Your ProMaster's fuel line item quietly climbed again — and at $4.19 a gallon, most operators haven't recalculated what that means per stop.
EIA weekly data for June 15 puts regular unleaded at $4.187 nationally. At that price, a Ram ProMaster 2500 at 18 mpg costs $0.233 per mile in fuel. A Ford Transit 350 at 19 mpg comes in at $0.220 per mile. That's fuel alone — before wages, insurance, or maintenance.
A driver covering 110 route miles per shift burns $25.60 in gas in a ProMaster, $24.20 in a Transit. Across a 20-van fleet, that's roughly $500 per operating day in fuel — about $125,000 annualized at 250 days.
The real pain point isn't the absolute price — it's the move. When gas climbs from $3.50 to $4.19, that's an extra $4.20 per van per day. For a 20-van fleet: $84 a day in unbudgeted fuel spend, or roughly $21,000 a year if the price holds.
Most DSP operators set their cost model on a fuel assumption that's now stale. The van mix matters here too — fleets running any Sprinter diesels see a different number, but the majority running ProMasters and Transits are absorbing this on gas. Pexara fleet benchmark data, using current EIA pricing as input, puts fuel at roughly 14–16% of total cost per stop for a suburban 20-van fleet.
That share will climb if gas holds above $4.00 through Q3. Know your number before your next route review.
Run your own fleet numbers free at pexara.ai/calculator