Two letters come up a lot at branded sites: DTW. It stands for dealer tank wagon, and it is the delivered price a dealer pays to have fuel brought to the station. It works differently from the rack price, and knowing that difference decides whether you price the pump on real cost or on a guess.
What DTW means
DTW, dealer tank wagon, is the delivered price of fuel. When the supplier hauls fuel to your station and you pay a posted price for it landed in your tank, that is the DTW price. It rolls the fuel and the delivery together into one number, so you are buying the gallons and the transport in a single price.
DTW vs rack
The key contrast is with rack pricing. Rack is a pickup price: what you pay loading fuel yourself at the terminal. DTW is a delivered price: what you pay to have branded fuel brought to your door. A jobber lifting at the rack and hauling it, and a branded dealer taking delivery at DTW, are looking at two different prices for getting fuel into the ground.
The spread between the two covers real costs. Freight from the terminal commonly runs a few cents a gallon (NACS pegs average distribution cost near 6 cents), and the FTC describes DTW as rack plus the refiner's costs for additives, trademarks, credit-card programs, and advertising. Those brand costs sit on top of the freight, and the total varies by market, so confirm your own spread against current postings rather than a rule of thumb.
Who pays DTW
DTW is most associated with branded, often lessee, dealers who take delivered fuel from their supplier rather than running their own transport. Independent jobbers more often buy at the rack and handle hauling themselves. Which path fits depends on the brand relationship, covered in branded vs unbranded fuel.
Zone pricing sets the DTW
DTW prices are set by geographic zone, so two dealers buying the same branded fuel can pay different DTW numbers based on where they sit. In effect, zone pricing is how a supplier decides each location's DTW level, weighing local competition, traffic, and geography. That delivered number is what your pump margin is built on, which is why FastDragon Fuel Jobber keeps it current per site: pump pricing should rest on the cost you actually paid.
Answers to common questions
How much higher is DTW than the rack price?
There is no posted national spread; suppliers set it zone by zone. To see yours, pull the published OPIS rack average for your supplying terminal on each delivery day and compare it to the per-gallon price on your DTW invoices over a month. The gap is your freight plus brand cost, and watching it trend is how dealers catch a zone widening on them.
Can a branded dealer buy at the rack instead of DTW?
Usually not while the supply agreement runs. Most branded contracts commit the dealer to buy from the supplier or its designated distributor at the posted DTW. Open dealers and unbranded sites can shop rack suppliers freely, which is one of the trade-offs weighed when signing with a brand.
Is a jobber's delivered price the same as DTW?
Both put delivered gallons in your tank, but the structure differs. DTW is the supplier's posted delivered price to branded dealers, set by zone. A jobber typically quotes rack plus freight and margin, a formula the buyer can check against published rack numbers, which makes the jobber quote easier to audit.
Can a dealer find out their price zone or get it changed?
Suppliers generally treat zone boundaries as confidential, so most dealers infer their zone from how their DTW moves against nearby sites. Reassignment is rare and goes through the brand representative, argued with evidence: competitor pricing, traffic changes, or a documented cost disadvantage. Dealer associations have pushed for zone transparency for years.
Why does DTW change from day to day?
Suppliers reprice DTW as wholesale markets move, the same way racks reprice, so the number can change daily and sometimes intraday in a fast market. The brand's zone adjustments ride on top of that base. Reconciling each invoice against the posted price for that day confirms you were billed the number in effect when the truck arrived.