel volatility, but it will keep the argument where it belongs: in the contract, on a public index, and on an invoice both sides can reconstruct.
Sources
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update, including weekly on-highway diesel prices by PAD district. Accessed during research on November 8, 2026: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, weekly diesel price series table: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_gnd_dcus_nus_w.htm
- Federal Highway Administration, Office of Freight Management and Operations: https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/
- Teocal Transport, Truck Freight Shipping Quote: https://teocaltransport.com/truck-freight-shipping-quote/
- Teocal Transport, Freight Shipping Solutions: https://teocaltransport.com/freight-shipping-solutions/
- Teocal Transport, Full Truckload Shipping (FTL): https://teocaltransport.com/full-truckload-shipping-ftl/