Lower Atlantic diesel is the cheapest in the US at $5.890

The cheapest diesel prices in the US this week are on the southern Atlantic seaboard. The Lower Atlantic printed $5.890 a gallon when the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) ran its weekly retail diesel survey for the week of October 26. California, at $8.155, is dearest of the ten districts the survey publishes.

Same country. Same grade of on-highway diesel. The two receipts are not the same purchase, and the gap is not gossip about one station. It is a supply map with ten rows on it.

The cheapest diesel prices in the US are east and south

The national average printed $6.352 a gallon, against $6.276 the week before. That figure is worth knowing and worth ignoring, in that order. Nobody buys the national average.

District	Diesel, USD per gallon
US national average, for context	6.352
Lower Atlantic (PADD 1C)	5.890
Gulf Coast (PADD 3)	5.951
East Coast (PADD 1)	6.079
New England (PADD 1A)	6.421
Midwest (PADD 2)	6.480
Central Atlantic (PADD 1B)	6.496
Rocky Mountain (PADD 4)	6.521
West Coast excluding California	6.614
West Coast (PADD 5)	7.329
California	8.155

Source: EIA weekly retail diesel survey, week of October 26.

Read that table by membership rather than by miles. The Lower Atlantic is Florida up through Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia and West Virginia. The Gulf Coast is Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and New Mexico. Those two carry the cheap end this week. The districts were drawn around supply and pipeline routes rather than state lines, which is why the cheap rows do not follow a freight lane.

California at $8.155 is the only district built from a single state, and it is the highest reading on the board.

The parent rows flatter the coasts

The East Coast shows $6.079, which sits near the cheap end of that ranking. The row is a blend of three districts underneath it, and the blend leans on the cheapest one. New England printed $6.421. The Central Atlantic printed $6.496 with New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania inside it. The Lower Atlantic printed $5.890 and pulled the parent down with it.

So a driver reading that row as a cheap coast is reading an average of one cheap district and two dear ones.

The West Coast behaves the same way in reverse. The PADD 5 figure of $7.329 blends California at $8.155 with the rest of the Pacific coast at $6.614. A truck filling in California pays one of those prices and a truck filling in Oregon pays the other. The parent row reports neither of them.

A district average is not a pump

A district figure describes a whole district. It does not make every card lock inside one cheap. The survey samples retail pumps across the district and prints one average for the lot, which means a truckstop on a Florida interstate and a card lock outside Savannah are both described by the same $5.890.

Two things follow. Fill decisions belong to the lane, not to the map. And the district reading tells you which way a market leans, not what the sign says when you pull in.

Where the lane gives you a choice, this week's board points at Texas and the Gulf Coast before the Midwest at $6.480 or the Central Atlantic at $6.496. Where it does not, the cheap district is a fact about somebody else's route. Every district reading is on the US diesel page, and California is there with the rest.

North of the line the cheap market is a territory

Canada prices the same product in cents per litre, and the two units do not convert into one clean comparison. Litres against gallons, cents against dollars. Keep them apart and read each on its own terms.

Natural Resources Canada printed its survey on Tuesday, October 27. The national average sits at 264.4 cents a litre. Quebec is dearest at 291.0. The Northwest Territories is cheapest at 225.3.

The shape is familiar. The expensive end is eastern and coastal, with Newfoundland and Labrador at 282.4 and British Columbia at 275.1 next behind Quebec. The cheap ground runs through the middle and north, and Alberta at 231.4, Saskatchewan at 249.6, Manitoba at 254.6 and Ontario at 257.7 all print under the national line. Quebec shows the other end of it.

A territory being the cheapest Canadian market is the detail worth holding onto. The Northwest Territories figure rests on a single survey location, and a cheap average in a market you cannot route through changes nothing on a lane from Toronto to Montreal.

The currency and the crossing clock

The Bank of Canada put the loonie at 1.4038 Canadian dollars to the US dollar on October 27, against 1.4025 the day before. Crude is priced in US dollars, so the rate sits under every litre a Canadian fleet buys.

On the border, CBSA reported commercial delays at one crossing in this morning's capture. Pacific Highway Crossing showed 5 minutes. Ambassador Bridge, Lacolle, Coutts-Sweetgrass and Emerson-Pembina all read clear. The rest had not returned a fresh capture when this was written, so their last reading is older and not worth planning around.

A queue at a booth is fuel burned at zero miles and hours the next appointment does not get back. This morning the clock is close to free, which is the cheapest thing on this page.

What a cheap district is worth on your lane

Cheap fuel only pays when the fill sits on the route. The Lower Atlantic at $5.890 and the Gulf Coast at $5.951 are this week's bottom two, and a load that runs through either one is buying well without doing anything clever. A load that does not is paying the district it is standing in.

Price the district before the rate. Then price your own truck, because the only half of cost per kilometre published here is the fuel price, and the litres are yours. The fuel cost calculator takes your burn rate and the price you actually paid.

The cheapest diesel prices in the US this week are a southern Atlantic reading, and the district on your route decides whether you get to use it.

Sources: US Energy Information Administration weekly retail diesel survey, Natural Resources Canada weekly diesel survey, Bank of Canada Valet API, CBSA border wait times. Methodology at https://dashboard.northernmilemedia.com/methodology/nmdi/.