US On-Highway Diesel Retail Price (1994–2026)

The US On-Highway Diesel Retail Price is the national average pump price for No. 2 diesel fuel, published weekly by the EIA since 1994, in dollars per gallon. Diesel is the fuel of freight — trucks, rail, and farm equipment — so this price is a direct input to the cost of moving nearly every physical good in the economy. It peaked at $5.81 in June 2022 and sits at $4.67 in mid-2026, structurally above gasoline for most of the past two decades.

Dataset: US On-Highway Diesel Retail Price (1994–2026) · Updated 2026-07-27

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) · series EMD_EPD2D_PTE_NUS_DPG

Macro Takeaway

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns.

A value of 4.668 means the national average diesel pump price was $4.67 per gallon that week.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.

EIA Direct API Access

The underlying data comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration API v2 (route petroleum/pri/gnd, series EMD_EPD2D_PTE_NUS_DPG). An EIA API key is free from the EIA developer portal.

Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/eia/us-diesel-retail-price.csv

This URL returns the complete, cleaned dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool — no key required.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/eia/us-diesel-retail-price.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(f"Latest: {df['diesel_price'].iloc[-1]:.3f} USD/gallon")
print(df.tail())

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/eia/us-diesel-retail-price.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

tail(df)
summary(df$diesel_price)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.

Methodology

The EIA collects on-highway diesel prices each Monday from a national retail sample, released the same afternoon alongside gasoline. The price includes all taxes; federal diesel tax is higher than gasoline’s.

This dataset is refreshed daily (Mon–Sat) via automated pull from the EIA API v2; new observations appear with each source release.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

• Release cadence. Weekly, every Monday afternoon, jointly with retail gasoline.
• What it includes. No. 2 on-highway diesel, all taxes included.
• Distillate linkage. Shares refinery output with heating oil and jet fuel — inventory competition among the three drives divergences from crude.
• Revisions. Rarely revised.
• Known gaps. None; continuous weekly since March 1994.

Common Pitfalls When Using This Series

1. Assuming diesel tracks gasoline. The two share crude but diverge on distillate supply; the diesel-gasoline spread swings widely and inverts.
2. Missing the winter-heating channel. Diesel and heating oil compete for the same output; cold-weather heating demand can lift diesel with no move in crude.
3. Ignoring the freight-cost lag. Diesel spikes reach consumer goods prices weeks to months later through shipping costs, not immediately.
4. Treating it as a consumer fuel. Diesel demand is overwhelmingly commercial; it responds to freight and industrial activity, not driving-season patterns.

Historical Regimes

1994–2003 — Cheap and stable. Diesel ran near or below gasoline, bottoming at $0.953 in early 1999.

2004–2008 — The premium opens. Global distillate demand and the ULSD transition pushed diesel to a durable premium over gasoline, peaking near $4.70 in 2008.

2009–2019 — Structurally above gasoline. Diesel held a persistent premium as distillate markets stayed tight relative to gasoline.

2020 — Demand collapse. The pandemic cut freight and diesel fell sharply, though less than gasoline given resilient goods delivery.

2021–2026 — Distillate crunch. Low distillate inventories drove diesel to $5.81 (June 2022), the widest diesel-gasoline gap in the series, normalizing toward $4.67 by mid-2026. A neighbouring angle: why the diesel and gasoline crack spreads diverge.

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Sources

• U.S. Energy Information Administration — Weekly Retail Gasoline and Diesel Prices (series EMD_EPD2D_PTE_NUS_DPG)

Dataset Reference

Eco3min Research. (2026). US On-Highway Diesel Retail Price (1994–2026).<br> https://eco3min.fr/en/us-diesel-retail-price-dataset/