You finally trimmed your cost per stop below where it was in the spring. Then gas prices turned around and took it back.
EIA's weekly data puts retail gasoline at $4.141 per gallon for the week of August 10 — down slightly from $4.211 the week before, but up nearly 6% from the $3.911 low logged just five weeks earlier on July 6. For a fleet running Ram ProMaster 2500s and Ford Transit 350s — the gas-powered backbone of most DSP fleets — that swing isn't cosmetic. At 18-19 mpg and 120-150 miles per route, a van running roughly $25 in fuel per shift in early July is now closer to $27-28.
Multiply that across a 30-van fleet running six days a week, and the July-to-August climb alone adds roughly $2,000-2,500 a month in fuel spend that wasn't in anyone's Q3 budget. It's not an isolated spike, either — EIA's own five-year weekly history shows current prices sitting above the 75th percentile of the last five years, meaning this isn't "back to normal," it's "still expensive by historical standards."
The volatility matters as much as the level. Five weeks, a 6% swing, and a partial pullback that still leaves prices near multi-year highs — that's not a fuel line item you budget once a quarter and forget. Operators locking rate cards or bidding new routes this month are doing that math against a moving target, and the target has been moving up more often than down since early July.
See how this affects your cost per stop — free calculator at pexara.ai/calculator