The weekly US Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration benchmark retail diesel price, the figure most carriers use to calculate fuel surcharges, rose to $5.348 per gallon in the reading published August 4, up 3.5 cents from the prior week and marking the fourth consecutive weekly increase. The benchmark has climbed 77 cents per gallon over that four-week span even as futures markets for ultra low sulfur diesel fell sharply on hopes that a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is close.
Diesel futures on the CME commodity exchange dropped roughly 4% to nearly 6% across several trading sessions in early August as traders reacted to reports that Iran and Oman were nearing an agreement on shipping access through the strait, a decline that pushed futures to their lowest settlement since mid-July even as retail prices continued rising on the lag between wholesale and pump pricing.
The retail increase also comes as President Trump has publicly called on oil companies to lower prices at the pump following strong second-quarter earnings reports. Analysts note the request faces structural limits, since integrated producers like ExxonMobil and Chevron set wholesale rack prices but do not control prices at individual retail stations, and independent refiners such as Valero and Marathon buy crude and other inputs on the open market, exposing them to cost pressures regardless of political pressure to hold prices down. For fleets, the run-up in the benchmark diesel price directly affects fuel surcharge calculations used across most US truckload and less-than-truckload contracts.
Source: FreightWaves — https://www.freightwaves.com/news/as-diesel-futures-markets-plummet-benchmark-retail-price-rises