Budget season is here, and the two halves of a delivered ton are no longer moving together. August producer price data put materials and components for construction up 5.1 percent from a year ago, with monthly growth slowing. Diesel over the same span is up roughly 58 percent. If you escalate next year’s delivered costs with a single blended percentage, you will overstate what the rock does and badly understate what the haul does. Here is what the August data actually says and how to carry material and freight as two separate assumptions in your 2027 numbers.
Most estimating shops escalate delivered cost with one number. This year that will produce a wrong answer in two directions at once.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released August producer price data on September 10 (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Producer Price Index, September 10, 2026). Prices for materials and components for construction were up 5.1 percent from a year earlier and up 0.3 percent on the month. Final demand overall rose 0.4 percent on the month and 5.4 percent over twelve months.
The monthly figure is the interesting part. A 0.3 percent month is a deceleration. Material inflation is still positive but it is cooling.
Now set diesel beside it. The national on-highway average is $5.967 a gallon, up about $2.20 from a year ago, which is roughly 58 percent.
Materials and components for construction rose 5.1 percent over twelve months while the national diesel average rose roughly 58 percent over the same period.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and U.S. Energy Information Administration, September 2026
Why one escalator gets it wrong twice
A delivered ton is material plus freight. Those two components are now moving at wildly different rates, and the mix between them varies enormously job to job. A short haul from a nearby pit is mostly material. A long haul to a remote corridor can be more freight than rock.
Apply one blended escalator across that and you systematically misprice both ends of your portfolio. Short-haul work gets padded. Long-haul work gets underbid. The second one is how contractors lose money without noticing until the job closes out.
Carry two assumptions instead of one
Escalate material on its own line, informed by the producer price trend for your actual products rather than a headline inflation number. Texas aggregate prices have their own trajectory and it is worth tracking directly.
Escalate freight separately, and tie each freight number to a stated pit and a stated haul distance. If the estimate does not say which pit it assumes, it is not really an estimate.
Then decide deliberately where fuel risk sits. A fuel surcharge that resets frequently moves that risk; a flat delivered price absorbs it.
Honest caveats
Two. This is national producer price data, not Texas-specific pricing, and your local market can diverge. And one month of deceleration is not a trend; these series get revised, and a single soft month does not mean material inflation is finished.
The forward read
The useful takeaway is not a forecast, it is a method. Separate the rock from the haul in your estimating, name the pit, and revisit the freight assumption more often than the material one, because that is the number actually moving. Start from a real delivered number.
Price the rock and the haul separately, or you will be wrong twice.
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