The five ways fuel discounts are priced
| Type | How your price is set | What you enter |
|---|---|---|
| Retail-minus | The posted pump price minus a fixed number of cents | Pump price and the discount |
| Cost-plus | The station's cost (wholesale, freight and taxes) plus an agreed margin | Your state and the cents added |
| Cost-minus | The station's cost minus a few cents, used by some programs as an aggressive offer | Your state and the cents taken off |
| Better-of | Whichever is lower: retail-minus or cost-plus, decided gallon by gallon | State, pump price and both terms |
| Rebate | You pay the pump price and get cents per gallon back later, sometimes only above a monthly volume | Pump price, rebate and any minimum |
How the state estimates work
Cost-based pricing depends on the wholesale (rack) price, freight and taxes where you fuel. The calculator does not use live rack prices. It starts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's weekly average retail diesel price for your region, removes taxes (a simple average of the state taxes in the region), freight and a typical station margin to estimate the regional wholesale price, then adds back your state's diesel tax from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the 24.4-cent federal tax.
Freight and margin are assumptions you can change under Assumptions. Local taxes, such as county or city fuel taxes, are not included. Treat the result as an estimate for planning, and use your program's invoices for exact figures.
Source: EIA weekly retail diesel prices
Where fuel discounts come from
Truck stops compete for diesel volume, and discounts are how they win it. A fleet program, a payment app or a chain's loyalty program each passes some of that competition back to the driver.
How to compare two discounts
- Compare the price you pay per gallon after every fee, rather than the headline cents off.
- Check where the discount applies: at the pump, inside the store, or both.
- Ask whether the discount covers every location on your lanes or only some.
- Find out when the savings reach you: instantly at the pump, or later as a rebate.
- Read the fee schedule for card fees, transaction fees and out-of-network charges.
Habits that add up
Discounts lower the price per gallon. Driving habits lower the gallons. Planning fuel stops around the best price on the route, keeping tires at the right pressure, cutting idle time and holding a steady highway speed all reduce what a truck burns.
The two work together. A truck that buys at the best stop on its lane and burns fewer gallons per mile saves on both sides of the multiplication.
What a discount is worth over a year
Multiply gallons per month by the discount per gallon, then by twelve. A truck buying 2,000 gallons a month at 15 cents off saves $300 a month and $3,600 a year. Ten trucks at the same numbers save $36,000.
Those figures are only an example. Put your gallons and discount into the calculator above.
