The fuel is only half of what a jobber sells; getting it there is the other half. Freight, the cost of moving fuel from the terminal to the customer, lands on every load whether or not the invoice breaks it out. On an 8,500-gallon transport load, missing one cent per gallon of delivery cost is $85 gone, and the same miss repeats on every load to that site.
What freight is
Freight is the cost of physically hauling fuel from the terminal to the delivery point: the truck, the driver, the miles. A full transport trailer carries roughly 8,000 to 9,500 gallons of gasoline, less for denser products like diesel, while a bobtail hauls a fraction of that, so per-gallon freight on small drops climbs fast. Depending on the deal, freight may be folded into a delivered price or billed separately, but either way someone is paying to move the fuel.
How a surcharge is actually set
Most surcharge schedules peg to one public number: the U.S. Energy Information Administration's weekly on-highway diesel average, surveyed Monday morning and posted at eia.gov the next day. Truckers call it the DOE price. The contract converts that number into a rate in one of two ways. A table version steps the surcharge up a set amount for each nickel or dime the DOE price climbs. A formula version subtracts a contract baseline and divides by the truck's pegged fuel economy: (DOE price − baseline) ÷ contract mpg = surcharge per mile.
Run the formula once and the mechanism is clear. With a $1.20 baseline, a 6.0 mpg peg, and the DOE average at $3.60, the surcharge is ($3.60 − $1.20) ÷ 6.0 = $0.40 per loaded mile. A 100-mile run with 8,500 gallons aboard adds $40, about half a cent per gallon. Fuel haulers often restate that math in cents per gallon, since that is how the rest of the invoice reads. The DOE number moves every week, so confirm the current figure before quoting.
How it gets billed
It varies by arrangement. Some customers buy at a delivered price with freight built in, which is the DTW idea. Others see freight and surcharge as their own invoice lines. Some pick up their own fuel at the rack and owe no freight at all. Whichever way the deal reads, the freight has to be tracked per load to be recovered.
Why it matters so much
Fuel margin is thin, and freight is exactly the kind of cost that erodes it. A jobber clearing a few cents a gallon can lose the whole margin to one unbilled stop charge or a surcharge still sitting at last month's rate. This is per-load bookkeeping that belongs in software: FastDragon Fuel Jobber carries freight and the current surcharge from the load into the invoice, so delivery cost gets billed instead of absorbed. Knowing your true cost to serve each customer is the foundation of protecting a jobber's margin.
What people ask
How often does a fuel surcharge change?
Most contract schedules reset once a week and hold that rate for every load delivered through the following Sunday. When a federal holiday lands on Monday, the government posts the diesel number a day late, so good contracts spell out which day the new rate takes effect. Spot freight works differently: the surcharge is whatever was agreed for that single load.
Does a fuel surcharge go negative when diesel gets cheap?
No. When the published diesel price falls below the contract baseline, the surcharge bottoms out at zero rather than turning into a credit back to the customer. Many contracts still carry baselines in the $1.10 to $1.50 range from when they were written, and retail diesel has stayed far above those levels for years, so the zero floor almost never comes into play.
How is freight billed on a split load?
A transport trailer has several compartments, so one run can drop fuel at two or three sites. Carriers usually divide the line haul by the gallons going to each stop, then add a flat stop charge for every drop after the first. Each customer should be invoiced only for their share, which is why the stops and the load have to be recorded together.
Do jobbers who run their own trucks still have freight?
Yes. The cost hides inside driver wages, truck payments, insurance, and the diesel the fleet burns instead of arriving as a carrier invoice. Jobbers with private fleets usually set an internal cents-per-mile or cents-per-gallon rate and charge it against each load, the same way they would pay an outside hauler. Skip that step and company-truck deliveries look more profitable than they are.