Diesel Just Hit An All-Time High. Your Quotes Were Priced At 142p

UK average diesel reached 199.52p per litre in the week to 5 October 2026, touching a record 200.01p and passing the previous peak set in June 2022. Nearly half of forecourts, around 4,050 stations, were selling at 199.9p or above. A full tank now costs close to £110, roughly £31 more than at the end of February, when diesel averaged 142.38p.

The RAC described it as the highest level in UK history. For a business running vans, the immediate question is not how to drive less. It is how much of that 57p a litre you have already agreed to absorb.

The real exposure is your price list, not your mileage

Route optimisation and better scheduling are worth doing, and most van-based businesses have already squeezed what is easily available there. A 5% mileage reduction against a 40% fuel price rise does not get you back to level.

The bigger number is sitting in documents you have already issued:

• Quotes with no expiry date. A quote given in July at July's fuel cost, accepted in October, is a loss you agreed to in writing.
• Annual rate cards and contracts with no fuel mechanism, priced when diesel was in the 140s.
• Fixed call-out fees that have not moved in two years.
• Free travel within a radius, set when the radius cost half as much to cover.

What to do this week

1. Work out your cost per mile, properly. Fuel at today's price, plus the mileage-driven share of servicing, tyres and depreciation. Most owners can quote their hourly labour rate instantly and have never calculated this, which means travel is priced by instinct.
2. Put an expiry date on every quote. Thirty days is normal and nobody objects to it. This single change removes most of the backward-looking exposure and costs nothing.
3. Decide between repricing and a surcharge. A transparent fuel surcharge that moves with a published index is easier to defend and easier to remove later than a permanent price rise. A price rise is simpler to administer and does not invite a conversation every month. Either is better than silent absorption.
4. Reprice travel separately from labour. Blending them hides the cost that is actually moving and makes your rates look worse than they are.
5. Check contracts for a review clause. Many annual agreements permit a mid-term adjustment on notice, and the owner has forgotten it is there.

Where automation genuinely helps

Three narrow places, all about knowing rather than driving:

• Mileage captured per job, automatically. Without it, cost per mile is an estimate and job-level profitability is a guess. This is the foundation for everything else here.
• Quote expiry enforced by the system, not remembered by a person. Expired quotes should flag rather than quietly convert at last quarter's price.
• A monthly recalculation of cost per mile and cost per job against current fuel, surfaced without anyone running a report. Fuel moved 57p in seven months; a figure reviewed annually is wrong for most of the year.

Route and scheduling tools are useful and well covered elsewhere. They reduce consumption. The items above protect margin, which is the thing actually under attack.

The honest limit

A small business cannot hedge pump prices, and nothing here changes what you pay at the forecourt. The cause is wholesale: diesel markets rose sharply following the suspension of Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline and continued tension between the US and Iran, with Brent around 103 dollars. None of that is in your control, and it could reverse as quickly as it arrived.

What is in your control is whether the next three months of work is priced at February's fuel cost. Most van-based businesses discover the answer in the accounts in January. The ones that look now get to decide instead.