Same load, same fuel price, two different invoices

Here is what the last eight weeks did to it.

Diesel is $5.348 a gallon as of August 3, up about 17% in four weeks and 41% from a year ago. Carriers add a fuel surcharge on top of your base rate, set as a percentage that tracks a published diesel index. That index is this price, and it is recalculated every week. When it moves, the percentage on your invoice moves with it.

Every carrier publishes its own fuel surcharge table, and the tables do not match. On a $4,000 linehaul base, they are currently adding roughly $1,750–$1,800 in fuel. Two national carriers read the same $5.313 diesel price and landed on different percentages: 43.82% and 45.10%. That is $1,753 against $1,804, a $51 gap on a single shipment.

Put these strategies against your freight

1. Audit your carrier’s index and lag. Ask each carrier, in writing, which published index sets your surcharge and how many days behind it runs.
2. Consolidate LCL into FCL where volume allows. Fewer, fuller containers mean fewer surcharge applications.
3. Shift long domestic legs to intermodal. Rail-plus-truck is meaningfully less fuel-exposed than over-the-road past roughly 700 miles.

Fuel will keep moving. What you control is how much of that movement reaches your invoice, and most of that is decided by how your freight is set up, long before anyone calculates a surcharge.

Stop trying to predict the price and start controlling what gets added on top of it, because in every fuel environment, shippers who understand their own surcharge mechanics pay less than shippers who do not.

Contact Aldenbridge Freight Forwarding at freight@aldenbridge.com and we’ll work through which of these apply to your lanes and volumes, what each is worth, and where you’re most exposed today.

The goal is a freight program that absorbs fuel swings instead of passing them straight through to your customers.