The all-in was lying. Fuel finally printed down, linehaul didn't move, and the surcharge lag just flipped to your side.

Three weeks ago the pump put on 93 cents in three prints and the surcharge lag flipped against the truck. On 29 September it flipped back: EIA printed the first down week in a month. The rate side did not move at all.

The two numbers, separately

Fuel. EIA on-highway diesel came in at $6.382/gal for the week ending 28 September — down 14.7 cents from the $6.529 record, the first decline in four weeks and the biggest single-week drop of the ten-week run, which now reads +17.9¢, +3.5¢, −9.1¢, +19.7¢, +19.8¢, −5.3¢, +36.8¢, +31.8¢, +24.4¢, −14.7¢. The national average is still $2.628 above a year ago. The regional split is the part that matters for a fleet that fuels in the Midwest: PADD2 $6.526, down 15.4 cents with the Joliet refinery back in service — but the Gulf Coast fell 22.2 cents to $5.955 and the Lower Atlantic 18.6 cents to $5.953, so the Midwest premium over the Gulf did not narrow. It widened, from 50 to 57 cents. Elsewhere: New England $6.510 (−0.7¢), Central Atlantic $6.531 (−1.5¢), Rocky Mountain $6.407 (+6.7¢, the only region up), West Coast $7.357, California $8.181. The next print is Monday 6 October, the same day as the October STEO.

Linehaul. The last benchmark van linehaul print is $2.17/mi for 13–19 September, down three cents, and the sequence since late July reads $2.32 → $2.28 → $2.25 → $2.21 → $2.19 → $2.21 → $2.20 → $2.17 — one gain in eight weeks. DAT iQ RateCast now has it at $2.15 by late October, down from the $2.20 it was carrying a fortnight ago. DAT Trendlines for 21–27 September has van spot rates up 1.65% on the week with the national van all-in at $3.01 — the first print over $3.00, and exactly the fuel event the deck said it would be: that week's surcharge component was built on the $6.529 record. The linehaul split for that week has not been published in a form we can cite, and nothing in the capacity data (van load-to-truck +2.03% on the week, truck posts barely moving) says the base rate turned.

Cost finally came off. Rate still flat. That is the whole week.

The lag flipped — and this is the week the table gets stepped down early

A fuel surcharge reprices one to two weeks behind the pump. The surcharge riding on this week's loads is built on $6.529 while the truck burns $6.382. At 6.5 mpg that is roughly 2.3 cents a mile in the truck's favour — about $36 on a 1,600-mile triangle — after three straight weeks of under-collection worth 5.7, 4.9 and 3.8 cents, roughly $230 a truck. Two weeks of the lag on this side gets most of that back. A truck fuelling on the Gulf Coast or in the Lower Atlantic, against a table indexed to the national number, is ahead by close to 9 cents a mile. A Midwest fill is a wash: $6.526 at the pump against a $6.529 table.

The catch is symmetry. On the way up, some desks held the lower index for an extra cycle. Those are the desks that will now step down on the 28 September print a week early, or quietly move to a monthly average that smooths the peak out of your reimbursement. The lag is worth the same cents per mile on the way down as it cost on the way up, but only if the table indexes on the same EIA week and cutoff in both directions.

The supply story has changed, not ended. ExxonMobil's 264,000 b/d Joliet refinery — the outage that drove the Midwest's 43-cent jump — is back in service, the White House stepped back from a blunt diesel export ban, and the retail trackers saw the dip before EIA printed it. Hormuz is still disrupted, distillate inventories are still the thinnest in two decades, and the deck's own source line has a $7.00–7.25 pump as "not especially surprising" near term. One down print is a top, not a turn.

The 9 September STEO put Q4 at $5.55 and October at $5.72. The pump is 83 cents above the Q4 number and 66 cents above the October one. The next edition lands around 6 October, the same day as the next pump print. Treat $5.55 as a floor case that is already gone.

What to do about it

1. Get symmetry in writing this week, before the step-down lands. The table steps down on the same EIA week and cutoff it stepped up. A broker who stepped up on a Wednesday cutoff does not get to step down on a Monday.
2. Diary which print each broker's table is on. The $6.529 step belongs on loads moving 28 September–5 October; the $6.382 step belongs to the week after. A desk already quoting on $6.382 is a week early and owes you about 2.3 cents a mile.
3. Pull every flat all-in still open from early September. One written against a $5.60 pump is still under-collecting about 12.0¢/mi at 6.5 mpg. One written against $5.967 is under by 6.4¢/mi. The dip did not fix a flat rate; it shrank the hole.
4. Benchmark against $2.15–$2.17 linehaul, never the $3.01 headline. The all-in crossed $3.00 on fuel alone. A broker presenting it as a rate increase is showing you a reimbursement — and one that is now running ahead of the pump.
5. Stress-test Q4 lanes at $7.25 — the deck's number, not the pump's. The diesel-high signal was rebased to $7.15 in Issue 26.40; the national pump is 77 cents from it. Any Q4 lane that stops clearing the $2.35/mi floor at $7.25 fuel is a lane to renegotiate now, before the 2027 bid season opens from mid-October.
6. Keep fuelling south of the Ohio River on northbound legs. Gulf Coast $5.955 against Midwest $6.526 is a 57-cent spread — about $114 on a 200-gallon fill, wider than it was with Joliet down. The deck's rule is to keep doing this until the spread prints under 25 cents.
7. Stop using the spot-over-contract screenshot in re-bids. It reversed. DAT's August monthly has van spot linehaul at $2.19 against contract at $2.41 — spot 22 cents below contract — and spot has slipped since. Bid on capacity instead: van load-to-truck 11.2 against 5.9 a year ago, van truck posts −30% year over year, and the fewest week-38 equipment posts in DAT's records.

The market is repricing cost, not demand. Track the two numbers separately every week: this week one of them finally moved your way, and the other still has not moved at all.